Menschen träumen – mutmaßlich schon immer – nachts, tagsüber und in politischen Visionen und Utopien. Aber wovon sie träumen, wie sie träumen, wie Träume wahrgenommen werden und welche Bedeutung man ihnen individuell, gesellschaftlich, politisch und wissenschaftlich beimisst, unterliegt historischem Wandel. Im Mittelpunkt dieses Bandes stehen Fragen nach den Inhalten des Geträumten, Imaginierten oder Ersonnenen sowie Betrachtungen zu den Träumenden, Visionären oder Utopisten der Geschichte...

This book is the first attempt to provide a general theory of self-destruction in complex systems applicable to natural, social and cultural phenomena.The contributors work collaboratively to prove that many of the nondistributed complex systems in nature and society sooner or later experience critical development leading to unintended and irreversible self-annihilation. The individual chapters also show that the relations of such systems to their own distinctiveness and other syst...

Forty years ago, German historian Reinhart Koselleck coined the notion of ‘asymmetrical concepts’, pointing at the asymmetry between standard self-ascriptions, such as ‘Hellenes’ or ‘Christians’, and pejorative other-references (‘Barbarians’ or ‘Pagans’) as a powerful weapon of cultural and political domination. Advancing and refining Koselleck’s approach, Beyond ‘Hellenes’ and ‘Barbarians’ explores the use of significant conceptual asymmetries such as ‘civilization’ vs. ‘barbarit...

Encompassing five continents and twenty centuries, this book puts ruler personality cults on the crossroads of disciplines rarely, if ever, juxtaposed before: among its authors are historians, linguists, media scholars, political scientists and communication sociologists from Europe, the United States and New Zealand. However, this breadth and versatility are not goals in themselves. Rather, they are the means to work out an integrated approach to personality cults, capable of overcoming b...

This book provides a systematic account of media and communication development in Soviet society from the October Revolution to the death of Stalin. Summarizing earlier research and drawing upon previously unpublished archival materials, it covers the main aspects of public and private interaction in the Soviet Union, from public broadcast to kitchen gossip.The first part of the volume covers visual, auditory and tactile channels,such as posters, maps and monuments. The se...