Recent ies_rw items

Household Food Waste Developments: A Comparison of Progress in the European Union and the United States

Mon, 4 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Household Food Waste Developments: A Comparison of Progress in the European Union and the United States

From Research to Market:What the EU can learn from the USA?

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The research project “From Research to Market: What the EU can learn from the USA” addresses the gap between the laboratory research and market. I examine how government, universities and private companies facilitate the transition of research results to market in the USA. In the report I present various programs that are available to the researchers and entrepreneurs in the US and invite to consider them for implementation in Europe. I argue that different stages of lab-to-market transfer require different mechanisms that should not be limited to funding but include technology transfer assistance and advice on intellectual property, mentoring by peers and industry mentors and access to the laboratory space and incubators. I conclude that the Bay Area answer to closing the lab-to-market gap is by a combination of support mechanisms that reinforce and complement each other, when implemented simultaneously. I invite to discuss which of the US initiatives and programs described in...

Refugees and their Allies as Agents of Progress: Knowledge, Power and Action in Forbidden and Dangerous Boundary Regions

Fri, 21 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Focusing on the historical and contemporary dilemmas posed by the “refugee crisis,” this essay investigates the potential for international progress in acknowledging our common humanity. I examine the utility of Emanuel Adler’s theory of cognitive evolution as a lens through which to assess the extent of that potential. I employ the theory to explore how certain practices dealing with forced migration became prevalent, while others lay dormant. I also examine how competing communities of practice battle to shape our understanding of forced migration in the current “post-truth” environment. I argue that cognitive evolution offers a potent conceptual framework for understanding both the extent to which the suffering of migrants has and has not been alleviated—a powerful indicator of the degree to which the world community has acknowledge their humanity. This holds for the social order of refugee protection, even in the current period as tribalism threatens to erode epistemological...

“Not Laughing Now”: Nigel Farage, European Identity, and Euroscepticism in the EU

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Due to economic, political, and cultural disparities between member states, the European Union (EU) has been unable to form a pan-European political and cultural identity. This has resulted in a long-term vote capturing opportunity for far-right political parties, which have brought Euroscepticism to the EU’s doorstep through election to the European Parliament (EP). Furthermore, because of their ability to emphasize these deeply rooted economic, political, and cultural disparities, far-right eurosceptic Members of European Parliament (MEPs) exacerbate Euroscepticism in a self-sustaining cycle that both internally and externally threatens EU legitimacy and, if left unaddressed, the very future of European integration.

Towards Fiscalization of the European Union? The US and EU Fiscal Unions in a Comparative Historical Perspective

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Towards Fiscalization of the European Union? The US and EU Fiscal Unions in a Comparative Historical Perspective

The Abyss of Complexity. Some Remarks on European and German Law in the Migration Crisis

Tue, 9 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This article focusses on dysfunctions of European and German law in the face of mass migration. In particular, it reflects the German debate on the relation of domestic constitutional provisions and EU asylum law.

Managing the multigenerational workforce: Lessons German companies can learn from Silicon Valley

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Germany is undergoing a dramatic demographic change that requires its organizations to make workforce talent of all ages a strategic priority. Practitioners in Germany focus largely on Generation Y employees, because this young employee cohort expresses new and different work-related values. However, diverse attitudes and behaviours of employees of different age groups can potentially lead to conflict and have an overall negative impact on organizational performance. Given US labour legislation and media pressure, managing workforce diversity has been on the agenda of U.S. organizations for many years. Consequently, it can be assumed that there are areas in which German organizations can learn best practices from the U.S. experience. Although data collected from Silicon Valley organizations suggest that taking specific action for managing the multi-generational workforce is currently not a pressing issue in the tech industry, setting up innovative workplaces is an action field...

The Vienna Archives: Musical Expropriations During the Nazi Era and 21st Century Ramifications

Fri, 6 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The Vienna Archives: Musical Expropriations During the Nazi Era and 21st Century Ramifications

The Loss of French Musical Property During World War II: Post-War Repatriations, Restitutions, and 21st Century Ramifications

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The Loss of French Musical Property During World War II: Post-War Repatriations, Restitutions, and 21st Century Ramifications

Implementation of EU Waste Recycling Regulation in Macedonia: The Challenges of Policy Integration and Normative Change

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The objective of this research is to examine changes made to harmonize the Macedonian waste and recycling regulatory framework with the European regulatory framework and from a behavioral and a policy perspective examine how the General Public in Skopje, Macedonia, perceives these regulatory changes on the ground. Specifically, it is an attempt to uncover behavioral and structural barriers and opportunities that might occur when implementing the Law on Packaging and Packaging Waste and the Law on Batteries and Accumulators, which have been transposed from European into Macedonian law as a part of the harmonization process. In order to get to these questions I carried out a comparative survey to study environmental behaviors and norms (and the factors affecting it) of Macedonian professionals working with waste and/or recycling as well as with the general public living in Skopje, Macedonia. The outcome of the survey, accompanying interviews, and literary review suggest among others...

Welfare State Growth and the Current Crisis in Portugal: Social Spending and its Challenges

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This paper focuses on the deep transformation of the Portuguese state under democracy and charts the development of very substantial welfare state. It examines the very substantial investments in social protection, social transfers, education and health and finds remarkable results in some areas but only partial success in others. The paper also looks at changes in employment and the growth of the state as a provider of jobs. The paper then turns to an analysis of the current crisis, examining both long-term factors and current dynamics asPortugal turns from initial stimulus to austerity to structural reform.

