Suchergebnisse

The post-Soviet withdrawal phase of the Afghanistan conflict (1989-1995) -- The advent of the Taliban (1995-2001) -- Post-9/11 Afghanistan -- The external powers : interests and concerns -- The challenge of religious militancy and extremism in Pakistan -- Pakistan : a case of intellectual crisis and weak governance -- Conclusions

"Modern democracies are pluralistic insofar as they accept a plurality of conceptions of the good affirmed by their citizens. At the same time they depend on a public conception of justice and sustaining practices that are compatible with the fact of pluralism. Democracy without a shared normative idea of justice degenerates into an accidental association of disengaged individuals. But how can we justify the normative core of the liberal, secular and social democracy without falling back into monistic, universalistic or even ideological claims? The problem of compatibility of democracy and pluralism is shortly sketched (I). Then a well-known and broadly accepted solution known as political liberalism is presented with respect to the work of John Rawls. For Rawls, a public conception of justice that might be supported by an overlapping consensus even in pluralistic democracies is to be 'political, and not metaphysical' (II) and also 'reasonable, but not true' (III). A discussion of this political liberalism, which is neither metaphysical nor ethical, follows. Eventually, five arguments against this 'thin' conception of liberalism are presented." (author's abstract)

"The Victorian era was a time of dramatic change. During this period Britain ruled the largest empire on earth, witnessed the expansion of democracy, and developed universal education and mass print culture. Both its imperial might and the fact that it had industrialised and urbanised decades before any other nation allowed it to dominate world politics and culture in many ways for the better part of the nineteenth century. Understanding the Victorians paints a vivid portrait of the era, combines broad survey with close analysis, and introduces students to the critical debates taking place among historians today. It emphasises class, gender, and racial and imperial positioning as constitutive of human relations, including the social, economic, cultural, political, and legal. Starting with the Queen Caroline Affair in 1820 and coming right up to the start of World War I in 1914, Steinbach's thematic chapters take in, amongst other things, the economy, gender, religion, the history of science and ideas, material culture and sexuality. With a clear introduction outlining the key themes of the period, including the issue of periodization, and with chronologies and suggestions for further reading, this is the ideal companion for all students of the nineteenth century"--

Pt. I. Media constructions of 1989 and the elusiveness of the historical GDR. Visual re-productions of the Wende : the role played by television images in constituting and historicizing political events / Hilde Hoffmann -- Remembering GDR culture in postunification Germany and beyond / Stephen Brockmann -- pt. II. Challenges to the dominant discourse of the Wende. "Das waren wir nicht!" : the image of East Germans and the GDR as a narrative problem after 1989 in Klaus Schlesinger's Die Sache mit Randow / Daniel Argelès -- "Der Schrei des Marsyas" : the mythic voices of the subaltern in Reinhard Jirgl's Mutter Vater Roman / Arne De Winde and Frederik Van Dam -- An early challenge to the construction of cross-border romance in post-1989 film : Andreas Dresen's So schnell es geht nach Istanbul / Rosemary Stott -- pt. III. Textual memory. Mediating immediacy : historicizing the GDR by bringing it back to life in postmillennial works of fiction / Andrea Geier -- "Eine Armee wie jede andere auch"? : writers and filmmakers remember the Nationale Volksarmee / Andrew Plowman -- Matter out of place : trash and transition in Clemens Meyer's Als wir träumten / Gillian Pye -- pt. IV. Literary generations : competing perspectives. Autobiographical writing in three generations of a GDR family : Christa Wolf--Annette Simon--Jana Simon / Wolfgang Emmerich -- Accursed progenitors? : extending the generation-gap debate to GDR parents / Astrid Köhler -- Parallels and divergences in post-1989 memory discourse : a comparative review of the Slovak experience / Nadežda Zemaníková -- pt. V. Afterlives. Dances of death : a last literature from the GDR / Karen Leeder -- "Die Gegenwart war es nicht" : Irina Liebmann and the post-Wende uncanny / Catherine Smale -- One iota of difference : remembering GDR literature as socialist literature / Benjamin Robinson

The thesis analyses how, if at all, accession to international standards makes a difference to national minorities in Russia in the advancement of their cultural rights, focusing on the period 2000-2011. It further analyses the factors that influence particular forms of implementation of international standards. The study uses data from semi-structured interviews, as well as from legislation, legal judgements and Council of Europe documents. It focuses on three minorities as case studies: the Karelians, Mordovians and Tatars. The research is divided into three parts: 1) Practice and Law, investigating how the specific characteristics of the Russian domestic legal environment and of the relevant international standards generate a particular type of dynamics between the two; 2) Homogenisation, examining whether international standards can suspend or reverse Russia's culturally homogenising tendencies since the 2000s; 3) Exclusion, investigating to what extent, if at all, international standards may modify the dynamics of majority-minority relations by facilitating the introduction of a form of participation that is effective, in the area of decision- and policy-making on minorities' cultural rights. The thesis concludes that the role of international standards in the area of minorities' cultural rights is restricted in scope in Russia. Two sets of reasons are identified. First, specific features of Russian politics and society: (i) Russia's selective implementation of international law; (ii) the alternation of localism and centralism; (iii) Russia's homogenising centralisation and 'managed diversity'; (iv) the absence of guarantees for the upholding of minorities' participatory rights, resulting in fictitious forms of participation. The second set of reasons relates to the complexities and weaknesses of international standards on minority rights themselves. (ECMI)