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The articles explores how the way in which wars are being waged has changed since the 19th century. Its main focus is on ground warfare. Warfare, according to the thesis advocated in the article, has become industrialized within a few decades. One of the consequences was that since then only rarely battles have been lead face to face. Another result was a change in the way the military had to prepare for war. After presenting a short overview the articles proceeds to deal with objectification tendencies in regard to death, which also began to develop in pre-industrial periods. (Prokla / FUB)

In the last decades the problem of the arms race has mostly been equated with the production and proliferation of weapons such as tanks, missiles or airplanes. However, recently there is growing evidence that small arms like machine guns, rifles, revolvers or hand grenades are worldwide the weapons responsible for most of the deaths in armed conflicts. Often, this is seen in connection with the phenomenon of the emergence of "new" intrastate wars characterized by privatisation and failing states. Looking back on the role of small arms in different types of war, it is argued that already in the past especially these arms have been used in situations beyond the "classical" wars. Presently, there importance derives from the global flood of small arms which is caused by government decisions in the past as well as by the purchasing power of the new warlords. The latter rely on powerful states involved in legal and illicit arms transfers as well as promoting informal economies. (Prokla / FUB)

All major technologies have been exploited not just for peaceful but also for hostile purposes. Biotechnology constitutes an exception. At the time when the biotech revolution began in the early 1970s, states agreed to ban biological weapons from their arsenals. This ban, however, has been weakened over the last 15 years. This article describes this process and the efforts to reverse it. (Prokla / FUB)

The paper starts with an overview of competing theoretical approaches to understanding Europeanization of Central and East European applicant states. It is suggested that instead of seeing the process as strictly "top-down," we must investigate the ways in which the common pressures and constraints of Europeanization are processed and responded to in particular local contexts. In the main section the paper is focussed on the case of Slovenia in order to examine how common pressures impinge upon, challenge or reinforce national 'models' and practices, in particular two "sites of Europeanization" are examined: the restructuring of the Slovenian banking sector and recent political turmoil around the privatization of a local Slovene brewery. The authors suggest through these cases how the process of Europeanization operates not only in the political sphere, but also involves contentious debates in the public sphere. (Prokla / FUB)

The crisis and the erosion of the collective wage agreements in Germany are not a result of the transformation of industrial relations through globalization or the transformation to a postfordist model of production. Essential basics are the change in the macroeconomic constellation of politics and economics and a pragmatical reaction of the trade unions. Although the political power of trade unions is threatened fundamentally, they set their hopes on "muddling trough", without concept. (Prokla / FUB)

Workfare strategies, requiring recipients of public assistance to work or to participate in work related activities, are not a completely new phenomenon of the modern welfare state. Nevertheless, there have been remarkable policy changes and reforms in most of the Western capitalist societies since the 1990s trying to replace or combine systems of cash assistance for the poor with mandatory employment programs. The article looks at the recent reform efforts and workfare initiatives in the US and Germany and identifies similarities as well as differences in the approaches and political intentions. While US-programs like "Wiscon Works" have gained much attention for reducing caseloads and moving single mothers into the (low-wage) labor force, little is known in Germany about the costs and the hardships of those who were forced to leave welfare. (Prokla / FUB)

The article examines different modes of peripheralisation in Eastern Europe in the process of transformation. While in both, the EU candidate countries and in Russia, patterns of peripheral capitalism can be observed, pursued by and in the interest of transnational political and economic interest coalitions, these take different forms. The EU candidate countries undergo a more coherent variant of transformation, structured by the pressures of the accession process and a subordinated integration into European production networks. On the contrary, Russia has seen a much more open and unstructured process of integration into the global economy, expressed so far mainly in capital flight, export of raw materials and import of vast amount of industrial goods. (Prokla / FUB)