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donate Abstracts for Mittelweg 36 6/2007
William E. Scheuerman
Präsidialdemokratie und Ausnahmezustand. Das Problem der Rechtsstaatlichkeit nach dem 11. September
[Presidentialism and Emergency Powers in the US after 9/11]
Since 9/11, the expansion of presidential discretionary powers in the USA in what has been declared a national crisis has again highlighted the issue of how the potentially disastrous impacts of such executive discretion can be kept from undermining the rule of law. Since U.S.-style presidentialism has been a model for a number of other countries, institutional mechanisms that contribute to an executive interest in installing and perpetuating emergency rule constitute a global issue. Political scientist William Scheuerman reviews the structural problems of presidential powers in crisis situations, discusses why suggested approaches to restraining executive emergency such as the extralegal model and the common law model are flawed, and proposes that older democracies learn from more recently established ones that have created constitutional provisions to ensure that the democratic rule of law is safeguarded.
Ulrich Bielefeld
Die Form der Freiheit
[The Form of Freedom]
Music has two dimensions, dimensions that are frequently constructed as contradictory: on the one hand, a systematic, rational side with defined rules, on the other, the "realm of freedom" and direct expressivity. Sociologist Ulrich Bielefeld considers developments in the relationship between these two aspects of music and shifting perspectives on this tension, in particular with respect to improvisation as a practice of performing and creating. His essay discusses relevant work by Max Weber and Theodor Adorno on the sociology of music and reviews the shifting status of composition and improvisation in free jazz, the blues, and the work of musicians such as the Ensemble Modern and Frank Zappa, ending with thoughts on how these developments reflect more general transformations in recent decades.
Valentin Groebner
Fleisch und Blut, Haus und Haar. Vermarktete Körper historisch
[Flesh and Blood, House and Hair: Commoditized Bodies in Historical Perspective]
In European legal history, human beings are conceptualized as bodies. These traditions are characterized by the principle of habeas corpus, the notion that an individual is worthy of protection as a body, which figures as the bearer of indivisible rights. But a second tradition has emerged beside this first one: that of humans as fragmented and economically exploited beings. This second history did not begin with the medical innovations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; medieval narratives of and trade in relics are as much a part of this tradition as are medical practices from early modern times, which attached real market values to human body parts. How are such body parts treated, how are they bought and sold? This contribution suggests that we should consider pious notions about relics, magical practices, and some astonishingly long-lived motifs from pre-modern narratives in the same context as phenomena from today's organ transplantation. For bodies and their parts are always embedded in narratives about identification: it is only by naming them or by successfully rendering them anonymous that they can be transferred and utilized in other contexts.
Published 2008-01-02
Original in German
Contributed by Mittelweg 36
© Mittelweg 36
© Eurozine
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