Ok, just one more, because I have been thinking about that question for at least the last ten years and really love the fact that it has now become such a hot topic:
The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University hosted a panel discussion on the Promise of Information- and Communication Technology on April 19th 2010 Weiterlesen »
Unfortunately sometimes first things must come first. Which for me right now means, I have to focus on finishing my thesis. It is a lot of fun as well, but still, I can’t resist at least mentioning two events that are highly interesting in the area of knowledge production and free culture. Weiterlesen »
David Harvey (Quelle: Wikimedia Commons)
A Colleague, Jonathan Heaney at NIU Galway, posted this a while ago and seeing I almost got locked into watching it because it was so intriguing I repost it here and go back to work. Basically, David Harvey’s lectures on Marx’s Capital are available freely on the net and a great experience for those willing to listen. Enjoy!
Pierre de Fermat (Quelle: Wikimedia Commons)
I shouldn’t and won’t ever claim to be as brilliant as Fermat. When he scribbled his famous theorem by the margins of a book he was reading (or so the legend goes), he was certainly referring to a proof that he had somewhere on paper and not just an idea. Else, he might have felt like I do right now. Weiterlesen »
Some students from Münster, Germany, took the Winner song of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest (written by the American Julie Frost and John Gordorn from Denmark and sung by just-out-of-high-school-student Lena Meyer-Landrut from Hannover, Germany), wrote a new German text and turned it into a fan song and video for the German team at the Fifa World Cup in South Africa. Weiterlesen »
Sometimes it is important to just go out and listen to some interesting thoughts by someone who is, well, interesting. So I did last Thursday and went to Gayatri Spivak’s talk at the Center for Area Studies here in Berlin.
It was entitled An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization – Weiterlesen »
I think of myself as a theorist. And although I would claim that I have a basic understanding of the methodological and organisational difficulties facing empirical scientists, I still find it a challenge to make my theory speak to them.
Today I had the opportunity, together with some colleagues, to engage in an informal exchange with Jeffrey Checkel, who has been working on transnationalism for quite some time and is currently focusing on the transnational/social dynamics of civil war. It was an interesting and informing discussion and he was helpfully open to our different approaches and problems.
Reflecting back upon the last few days I have to say – it was intense. And I mean that in a positive way. The location for the interim meeting of the IPSA Research Committee on “Power” was close to ideal. Soeterbeeck is a former monastery, with lots of character and a truely contemplative atmosphere that made it easy to focus on the issues at hand. But it also encouraged the kinds of more informal exchanges that are so important to provide the texture to all the more serious and abstract discussions. Henri Goverde, Mark Haugaard and Kevin Ryan did a wonderful job of making this possible.
The papers presented were quite varied and included theoretical treatises – referencing people as diverse as Foucault, Habermas, Bauman and Elias among others – as well as empirical case studies in environmental politics and the politics of the welfare state. Instead of falling apart, however, our discussions soon began to evolve around a rather concise and not necessarily expected set of issues. So, instead of summarising Weiterlesen »