Publications

Vom Ruhrgebiet war vor 1914 noch kaum die Rede. Die Zeitgenoss:innen bezeichneten den schwerindustriellen Ballungsraum, der in wenigen Jahrzehnten auf dünn besiedelter, agrarisch geprägter Fläche entstanden war, nüchtern als Rheinisch-Westfälischen Industriebezirk. Die Beiträge des Bandes zeigen, dass es sich bei der Konstituierung dieses jungen Raumes keineswegs um eine zwangsläufige Entwicklung handelte, sondern die Zukunft offen und unsicher war. In einem langen Zeitraum von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg spüren sie den Lebenswelten, Erfahrungen und Wahrnehmungen, der Ressourcennutzung und Umweltzerstörung nach. Themen wie Arbeit und Freizeit, Kultur und Religion beleuchtet der Band ebenso wie soziale und politische Konflikte, Mobilität und Migration.

While borders are on the rise in both political practice and academic research, more mundane practices of boundary work continue to make, remake and unmake transnational knowledges, spaces and identities. In this special section, we argue that global politics unfolds through boundary work, an understudied but highly effective set of ordering practices that shape the conditions for and dynamics of global (non-)cooperation. We leverage recent innovations in the study of boundary work in other fields to transcend the conventional portrayal of boundaries as instruments of exclusion and competition. Instead, we equally attend to their potential to facilitate inclusion and cooperation between otherwise differently positioned actors. Building on this conceptual foundation, the contributions to this collection offer novel, empirically grounded insights into diverse types of boundary work (competitive, collaborative and configurational) across several important transnational domains and institutional sites. These insights will be of particular relevance to practitioners of global politics, who regularly confront boundaries. Overall, we encourage scholars of International Relations to pay more attention to the constitutive effects and dynamics of boundary work in global politics.

Exploring the cross-cultural exchange of ideas between German and Turkish scholars, policymakers, and institutions, this book sheds light on how German theories were interpreted and applied in Turkey during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Situating the flow of ideas within broader patterns of economic globalization, the contributors to this edited volume explore historical, economic, and ideological developments in Turkey and Germany. Within economic thought, there is a particular focus on the influence of the German Historical School in Turkish economic thought; the contributions of German refugee scholars in the 1930s, through their publications, courses they offered, and their relations with the other members of academia; and Marxian Asiatic Mode of Production debates of the 1960s. In terms of economic policy, the book also discusses agrarian populism in the 1930s, German soft power in interwar Turkey, the first Gastarbeiter Agreement and its effects, German investments in Turkey after the World War II, and the role of sports in shaping relations between Germany and Turkey. The book will be of great interest to readers in the history of economic thought, intellectual history, economic history, and the histories of Germany and Turkey more broadly.

This study attempts to widen the scope of African ecocriticism and emphasize the roles of nonhuman life forms in literary representations of sustainable environments. Using Joe Ushie’s poetry collection, A Reign of Locusts, for a discourse situated within the African material ecocritical problematic, the study submits that some African poets valorize their birthplaces’ natures not only in recognition of the agency of their places, but also in deployment of traditionalism against the failures of modernity. That is, such African poets often shift from the romanticization of their indigenous ecologies to activism against the force that modernity exerts on the environment. While recognizing the enduring force of modernity, the poets, through their poetics of nature, suggest that the promotion of traditional ways of relating to the earth is one of the ways in which humans can ensure a sustainable environment.

How do transnational actors handle institutional configurations in which they need or are expected to work together, even though cooperation is likely to diminish their distinctiveness? For officials of international organizations (IOs) whose mandates and memberships overlap, this tension can induce lasting identity stress. In this article, I argue that one way for IO officials to cope with this stress is by mobilizing ‘atrocity stories’ as boundary work devices. To exemplify the dynamics surrounding this widely overlooked inter-organizational practice, I examine a prominent case of ‘twin’ organizations: the relationship between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. I draw on more than 40 semi-structured interviews to demonstrate that both IMF and World Bank officials field seemingly trivial atrocity stories to shore up their organizational identities while acknowledging obvious ideational and operational similarities between the IOs. Thus, they not only determine what are shared tasks and what are not, but also delineate who they are as representatives of two routinely and closely interacting IOs. The analysis clarifies how a reliance on atrocity stories can help actors to tame the identity stress that stems from their interactions.

Are policies in pursuit of economic growth good or bad? This question continues to divide thinkers, especially against the backdrop of escalating socio-ecological problems. In this chapter, I approach the polarized debate about growth through a constructivist lens that regards its (un)desirability as a social fact. I undertake an exploratory analysis of the policy position of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) under the leadership of Robert Habeck from the Green Party. The empirical evidence leads me to argue that the BMWK remains firmly in the pro-growth camp. Notably, the ministry insists that ‘sustainable growth’ can be attained with the right policies. It does not even entertain growth-critical ideas at a time when post-growth arguments are gaining more traction. Overall, the chapter suggests that growth-friendly policies are not good or bad as such, but certain social groups deem them to be good or bad.

