Search results for ""Peter Lang AG""

Information and communication technology (ICT) has boosted economic development in China. To understand China’s modernization, it is therefore necessary to consider the development of ICT. The book reflects how a catch–up country with a fast modernization process develops into a relatively modern country and the consequences of the fast development. It focuses on the development of media in China by examining the diffusion of ICT and providing a case study in an indigenous place to explore the modernization process. The book offers a new perspective to understand modernization and contributes knowledge to understand China’s media, technology diffusion, indigenous culture transformation into modern culture and social changes.

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Grenzgänger zwischen Deutschland und der Schweiz unterliegen regelmäßig in beiden Staaten der Einkommensteuer. Mit seinem Art. 15 a enthält das DBA D-CHE für Grenzgänger eine eigene Vorschrift für den Ausgleich dieser Doppelbesteuerung. Die Anwendung dieser Norm bereitet bei verschiedenen Fallkonstellationen in der Praxis jedoch immer wieder erhebliche Schwierigkeiten. In dieser Arbeit werden im Wege der Auslegung des Art. 15 a DBA D-CHE adäquate Lösungen für diese problematischen Sachverhalte erarbeitet. Darüber hinaus wird in einem zweiten Schritt die Sonderbehandlung von Grenzgängern in Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen auf ihre Aktualität und Funktionalität hin beleuchtet.

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Die Auseinandersetzung mit der NS-Herrschaft drückt sich seit 1949 in den (unterschiedlichen) Positionen der Bundespräsidenten auf besondere Weise aus. In ihnen spiegelt sich die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik im Spannungsfeld von Verdrängung und Aufklärung. Bestrebungen, die Beteiligung der Deutschen an den Verbrechen des Hitler-Regimes zu relativieren, sind heute einem parteiübergreifenden Erinnerungskonsens gewichen. Dabei besteht aber die Gefahr, dass die nationale Beschwörung einer angeblich gelungenen Aufarbeitung die unverstellte Wahrnehmung der Taten und der Opfer ein weiteres Mal überlagert. Dieses Buch ist eine kritische Analyse der Reden der Bundespräsidenten von Theodor Heuss bis Christian Wulff zur NS-Vergangenheit und beschreibt gleichzeitig die widerspruchsreiche Identitätssuche der Bundesrepublik, die bis heute andauert.

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Dieser Sammelband spannt einen Bogen von den ordnungstheoretischen und sozialphilosophischen Grundlagen wissenschaftlicher Politikberatung bis zur Anwendung ausgewählter Methoden. Die Autoren setzen sich mit unterschiedlichen Theorieangeboten für Politikberatung, Anforderungen an Politikberatung und Formen von Politikberatung auseinander. Thematisch bildet die Leitidee der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft, räumlich deren Nutzung bei der Politikberatung in den Transformationsländern Südosteuropas eine Klammer. Als Beispiele solcher Länder dienen Ungarn – bereits ein EU-Mitglied – und Albanien. This book runs the gamut of political economy from theoretical and philosophical principles to the application of selected methods in giving policy advice. Its authors compare the offerings of various disciplines, in particular economics and sociology, for policy advice. The demand and supply side of this activity are discussed. The leitmotif for the articles in this book is the Social Market Economy, and a further unifying theme is the application to transformation economies in South East Europe, both within the EU and beyond.

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Diese Festschrift ehrt den Alttestamentler James Alfred Loader, der, von der Universität von Pretoria und der UNISA herkommend, seit 1997 an der Universität Wien lehrt. Weisheit und Schöpfung markieren zwei wichtige Kristallisationspunkte seiner Forschungen und der Alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft insgesamt. Der internationale Sammelband enthält sechs deutsche und acht englische Beiträge von alttestamentlichen Forscherinnen und Forschern aus Europa (Deutschland, England, Finnland, Niederlande, Österreich, Schottland, Schweiz), den USA und Südafrika. Sie untersuchen das Spannungsfeld von Weisheit und Schöpfung anhand ausgewählter Textbeispiele aus Genesis 1, einzelnen Psalmen, Hiob, Kohelet, Proverbien und Sapientia Salomonis. Sie gehen Fragen der Metaphorik und der Rezeption von Weisheit und Schöpfung nach, sei es in der Umwelt Israels, im Neuen Testament oder in der späteren jüdischen und christlichen Auslegungsgeschichte, und thematisieren Bezüge zu Anthropologie und Ökologie.

