August 9, 2012, 2:46 pm, Sander Wilkens,
Agglutination,
Fusion and degree,
Non-/individualism,
Polar opposition,
Reification,
Spatial concepts,
Spatial Cybernetics,
Topics.
Even if Durkheim has received wide intercultural acknowledgement as a theoretician of modern sociology, one of his main concepts, the doctrine of collective consciousness, has been severely criticized by Adorno. To the extent, his reading provides evidence of diametrical methodical thinking and of clashing conviction. Nevertheless, there are several arguments which speak in favor of Durkheim: (i) his empirical foundation in connection with the lifelong attempt to provide consciousness a standing on this secondary collective balance; (ii) his awareness of the scaling of representations between distinctive fusion and broader aggregation; (iii) his succinct understanding of their interconnectedness to societal relationships; (iv) his orientation towards non-individualism and polarity. In particular under this aspect one can observe a failure of Adorno himself, merging the dialectical approach with polarity.
Juli 31, 2012, 4:26 pm, Don Foresta,
Art and science,
Interactivity,
Network,
Renaissance,
Sociohistorical analysis,
Spatial Cybernetics,
Topics.
This article is about art and science and a certain parallelism between them in the evolution of Western culture, particularly over the last 150 years. I will try to describe what changes have taken place in our society’s operational schema and our shared paradigm. My construct will be one of art, though a strong influence from science will be evident. I propose that we have been living through a second renaissance provoked by a profound change in the definition and representation of reality by both art and science. Throughout the 20th century, the ideas put forth by both have been extremely unconventional and the two have interacted in ways not always obvious, providing new metaphors, new patterns for defining the future shape of our culture.
The article devotes to the german legends and on the basis of the concrete examples of Weimar, Nuremberg and Dresden the impact of the aura from these cities on modern nation building in the 20th and 21st century will be investigated.
In the Western post-industrial societies, the individual experience is heavily shaped by the day-to-day contact with information and communication technologies. This article argues that everyday experience based on the use of communication technologies leads to a specific adaptation of the human consciousness to the technical environment. The question is discussed, what is the impact of this process on human consciousness.
Juni 4, 2012, 8:52 am, Swasti Vardhan Mishra,
Residential segregation,
Scheduled caste,
Scheduled tribe,
Spatial autocorrelation,
Spatial concepts,
Spatial Cybernetics,
Topics.
The paper aims at achieving two objectives, firstly, to acquaint the researchers in the field of spatial demography with the techniques of residential segregation; pattern of population distribution based on the concept of spatial statistics and secondly, the practical evaluation of the techniques through real life data. The study queries about any residential segregation and pattern of location of the scheduled caste (SC) and the scheduled tribe (ST) population in Kolkata city by concentrating on the measures of Entropy Index (EI), Atkinson’s Index, Absolute Centralization Index (ACE) and the Global and Local Spatial Autocorrelation (SA) measures of Moran’s I and LISA. The outcome of the study clarifies the fact that caste and race based segregation is being diluted in the wake of Indian urbanization and the spatial clustering tendency of the Concerned Social Group (CSG) is as mild.
März 27, 2012, 8:49 am, Ekaterina Fen,
Method,
Mobility places,
New urbanism,
Rhythmanalysis,
Spatial concepts,
Spatial Cybernetics,
Topics.
This article studies the idea of rhythm performance and perception as a tool for mobility places studies. Starting from the analysis of H. Lefebvre classification it introduces observer/actor dichotomy that allows to refer to marginal aspects in rhythmanalysis discussion, such as: mobility places, idea of atmosphere, dichotomy of rhythm/improvisation and applicability of rhythmanalysis to the bigger-scale territories. That allows broadening the limits of disciplinary field of “new urbanism”.
März 22, 2012, 9:59 am, Alexa Maria Kunz,
Higher education studies,
Semester break,
Spatial concepts,
Spatial Cybernetics,
Study time allocation,
Time institutions,
Topics.
This paper was developed from a presentation hold on the annual convention of the department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Karlsruher Institute of Technology (KIT) in February 2012. Since the beginning of the Bologna Process the controversial issue of students’ time allocation has been occasionally discussed in the scientific community as well as in public media. It is ambiguous how much time students spend for studying and how they get along with their workload. For the first time a research group at the KIT collected and analysed a large scale of data on students’ time allocation, students’ workload as well as motives for studying during the semester break. This paper contrasts ‘time institutions’ of employees like the 40-hour working week with student time structures.
März 20, 2012, 4:46 pm, Lisa Xanke,
Artificial human,
Artificial intelligence,
Cyborgs,
Posthuman age,
Sociohistorical analysis,
Terminator,
Topics,
Transhumanism.
The article deals with the idea of artificial people in literature and film, using examples from the literature and the history of film it is shown that the idea of artificial people has always existed. With the increase of technical innovations, more and more scenarios developed by artificial people, to the formation of the idea of the cyborg.
The historian Imanuel Geiss who died in Bremen on February 20 at age 81 was one of the few internationally renowned representatives of German historic teaching. His works about WW I, he history of racism, but especially his Encycplopedia of Global History “Geschichte griffbereit” (1979ff.) will be rememberd as milestones of .scholarship.
März 14, 2012, 3:07 pm, Ulrich Gehmann,
Colonization,
Formatization,
Formats,
Posthuman age,
Sociohistorical analysis,
Technicality,
Topics,
Value chaining.
In the following, a new conceptual framework for investigating nowadays‘ „technical“ phenomena shall be introduced, that of formats. The thesis is that processes of formatting account for our recent conditions of life, and will do so in the very next future. It are processes whose foundations have been laid in modernity and which will further unfold for the time being. These processes are embedded in the format of the value chain, a circumstance making them resilient to change. In addition, they are resilient in themselves since forming interconnected systems of reciprocal causal circuits.Which leads to an overall situation that our entire „Lebenswelt“ became formatted to an extent we don’t fully realize, even influencing our very percep-tion of it.