Suchergebnisse

Wenn man nach der sozialstrukturellen Bedeutung der neuen sozialen Bewegungen fragt, dann drängt sich zunächst der Eindruck eines nur marginalen Charakters dieser Bewegungen auf. Die neuen sozialen Bewegungen mobilisieren offensichtlich nur Minoritäten. Sie bewirken wenig, wenn man ihre Erfolge an der Durchsetzung politischer Forderungen mißt. Die Themen, die sie aufgreifen, werden, sobald sie sich als publikumswirksam erwiesen haben, von der offiziellen politischen Kultur aufgegriffen und vermarktet. Es gibt also gute Gründe dafür, die neuen sozialen Bewegungen für ein nur marginales Phänomen im Prozeß gesellschaftlicher Modernisierung zu halten. Die neuen sozialen Bewegungen scheinen darüberhinaus auch ein nur transitorisches Phänomen zu sein. Sie scheinen nichts anderes als der Ausdruck einer Übergangskrise, als die Begleiterscheinungen eines Wandels der Sozialstruktur im Prozeß der Modernisierung der Gesellschaft zu sein. Der Bedeutungsverlust des Nationalstaats, der Bedeutungsverlust von Konfession und sozialer Herkunft und die damit verbundene Lockerung sozialstruktureller Bindungen von Wählern an Parteien, die Bildungsexpansion und die damit verbundenen neuen sozialen Ungleichheiten, dies alles signalisiert Verschiebungen in der Sozialstruktur, die ein zunächst institutionell ungebundenes politisches Verhaltens- und Handlungspotential, das man dann "unkonventionelles" politisches Verhalten genannt hat, freigesetzt haben. Es dürfte aber wohl nur eine Frage der Zeit sein, bis dieses ungebundene Protestpotential wieder integriert und die aktuellen Probleme institutioneller Desintegration durch strukturelle Variationen in der Parteienlandschaft gelöst werden.

This article is part of the publication of contributions delivered at the 24th annual conference of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE), held at the University of Leipzig, 30.08.-05.09.1999. "A change of perspective has taken place in teacher education: It is no longer seen as the problem-solving agent of education but rather as just another source of educational problems. In this article, the author tries to trace the roots of such a negative image. The most obvious approach is a historical one. An enormous number of attempts have been made to reform teacher education. The most important and positive among these attempts has been the academic orientation of teacher education. Yet, seen from the educationalists' perspective, there have appeared a number of traps and false conclusions, possibly due to a misinterpretation of what the role of science in education should be. The reorientation of teacher education, i. e. the turn from purely didactical and practice-oriented courses at educational colleges to mainly academically oriented courses at universities, have brought up new problems that urgently need to be solved. The author discovers major problems in the fact that the great variety of research interests have to be brought in order to make them accessible to students. Didactics which are said to be the most important of all professional disciplines for teachers need to be applied to the structure of the educational discipline as a whole. An agreement on a fundamental canon of topics, methods and knowledge is necessary. This demand is, however, not meant to minimize the range of areas of study; instead, it should rather be considered to broaden specific fields of interest in order to avoid one sided academic points of view. The still unsolved problem of theory and practice is another point to be discussed. The author's question here is: "Where should educational knowledge be grounded - in the discipline or in the profession?" As it is not possible to make a clear distinction between theory and practice but rather to distinguish between the production and the application of knowledge, a curriculum is needed where those two aspects can be put together interactively. This seems to be a solution to many unsolved problems, as it would lead to a more specified target of academic teacher education. In Germany, the academic foundations for the teaching profession are laid in the initial phase of training at university. One should be careful not to ascribe tasks to academic studies that can realistically only be part of the probational second phase of teacher education. Yet, as education needs to be perceived as an action-oriented system of reflection, a significantly stronger combination of practical school experience and theoretical reflection is needed. Ideally, there would be greater stress on the combination of observation and analysis of school work which could be a means to reflect on professional practice. Also, the didactical aspects of teacher training, which are constantly being claimed as being of major importance to teachers, need to be rethought on the level of university teaching. This is a demand going with professionality on the side of academic teachers but it is also meant as a kind of compensation for the lack of practice-related teaching. Seminars and lectures would then be turned into didactical workshops. Another field of possible improvement is seen in an intensified form of investigative learning where school research is seen as a task for both students and teachers. For matters of quality ensurance university teachers need to be willing to co-operate and start to develop ideals and criteria which can later be evaluated. But as the great day of general consent on the national level can not be expected and as new regulations only will not bring real change, innovation can alone be expected by people bearing responsibility at the basis of different universities. The financial crisis of public households should not focus an saddening thoughts an economic efficiency that keep real innovation in the minds of idealists without being ever put to practice." (DIPF/Orig.).

"This presentation will analyze the future of post-Katrina New Orleans. It will discuss the pattern of impacts of the hurricane across neighborhoods and across racial and class categories, identifying 'whose New Orleans' is really at stake in the recovery. Early media reports about the wind damage and flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina focused especially on the people who had been unable to escape the city before it flooded. Images of poor and predominantly black people crowded into the Superdome and Convention Center supported the impression that Katrina had disproportionately affected poor, black neighborhoods. Analysis of FEMA storm damage data shows that this image is correct. Damaged areas had nearly twice the proportion of black residents as did undamaged areas. Closer inspection of neighborhoods within New Orleans shows that some affluent white neighborhoods were hard hit, while some poor minority neighborhoods were spared. Yet if the post-Katrina city were limited to the population previously living in areas that were undamaged by the storm - that is, if nobody were able to return to damaged neighborhoods - New Orleans is at risk of losing more than 80% of its black population. This means that policy choices affecting who can return, to which neighborhoods, and with what forms of public and private assistance, will greatly affect the future character of the city. Emphasis will be given to the role of local politics in creating the conditions for natural disaster, particularly in the urban development process that left black neighborhoods particularly exposed. He argues that decisions about the future are not technical questions about disaster prevention but political questions about whose interests will be protected. And the pattern of neighborhood mobilization in the first year after the hurricane and the diaspora from the city have greatly affected what voices are being heard in the political arena. New Orleans' first election after Hurricane Katrina was conducted under unusual conditions. A large share of the population remained displaced outside the city, and the majority of displaced persons were living outside the State of Louisiana. Those living away from home were disproportionately black residents and among blacks they were disproportionately low-income. Among displaced persons, blacks were considerably more likely than white to be living outside the metropolitan area and outside the state. Although Hurricane Katrina reshaped the political map of the city by suppressing the vote in the poorest and blackest neighborhoods, the dynamics of the mayoral campaign represent a more remarkable shift in the composition of support for the winning candidate, Mayor Ray Nagin. Having been elected in 2002 on the basis of his strong showing in white and more affluent neighborhoods, despite being black himself, the Mayor has been re-elected with his main edge among neighborhoods with predominantly black and low to middle income residents. A key question for the future is how development policy in his second term will respond to the needs of his new electoral constituency. At the moment it appears that city policy will instead follow the market, encouraging redevelopment in more affluent neighborhoods regardless of their vulnerability to flooding, actively reducing the supply of low-rent public housing, and using public funds to support homeowners rather than working class renters. In this case the 'natural disaster' of the hurricane will give way to an 'unnatural disaster' of public policy." (author's abstract)