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The book analyzes the methods used in the construction of the grounded type of sociological theory. It provides an overview of examples of qualitative research which are used for delineating the principal characteristics of methods employed in the construction of the grounded type of theory. Subject to explication are the characteristics of concepts, categories, and properties of categories employed in this type of theory, as well as the main steps involved in the construction of a grounded type of theory. These steps are explicated by applying the modern logical and methodological treatment of induction, deduction, and abduction.

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Providing effective leadership in Church and society is one of the most difficult human endeavors. It influences the dynamics and quality of social and spiritual life. The Church in the developing countries needs more than ever charismatic and prophetic leaders. Peter Damian Akpunonu – ordained a Catholic priest in 1966 at the young age of 23 – is one of the most outstanding seminary formators and influential Biblical scholars in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. His priestly golden jubilee provides occasion to reflect on his sterling qualities as a leader, an administrator and a pastor. This Festschrift also examines a wide spectrum of leadership models from biblical, historical and cultural perspectives. Seminary formation today needs urgent reform. Contemporary social challenges, including the potential retirement welfare crises for priests in Africa, are also crucial issues the Church has to address.

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This study is an empirical and a theoretical contribution to academic labor market research in the social and educational sciences. The main focus is the situation of young academics who teach at German universities. Both the role of research and teaching in the academic labor market as well as opportunities for professional development in academia and beyond for those who teach are investigated. The study reveals how structures of the academic labor market, including academic culture, affect career decisions and development opportunities of young academics. The findings demonstrate how academics reconstruct the relation between teaching and research in their practice and how they seek new ways in making teaching meaningful in their working lives. The monograph proposes a model for evaluating the agency of academics and identifies the potential for social innovations in academia.

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Die 39 Beiträge dieses Sonderbandes beleuchten das Thema Theologie im Spannungsfeld von Kirche und Politik aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven. Neben historischen Aspekten werden sowohl politisch-zeitgeschichtliche Fragen als auch ethische Problemstellungen bedacht. Weitere Aufsätze widmen sich der praktisch-theologischen Reflexion und Konkretion im Rahmen der christlichen Gemeinde, wie auch der Relevanz des Themas in außereuropäischen politisch-kulturellen Kontexten. Der internationale Autorenkreis setzt sich überwiegend aus Kolleginnen und Kollegen, Schülerinnen und Schülern des Regensburger Systematikers Hans Schwarz zusammen. Im Rahmen der Regensburger Summer School 2014 haben sie damit auch das Lebenswerk von Hans Schwarz anlässlich von dessen 75. Geburtstags gewürdigt, in dem das theologisch geleitete Umgehen mit der säkularen Welt eine wichtige Rolle spielt. The 39 contributions to this special issue develop the theme Theology in Engagement with Church and Politics from a variety of perspectives. Alongside the exploration of historical aspects, both contemporary political questions and ethical dilemmas are examined. Further contributions are devoted to the reflection upon practical theology, Christian congregational praxis, and contextual studies, which demonstrate the political and cultural relevance of this theme beyond Europe. The international circle of authors is constituted largely of colleagues and students of Professor Hans Schwarz, systematic theologian from Regensburg, Germany. In conjunction with the 2014 University of Regensburg Summer School, the authors dedicate this volume to the lifetime achievement of Hans Schwarz on the occasion of his 75th birthday, in whose work the engagement of theology with the secular world plays a major role.

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This book is an invitation to informed and critical participation in the current debate on the role of digital technology in education and a comprehensive introduction to the most relevant issues in this debate. After an early wave of enthusiasm about the emancipative opportunities of the digital «revolution» in education, recent contributions invite caution, if not scepticism. This collection rejects extreme interpretations and establishes a conceptual framework for the critical questioning of this role in terms of concepts, assessments and subversions. This book offers conceptual tools, ideas and insights for further research. It also provides motivation and information to foster active participation in debates and politics and encourages teachers, parents and learners to take part in the making of the future of our societies.

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Finding and understanding the right requirements is essential for every software project. This book deals with the challenge to improve requirements engineering in distributed software projects. The use of graphical user interface (GUI) prototypes can help stakeholders in such projects to elicit and specify high quality requirements. The research objective of this study is to develop a method and a software artifact to support the activities in the early requirements engineering phase in order to overcome some of the difficulties and improve the quality of the requirements, which should eventually lead to better software products. Therefore, this study seeks to support the work with these prototypes in distributed projects. It is based on a theoretical analysis and follows a design science research approach.

