This book presents neopragmatism as a fresh theoretical framework for the social and spatial sciences. Instead of relying on fixed truths or rigid subject-object divisions, it moves beyond traditional theoretical oppositions. At its core, the book applies Richard Rorty’s vocabulary theory and a panrelationalist perspective, viewing the world as a dynamic network of relations shaped through language. This approach is enriched by insights from discourse theory, conflict theory, and actor-net...

Landscape appears stable and consistent. At least, this is a common perception of landscape. This view ignores the contingency of landscape, which is evident in the past and future as well as in the present and not just in relation to the physical spaces into which 'landscape' is projected but also in relation to social constructions and individual experience. The contingency of landscape becomes clear in inverse landscapes, which illustrate states and processes that are not impossible, bu...

This book explores the importance of freedom and liberalism in the context of socialities, individualities and materialities. The authors provide a highly unusual and innovative blending of concepts about space and landscape through a deeply theoretical exploration of liberalism.Liberalism is often problematized in contemporary discussions with regard to gentrification, environmental problems and inequality. In contrast, this book refers to a liberalism that maximizes life chances ...

Originally published in German, Christoph Wulf's Anthropology sets its sights on a topic as ambitious as its title suggests: anthropology itself. Arguing for an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to anthropology that incorporates science, philosophy, history, and many other disciplines, Wulf examines—with breathtaking scope—all the ways that anthropology has been understood and practiced around the globe and through the years.Seeking a central way to understand a...

Since the politicization of anthropology in the 1970s, most anthropologists have been reluctant to approach the topic of universals—that is, phenomena that occur regularly in all known human societies. In this volume, Christoph Antweiler reasserts the importance of these cross-cultural commonalities for anthropological research and for life and co-existence beyond the academy. The question presented here is how anthropology can help us approach humanity in its entirety, understanding the w...

In this book, the author develops a relational concept of space that encompasses social structure, the material world of objects and bodies, and the symbolic dimension of the social world. Löw’s guiding principle is the assumption that space emerges in the interplay between objects, structures and actions. Based on a critical discussion of classic theories of space, Löw develops a new dynamic theory of space that accounts for the relational context in which space is constituted. This innov...

In this work, those subjects given in the format of block-lessons are examined with respect to educational theory and didactical and methodological aspects. The publication is intended for scientists, students and practicing teachers. It emerged from a research project by the Pedagogical Research Centre at the Federation of Waldorf Schools in Kassel and the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences in Alfter. The examples that appear in this volume are intended to encourage readers to ...

In this book Axel Honneth re-examines arguments put forward by Hegel and claims that the 'struggle for recognition' should be at the centre of social conflicts.

This book provides an introduction to the basic principles of discourse research, offering practical research strategies for doing discourse analyses in the social sciences. The book includes guidance on developing a research question, selecting data and analyzing it, and presenting the results. The author has extensive practical experience in the field of discourse research and shows, throughout, how the methods suggested are compatible with numerous research questions and problems in soc...

This book offers a concise overview of the development of intercultural philosophy since the early 1990s, focusing on one of its key pioneers Heinz Kimmerle (1930– 2016).Building on influences from Gadamer, Heidegger, Derrida and Ramose, Kimmerle’s approach to intercultural philosophy is radical and fosters epistemic justice. Kimmerle critically reflected on his own western philosophical tradition, highlighting the problems of a discourse based on a dominant concept of rationality,...

Constructivism has been traded as a new paradigm by its advocates, and criticised by its opponents as legitimating deceit and lies, as justifying a trendy post-modern "Anything goes".In this book, Bernhard Poerksen draws up a new rationale for constructivist thinking and charts out directions for the imaginative examination of personal certainties and the certainties of others, of ideologies great and small. The focus of the debate is on the author's thesis that our understanding of journa...

The basic concern of the volume is to determine the preconditions of personality development and to show their significance and their perspectives for educational science and for pedagogical practice. First, these basic preconditions of becoming oneself are collected in a single volume and discussed in terms of their significance for science and for educational practice. In all fundamental dimensions are understood as precondition of becoming oneself. “Bildung” is here for the first time u...