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Berlin Wall (berlin + wall)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences83%

Selected Abstracts

WE WERE DANCING IN THE CLUB, NOT ON THE BERLIN WALL: Black Bodies, Street Bureaucrats, and Exclusionary Incorporation into the New Europe

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 4 2008
DAMANI JAMES PARTRIDGE
ABSTRACT In this essay, I explore the micropolitics of citizenship and sovereignty via the emerging street bureaucratic status of "white" German women in relationships with "black" men in Germany and Berlin. In the midst of the fallen Berlin Wall and increasing Europe-wide restrictions on immigration and asylum, it examines further the extent to which a consistent "black" male hypersexual performance is necessary for legal recognition via "white" German women who, taking on an informal bureaucratic status, ultimately decide which "black" subjects to marry. A history of desiring "black" bodies, the essay argues, coincides with several important moments of sexual liberation (incl. post,World War II African American military occupation, 1970s West German feminism, and the fall of the Berlin Wall), which make these relationships both possible and public; however, the hypersexualized conditions under which "black" subjects get incorporated into contemporary German life are also ultimately exclusionary. [source]

August 1961: Christa Wolf and the Politics of Disavowal

GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 1 2002
Charity Scribner
Throughout her career Christa Wolf has circumvented any explicit reference to the Berlin Wall. Although Der geteilte Himmel reaches its climax in the summer of 1961, the Wall does not figure in this novel. None the less it provides a framework for the narrative through its absence. Wolf's latest novel, Medea, also organises itself around the tropes of walls and borders. Today, forty years after Berlin's division, one could easily dismiss Wolf's writing because of her ,blind spot'vis-á-vis the Wall. But to do so would forfeit Wolf's subtle handling of literary representation, prohibition, and disavowal. This essay argues that Wolf's elaborations of disavowal play a critical (but as yet unexamined) role in the continuing debate over the politics of memory that has come to define German studies. Freudian theories of repression and fetishism are engaged to discern the structures of disavowal that give form not only to Der geteilte Himmel and Medea, but also to Wolf's most important writings on ethics, ,Selbstanzeige' and ,Nagelprobe'. The essay concludes that authentic memory does not reconstitute a homogeneous image of the past. Rather, as Wolf demonstrates, it reawakens the antagonisms that forever thwart the resolution of and in any narrative. [source]

Local dimensions of global investment: Israeli property firms in Central Europe

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2003
Igal Charney
Transnational property investment has increased dramatically during the last few decades. This process has been traced by literature focusing on capital-rich countries (e.g. the United States, Canada, Japan) and on major world cities. More recently, in tandem with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the geographical horizons of foreign investors have broadened to include former socialist countries. This article examines the recent surge in Israeli property investment in Central Europe and argues that global flows depend on relationships between place of origin and destination. Mobility of property capital creates networks that connect cities on a transnational basis. Les investissements immobiliers transnationaux ont énormément augmenté au cours des dernières décennies. Cet aspect a été suivi et documenté surtout pour les pays riches en capitaux (Etats-Unis, Canada, Japon, par exemple) et les grandes villes mondiales. Plus récemment, parallèlement à la chute du Mur de Berlin, les horizons géographiques des investisseurs étrangers se sont élargis aux anciens pays socialistes. L'article examine l'afflux récent d'investissements immobiliers israéliens en Europe centrale, affirmant que les flux planétaires dépendent des relations entre les lieux d'origine et de destination. La mobilité des capitaux immobiliers crée des réseaux qui relient des villes au plan transnational. [source]

Socialist psychotherapy and its dissidents

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Issue 3 2001
Christine Leuenberger Ph.D. research associate/lecturerArticle first published online: 17 JUL 200
This article focuses on the history of psychotherapeutic theory and practice in socialist East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The "official" pre-1989 socialist history of East German psychology is juxtaposed to psychotherapists' post-1989 oral history of the development of Socialist psychological theory and practice. These reconstructive histories draw on embryonic therapeutic practices that diverged from the dominant socialist paradigm. Their existence exemplifies how a state-driven high modernist scheme for remaking society can fail as it does not account for the complex relationship between a state's abstract knowledge and local practices. Moreover, the emphasis therapists put on the prevalence of these alternative practices also reveals how the present post-socialist context becomes an interpretative resource for reconstructing their past. By emphasizing these practices they try to bridge the gap between their past and current practices so as to minimize the transformation that has taken place. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [source]

The "End Of History" 20 Years Later

NEW PERSPECTIVES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2010
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the triumphant celebrations of the West, a new chapter of history has opened featuring the rising powers of Asia, led by China. Though embracing free markets, China has looked to its Confucian traditions instead of liberal democracy as the best route to good governance. Will China manage to achieve high growth and a harmonious society through a strong state and long-range planning that puts messy Western democracy and its short-term mindset to shame? Or, in the end, will the weak rule of law and absence of political accountability in a one-party state undermine its promise? Francis Fukuyama and Kishore Mahbubani, the Singaporean thinker who has become the apostle of non-Western modernity, debate these issues. In this section we also republish a collective memoir by George H.W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand, recalling their fears and hopes two decades ago as they brought the Cold War to an end. [source]