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This book identifies a corpus of British and Polish texts that share correspondences with reference to the themes of feminine doubling, the difficulty of asserting feminine subjectivity, sexual mother-figures and symbolic father-figures. It draws on the Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis and the French feminist uses of it known as écriture féminine – the theories of Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous. It also introduces the theories of the forgotten Russian-Jewish psychoanalyst, Sabina Spielrein. The first part of the book takes account of specifics of Polish culture and history that made women writers marginalised within this context. In the second part, it closely and comparatively examines the selected British and Polish texts, while giving voice to the unknown, stereotyped, or forgotten Polish works. The innovative features of the book include its comparative character and the implementation of various psychoanalytical approaches to the Polish texts.

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This book examines the intertwined relationship between contemporary Polish politics and national culture by focusing on the phenomenon of discrimination. The object of the analysis is the language of the League of Polish Families, a populist party that recreated the climate of pre-war National Democracy in Poland from 2001 to 2007 by negatively labeling the nation’s Others. Through the political party’s discourse of discrimination, the book grasps a peculiar moment of Poland that faced uncertainty of identity upon its accession to the European Union. By adopting a method of critical discourse analysis, the author attests to the party’s political use of different layers of national traditions in denigrating Jews, sexual minorities and feminists while sanctifying the Polish nation.

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This dissertation comprises four essays investigating the impact of bank governance structures on performance, risk, and stability. The first three studies analyze financial expertise of supervisory board members as a governance instrument: The first study focuses on the extent to which supervisory board members may be regarded as financially literate. The second study places emphasis on the impact of expertise on performance, risk, and stability at German savings banks, while the third study comprises the comparison of the mentioned impact at savings and cooperative banks. Finally, the fourth study analyzes the impact of ownership concentration on banks’ performance, risk, and stability on a global level.

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The book contains selected contributions from the international workshop Historical and Cross-Cultural Aspects of Psychology. This was organised by Evelin Witruk and her team at the University of Leipzig in 2009, when Psychology in Leipzig celebrated its 130th and the University of Leipzig its 600th anniversary. In line with the workshop, this collection represents an interdisciplinary approach to cover and combine different aspects of psychology. It focuses on the origins of Psychology in Leipzig where Wilhelm Wundt founded in 1879 the world’s first Psychological Institute. The contributions regard the history of psychology, the role of this science in regions affected by disasters, and methodical and cross-cultural issues. So this volume intertwines basic research, partly based on or inspired by history, with applied work to promote scientific exchange not just between different countries but also between the different branches of psychology.

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It is obvious today that the democratic political regime cannot be considered reality without taking into account political parties; it is as obvious as the phenomenon of partidocracy, expressed through the quasi-total domination of parties in politics. Such judgements prompted the title of the book Stasiology and Electoral Systems. The book itself revives the term stasiology, introduced by M. Duverger in 1951, which defines the science of political parties but has not been used very much over the last decades. Its approach is explanatory and perspective alike, emphasizing the myriad of correlations surrounding the emergence, functions, types and systems of parties, on the one hand, and the electoral systems used to elect parliaments, styles of representation and executive formation on the other.

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This book examines the changing lifestyles in transforming societies, focusing on the interplay of lifestyle choices, social status and the society as a whole. When individuals choose their careers, mates or networks to belong to and to identify with, they are influenced by rapid technological developments, economic uncertainty and other ongoing changes in society. On the other hand, by their choices they also construct new social realities. The book addresses lifestyles and social change in connection with a wide range of issues: belonging to different movements and networks; changes in gender order, work and partner choices; changes in home cultures and ways of residing; emerging translocal belonging and cross cultural relationships; consumption choices and construction of identities. The first part of the book gives the wider context within a longer perspective and the second part is focused on specific cases of lifestyle choices.

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The acute poverty, underdevelopment and environmental damages that exist in the Niger Delta region despite abundance of natural resources present a paradox to anyone who cares. It is a fact, that corruption, misappropriation of fund and lack of accountability on the part of most major stakeholders are partly responsible for such paradox. There is no shortage of development theories to tackle the development problems in the region. Lacking is the political will to operate just and effective socio-economic and political structures in the country that could increase chances of development for the poor and disadvantaged in the region. Based on Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach and the Catholic Social Teaching, this book presents a development ethics that can serve as ethical orientation to assist those who seek new ways to advance social and environmental development of the Niger Delta.