This book is the first volume of two edited collections that critically assess the historical and contemporary processes that have shaped the formation and transformation of the African university. It provides general perspectives, reflections, and a selection of case studies from different regions and higher education systems, highlighting the vibrant debates on the social and institutional life of universities in Africa. The chapters assembled here capture the rich experiences, strategies, and analyses of students, lecturers, researchers, and administrators, showcasing the university as a dynamic lived experience.

Is there such a thing as an “African university”? What characterises an “African” university? What does it mean to be an African university, apart from being a university in Africa? What insights can we gain by studying the university in Africa? These questions guide our exploration in this conceptual chapter. To answer them, we examine the grand narratives and competing models that have shaped the way African universities define their identities as distinct, socially situated institutions. We start by exploring the idea of the university as a travelling concept and show that the modern university underwent significant transformations as it expanded beyond Western societies to become a global institution. As the European model spread across the world during the colonial and capitalist developments of the 19th and 20th centuries, it adapted to incorporate different features relevant to new contexts. With the rise of the postcolonial condition in the second half of the 20th century, nationally rooted institutions began to evolve. As they negotiated their institutional fabric and societal role, they reflected both global trends and local realities. To better understand this process, we discuss in detail four narratives and corresponding models that have shaped and continue to shape the idea of the university in Africa.

Ancient Egyptian and Nubian sources on war from the third millennium BCE to the turn of the era typically portray foreign women as captives or, occasionally, victims of physical violence. The decorum seems to have changed during the New Kingdom when Egypt became an empire and controlled a vast territory from Nubia in the south to the Levant in the north. In this period, women are not visually depicted as victims of physical violence. However, captured men, women, and children were often assigned to temple workshops in both ancient Egypt and Nubia. Elite women in ancient Egypt were sometimes buried with weapons to symbolize their status. However, only royal or ruling women in Egypt were shown as actively engaging in violence. A ruling woman such as Hatshepsut was depicted as a pharaoh (man) smiting and trampling over male enemies. Queens (i.e., great royal wives) are depicted smiting and trampling over female enemies in those scenes in which their husbands, ruling kings, are doing the same to male enemies. These queens are mirroring martial goddesses who are attested as both fighting for god Re and assisting the king on the battlefield. More than a millennium later, some Meroitic female rulers are depicted smiting male enemies just as their husbands do. This iconography suggests that they truly shared power with their husbands.

This paper is the first attempt to analyse Egyptomania and ancient Egyptian motifs in musical genres such as turbo-folk, chalga and rap in the Balkans from the 1990s to nowadays. Within the genres of turbo-folk and chalga, ancient Egyptian motifs are predominantly found in the music videos for the songs which do not necessarily always refer to ancient Egypt. In contrast, in hip-hop examples of Egyptomania, ancient Egyptian motifs are found both in the music videos and the lyrics of the songs. My results indicates that Egyptomania in turbo-folk and chalga serves to create a Balkan orientalist fantasy which does not differ much from similar global orientalist fantasies of ancient Egypt. In contrast, examples coming from Serbian and Bulgarian rap, although still relying on orientalist stereotypes, show a much more creative use of ancient Egyptian motifs to express different local social issues (female empowerment and class struggle).

Standard accounts of concepts in philosophy and in cognitive psychology hold that we learn a target concept by learning the concepts that constitute it. If this is the only model of learning we have, then only concepts that are complex or structured can be learned. I argue for an alternative to this framework by presenting a proposal for how we learn some atomic concepts. I show that we can learn a concept through descriptions without thinking that the concepts employed in the descriptions constitute the target concept. I develop this idea by using the notion of a mental file and by employing a general externalist explanatory strategy. In the view I develop, some concepts are akin to files in that the descriptions associated with a given concept are means of properly individuating the extension of the concept, and they are also means of connecting a concept to others, but they do not constitute the concept and can be revised or abandoned. I show how this discussion connects to issues in conceptual engineering.

The first twenty-one books of Albert the Great’s massive paraphrastic commentary on Aristotle’s De animalibus (completed in the 1260s) were followed by something very different in books 22-26, namely brief narrative descriptions of various animals arranged alphabetically and relying extensively upon Thomas of Cantimpré’s De natura rerum. The result is a peculiar composite that first articulates the general or common principles of animals—e.g., the manner of their reproduction, their nutrition, growth, shared behaviors, etc.—but then provides brief, narrative descriptions of different animal species which are sourced primarily from Thomas of Cantimpré’s encyclopedia (ca. 1256). In the following pages I examine Albert’s use in his De animalibus of Thomas of Cantimpre’s narrative descriptions in De natura rerum. I will show that although Albert often criticized Thomas’s text, he utilized it nonetheless to satisfy the requirements for a natural science and to make that science accessible to a wider audience.