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.

This special issue on what we call global green visions offers a vantage point for understanding global environmental governance in the Anthropocene through the lens of world order(s). Specifically, we suggest in this introduction that a variety of international and transnational actors craft green visions, thereby not only outlining what (un)sustainability means for them but also promoting distinct conceptions of future world order. In other words, ideas about sustainability are not politically innocent; instead, each explicitly or implicitly revolves around a particular conception of world order. The special issue bridges and complements existing work in international relations and global environmental politics by examining how the global green visions of various actors interact with understandings of world order, rather than merely acknowledging that claims about what is “sustainable” and “unsustainable” are contested. In fact, global green visions are contested precisely because they entail renegotiations of how to govern under the increasingly difficult conditions of the Anthropocene.

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).

The extant literature largely ignores the micro-governance of collaborative networks (CNs), that is, the day-to-day functions that CN coordinators need to perform to produce a collaborative environment that stimulates joint action. This paper aims to identify which configurations of micro-governance functions foster an internal collaborative environment in CNs. We collected data from 36 CNs for water protection in Brazil and performed a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Results show two configurations that may be adopted in different situations. Although the first configuration requires all six micro-governance functions to be performed, the second one does not require high monitoring. This configuration is adopted by CNs whose stakeholders do not have a previous history of conflict. Our study advances the theory of collaborative governance by empirically demonstrating how micro-governance functions enable effective implementation in natural resources management. We contribute to the practice of collaborative governance by describing how CN coordinators may enhance their day-to-day activities.

Wie haben Autor*innen wie Fakir Baykurt, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Kemal Yalçın und Rauf Ceylan das Ruhrgebiet literarisch geprägt? Nesrin Tanç zeigt, wie Literatur kollektive Erinnerung, Migrationserfahrungen und kulturelles Erbe dokumentiert. Dabei verbindet sie Analyse mit Kulturpraxis: Übersetzungen, Hörstücke und Literaturkarten machen Literatur erfahrbar und bieten einen neuen Blick auf transnationale Literatur für alle, die sich mit Bildung, Kultur und Erinnerung beschäftigen.

This book honors the impactful work of Terrence G. Wiley on advancing social justice in the areas of language diversity and language policy. It brings together a group of experienced scholars to provide an overview of research and progress in three areas: heritage and community language education, ideologies of language and literacies, and language policy. The chapters cover a wide range of formal and informal learning spaces and address language policies and practices from the national to the local levels. The international appeal of Wiley's work is represented through the rich diversity of the contributing scholars and research contexts. With an emphasis on advancing scholarship and advocacy for language minoritized populations in the United States and around the world, this book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in the fields of language education, language policy and sociolinguistics.

Since the mid-2010s, scholars and practitioners have been increasingly interested in the integration of development cooperation, humanitarian action and peacebuilding, known as the ‘triple nexus’ approach. In parallel, the necessity of including sexual and gender minorities in these three areas has also garnered growing attention, recognizing the marginalization and specific needs of LGBTQI+ people. This critical literature review examines both scholarly and ‘grey’ publications on the place of sexual and gender minorities in each of the triple nexus’s three areas, documenting what is known and what is not. It also examines the challenges for implementation and achieving impact before proposing a global research agenda on LGBTQI+ people and the triple nexus.

The capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, the extirpation of various heresies in the twelfth and thirteen centuries, the gradual expansion of Christian rule in the Iberian peninsula, and the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity there during the fourteenth century, all seemed to support a Christian triumphalism that imagined that as the End Time approached, Jews and other infidels would inevitably be absorbed into the Church. Nonetheless, an expanding medieval awareness of the many ‘Others’ beyond Christendom contributed to Christian anxieties that Jews (or Muslims) might expand their number through mass conversion, and not Christians. This paper will examine some sources of this anxiety.

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.

Internationalization and globalization of higher education represent one of the key features of contemporary global (knowledge) economy and society. By performing the functions of education, research and third mission, higher education institutions are social institutions through which countries participate in the global society. One of the features of internationalization of higher education is the increasing use of English language as medium of instruction, research and outreach. This chapter presents key conventional theoretical perspectives—such as sociolinguistic theory of social and linguistic capital, and decolonial critical theory—often used to account for language policies and practices pertaining to internationalization of higher education in non-Anglophone multilingual societies. The chapter brings global examples, but also experiences of African higher education institutions vis-à-vis the use of English for academic purposes. The chapter’s assumption is that English is increasingly becoming and being perceived as essential and hegemonic in internationalizing African higher education, despite the challenges non-Anglophone African academic community face in using English for academic purposes. The chapter argues that the Anglicization of African academia reinforces the domination of Global North’s science over the Global South’s, as well as the global inequalities in knowledge production and dissemination.

Citizens’ willingness to participate in political and civic life is crucial for democracies. The Civic Voluntarism Model has frequently been used to explain political participation by emphasizing citizens’ resources, psychological engagement, and recruiting as important antecedents. While the model has received extensive support from cross-sectional studies among adults, we know little about its explanatory power for the development of adolescents’ willingness to participate. Thus, this study aims to determine whether and how adolescents’ resources (i.e., political knowledge, socioeconomic background, cultural capital), psychological engagement (political interest and efficacy), and recruitment (peers’ participatory attitudes, discussions, and school track) are related to the development of three types of willingness to participate (civic engagement, activism, voting) among high school students from Grade 7 to 8. For this purpose, we performed cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses with data from N = 444 students. Overall, our structural equation models indicated positive associations between the Civic Voluntarism Model components and willingness to participate, with considerable variation between the cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. For the cross-sectional analyses, we found positive associations between political interest and all examined forms of willingness to participate. In the longitudinal analyses, we found that socioeconomic background was related to all forms of willingness to participate. The results for other factors varied depending on the type of political participation. Future studies should strive to systematically investigate these differences and inspect the specific interplay between factors. The consistent longitudinal findings on socioeconomic statues point to the need to counteract political inequality through measures such as civic education.

This paper examines the paradoxical (post-)growth trajectory of Bitcoin, the first ‘cryptocurrency’, as a case of infrastructural change in digital finance. Bitcoin's founding phase revolved around the principles of self-governance and self-limitation, which combined to create a commitment to degrowing the financial system and limiting monetary production to impede accumulation. Yet growth logics soon began to unfold after Bitcoin's creation in 2009. How and why did that shift occur, and with what implications? We rely on white papers and outputs of alt-coin founders to trace the socio-technical relations underpinning the emergence and expansion of ‘alt-infrastructures’ oriented around growth. We demonstrate how what was originally designed as a post-growth infrastructure largely, albeit not fully, succumbed to conventional growth dynamics over a fairly short period.

In recent years numerous streaming series, books, and films focusing on Elisabeth of Austria have generated intense interest among readers and viewers. This plethora of pop cultural 'Sisi' products both reflects and produces a cult affect surrounding the figure of 'Sisi'. Recent films by female auteurs Frauke Finsterwalder ( Sisi und Ich, 2023) and Marie Kreutzer ( Corsage, 2022) present especially complex, partly fantastical pictures of this figure. I will argue here that these recent filmic 'Sisi' iterations embody a unique mode of female fetishism that invites us to reconsider the fetish from a feminist perspective.