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The subject of the present book are literary anthroponyms and their translation. The examples, taken from English children’s literature of the Victorian and Edwardian period, show that literary names are usually motivated and linked to their bearers, therefore it is necessary to investigate them in terms of their meaning, functions and role as narrative elements. The study focuses on how anthroponyms function in the context of the narrative, situation and culture, and shows similarities and differences between the name systems of the original and the translation. Also, it gives an overview of a larger number of anthroponyms, focusing on translation techniques used for various name categories. The author also discusses time-related tendencies in the translation of anthroponyms.

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This book analyzes the ideology-based reception of Adam Mickiewicz in Communist Poland and of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in East Germany, the dynamics of that process and the strategies used to exploit the iconic status of the poets for the purpose of reaffirming the legitimacy of the new system. The basic question tackled here concerns the similarities and differences between the Polish and German styles of harnessing poets into the service of politics. These issues are presented in view of the cultural and political life, i.e. public appearances by prominent politicians and culture activists, Marxist history of literature and literary works that ennobled Mickiewicz and Goethe in a hagiographic manner.

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It is widely acknowledged that sustainable development is a long-term goal, which both individuals and institutions (and countries!) need to pursue. This important theme is characterized by an intrinsic complexity, since it encompasses ecological or environmental considerations on the one hand, and economic matters, social influences and political frameworks on the other. This makes provisions in respect of education for sustainable development a particularly challenging task, but one which is feasible and achievable, provided the right elements are put into place. This book is an attempt to foster the cause of education for sustainable development, by documenting and disseminating experiences from different parts of the world, where learning for, about and through the principles of sustainability is taking place, in various sets and contexts, in both industrialized and developing nations. A special feature of this book is that it not only presents a wide range of philosophies, approaches, methods and analyses with respect to education for sustainable development across the world, but also documents and disseminates concrete case studies, which show how education for sustainable development may be realized in practice.

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Ageing and broader socio-economic developments are challenging European societies in manifold ways, not least in how they are dealing with the need for long-term care. In the growing body of comparative long-term care literature, Central and South Eastern Europe has so far been widely neglected. This book covers eight countries in this region, namely Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. The book provides an overview of common and diverse demographic and socio-economic challenges, whilst analysing the current situation in the organisation, provision and financing of long-term care and the roles of family, civil society, private sector and the state. It also discusses relevant trends and prospects in a broader comparative perspective.

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This highly topical book deals with the new frontiers of digital television addressing the challenges it faces as a result of the upsurge of new and converging digital technologies. In a world which has developed online interactivity and new roles for its users, a new scenario of the domestic sphere is emerging where television has lost its dominance within audiovisual products to the Internet, videogames, tablets, mobile phones, and more. Contemporary digital television is thus a field where different platforms, languages and formats compete in order to become the dominant standard for the future. In this new TV ecosystem audiences are negotiating their identities and are implementing practices of use which are redesigning the entire processes for TV production and consumption.

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About 40% of the shipping containers worldwide are leased, while 60% are owned by shipping lines. This book analyzes the motivations behind the buy or lease decision generally, as well as special aspects in container shipping. Based on the status of research, the author performs new macro- and microeconomic regression analyses to identify variables affecting these decisions. A shipping line survey provides further detailed insights. Notably, the author presents an enhanced model for the evaluation of the buy or lease decision that integrates financial, logistical and macroeconomic variables into the analysis. This book enables both shipping lines and container leasing firms to optimize their decisions.

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In this collection of essays, Americanists from the United States, Germany, and Latvia enter the scholarly debate about the ever increasing pluralization of societies on the North American continent by correlating the issues of multiculturalism and ethnic survival. Spanning six centuries and covering the cultural work and literary representation of eight ethnic groups in the USA and Canada, the essays demonstrate that the scope of the debate has to be widened to reflect the complexity of a subject which has too long been reduced to convenient but simplistic binaries.

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South Korea underwent a dramatic change in the last one and a half decades, from being considered a «tiger in trouble» in the wake of the Asian crisis to a showcase of economic development. The judgment of 1998 was itself a complete reversal of the previous enthusiastic reviews of world record-high growth for several decades, from the 1960s to the 1990s. Korea, once considered a shrimp between two mighty whales, Japan and China, veritably made a jump to become a tiger. And, after the steep decline of 1998, this tiger again showed its claws. This book deals not with the causes of the crisis in retrospect, but rather with the implications for the development of a new economic model in South Korea. It argues that the crisis and the following institutional change can best be understood by applying the theory of economic transformation.

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Refusal to license intellectual property rights (IPRs) are an ongoing topic within the enforcement of Article 102 TFEU (ex Article 82 EC). Nevertheless, so far an economic founded instrument to analyse these cases is missing. To close this gap, the Innovation Effects and Appropriability Test will be developed throughout this book. Innovation research has been showing that firms rely on more appropriation mechanisms than only IPRs. The availability of these alternative instruments depends on the involved technologies, the kind of innovation, the concerned industry and so on. Consequently, it is in the centre of the Innovation Effects and Appropriability Test to analyse whether the dominant firm could rely on other appropriation instruments to protect its innovation and to recoup its investments in R&D.

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This study was drafted during an eventful and turbulent period in terms of European fundamental rights. After about four decades of gradual development of a fundamental rights doctrine by an increasingly problem-oriented casuistry of the European Court of Justice, the way to a fundamental rights codification at the Community/Union level was paved with the adoption of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on 7 December 2000, which today embodies the key subtance of the European acquis in the area of fundamental rights. Initially, this Charter was adopted as a mere solemn proclamation, without a direct legally binding effect. A new dimension was opened by the Lisbon Reform Treaty of 13 December 2007 (in force since 1 December 2009), into which the Charter was structurally incorporated by a cross-reference in the Treaty, which declares the Charter to be legally binding and of the same legal value as the Treaty law. On this basis, the second focal point, the institutional protection of fundamental rights, i. e., the system of judicial protection in the legal order of the Community/Union, is analysed. In conclusion, the theory is represented that the existing system of institutional protection can be adapted with minor adjustments in such a manner that it provides comprehensive and effective remedies for violations of individual fundamental rights. The creation of a specific fundamental rights complaint as a new, additional procedural Instrument with subsidiary character is, therefore, deemed to be unnecessary.

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Determining risk-adequate insurance premiums is a core issue in actuarial mathematics. This study is specifically concerned with identifying convenient partitions of (general) insurance collectives such that the resulting tariff classes are homogeneous to a maximum extent and – on the other hand – yet large enough to allow for the occurrence of the group balance concept and to end up with reliable estimates of the moments of the claim size distributions. Therefore, the author develops an innovative classification algorithm utilizing a multidimensional cluster approach combined with credibility-theoretical implications. Its construction stems from involving the entire claim information of risks simultaneously and in a suitable manner, and particulary from obtaining optimality regarding the cluster criterions. Under certain conditions, commonly used cross classification schemes are shown to be a particular case of the new approach. Besides desirable theoretical benefits like its generalizing established cross classification systems, an empirical investigation also suggests the practical superiority of the new algorithm.

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Joyce was the first Modernist to use the religious term epiphany to describe an unexpected insight, often within a trivial, mundane biographical or fictional context. But prose fiction around 1900 is full of similar concepts under various names: moment of vision, moment of being, anderer Zustand, mémoire involontaire. This book asks three questions: Where does the concept of the epiphanic moment come from? What does it look like? Why was it so valuable for prose fiction around 1900? Finally the study looks at the present use of the term only to discover that «epiphany» has recently had an astonishing comeback – even Homer Simpson has had his epiphany.

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By analysing the proposals for teacher education drawn up by UNESCO, the World Bank and OECD, this book shows that even though each of these organizations has different views about education, their proposals are based on a similar set of assumptions about the future, and about how educational systems should be reformed to adapt to this future. In order to explore the effects of these proposals in different contexts, the book examines the educational reforms implemented in Argentina and Brazil in the 1990s, revealing how the discourse of international agencies was transformed as it met with local assumptions about what constitutes good education for teachers. The findings of this research are discussed within a broader theoretical model which makes it possible, thus, to map the circulation of discourse in the global educational field.

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This book is concerned with the economic consequences of the rising obesity prevalence in affluent societies. A microeconomic model describing food consumption from the perspective of the individual consumer is developed. To maximise utility over lifetime, the marginal costs of food consumption must be adapted to the level of prices and to variations in the metabolic rate. This result holds independently of the weight status category and of the level of health-consciousness. Furthermore, extensions relevant to food overconsumption are introduced: The influence of diet composition and the rate of time preference, as well as the incorporation of addictive aspects and dynamic inconsistency. The theoretical framework is substantiated with an empirical analysis, and the implications for health insurance schemes – namely the differentiation of premiums by risk – are discussed.

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