Immigration, Jobs and Employment Protection: Evidence from Europe

Tue, 1 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper we analyze the effect of immigrants on native jobs in fourteen Western

European countries. We test whether the inflow of immigrants in the period 1996-2007

decreased employment rates and/or if it altered the occupational distribution of natives

with similar education and age. We find no evidence of the first but significant evidence

of the second: immigrants took “simple” (manual-routine) type of occupations and natives

moved, in response, toward more “complex” (abstract-communication) jobs. The

results are robust to the use of an IV strategy based on past settlement of different nationalities

of immigrants across European countries. We also document the labor market

flows through which such a positive reallocation took place: immigration stimulated job

creation, and the complexity of jobs offered to new native hires was higher relative to

the complexity of destructed native jobs. Finally, we find evidence...

Managing Migration and Integration: Europe and the US

Tue, 1 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Most Americans and Europeans in opinion polls say that governments are doing a poor job of selecting wanted newcomers, preventing the entry and stay of unwanted foreigners, and integrating settled immigrants and their children. This seminar reviewed the evidence, asking about the economic and socio-political integration of low-skilled immigrants and their children.

The context for links between immigration and integration is that most European nations have shrinking populations and extensive welfare states that provide support to the elderly and poor from the contributions of currently employed workers. If immigrants and their children add to employment, they can achieve the higher wages and more opportunities most sought inEuropeand help to preserve generous welfare states. However, if immigrants and their children are mostly jobless or out of the labor force, they may add burdens to welfare states.

Welfare State Integration of Immigrants: the Case of Germany

Tue, 1 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Why doesGermany– in contrast to theUS– have a system of integration policies? I begin with the hypothesis that societies have certain basic ways of securing general macro – social, societal integration and of tackling social problems and tensions. Thesemodes of dealing with tensions and social problemsderive from fundamental principles and values of the social order. In the tradition of the German welfare state philosophy starting with Bismarck, the contemporary Soziale Marktwirtschaft is a system of economic, social and political relations that is a basic element of the social order in Germany: an interventionist welfare state to reduce tensions and to help provide social security, social justice and improve opportunities for disadvantaged groups and in general to prevent social exclusion.

When a new social problem arose – immigrant integration – the approach was that used to deal with other social problems, i. e. by means of the welfare state. As a result, migrants...

Integration of Low-Skilled Immigrants to the United-States and Work-Family Balance

Tue, 1 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The role played by immigrants in the American economy is well documented and, to a lesser extent, the effect of the migration experience on the families of immigrants. However, little is known of the connections between work and family when it comes to immigrants, especially immigrants in low-skilled jobs, whether it is the effect of labour market experiences on the family or the effect of family patterns on integration into the labour market. Yet, the issue of balancing personal life with professional responsibilities is of growing interest among scholars and policy makers, given the increasing participation of women in the labour market, the increase in non-standard work and the high proportion of immigrants in these work arrangements.

University Research Management: An Exploratory Literature Review

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Professional management is increasingly important for successful research at universities as well as other organizations. This exploratory review draws on different bodies of literature in order to reformulate the complex challenges of research management by applying newer organizational theory. Research management can be described as boundary work that produces couplings between science and the wider society. Because of the complexity of organized science, management is increasingly indispensable to ensure the social, cognitive, and material preconditions of research. This paper discusses different means of research management on the research group level and within university departments. Research organizations are characterized by their relative diffuse distribution of management functions over organizational levels as well as by little direct determination between organizational elements. Charismatic scientific leaders can enhance the efficiency of research organizations...

Repeat Migration between Europe and the United States, 1870-1914

Wed, 2 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Repeat crossings of the North Atlantic by European migrants during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were more frequent, faster-growing and had more intricate and significant impacts on the overall long-distance relocation process than previous scholarship has appreciated. This result is revealed by the first comprehensive accounting of all crossings between Europe and North America during the period, and by a consistent, broad, and process-based definition of migration which encompasses all transoceanic journeys except those made by tourists and business travellers. The rise of repeat migration between Europe and the United States was a rational response of migrant networks to the growth of “floating” job opportunities in America, and to the need for diversifying the risks of remote and uncertain employment across multiple individuals making multiple moves.

Low Emission Lifestyles in Megacities: Communication and Participation Strategies in Hyderabad

Wed, 2 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The paper presents the first results of the research project “Low Emission Lifestyles – Communication and Participation Strategies for Hyderabad”. This project addresses the challenges of a society-wide transition towards sustainability in the context of so-called "Megacities” by taking into account their complex social and economic characteristics. The project is part of an Indo-German research project “Climate and Energy in a Complex Transition Process towards Sustainable Hyderabad”. The aims of the project are to develop adaptation strategies (“manage the unavoidable”) and mitigation strategies (“avoid the unmanageable”) by changing institutions, governance structures, lifestyles and consumption patterns. The geographic focus of the project is the Indian city of Hyderabad, capital of Andhra Pradesh, a southern state of India. The objective of the research project is to integrate methods of public awareness raising, participation and communication in the local context, for...

The Governmentalization of “Lifestyle” and the Biopolitics of Carbon

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The search for a sustainable civilization—an essential concomitant of dealing with global warming—will be driven, in part, by the “normalization” of a low-carbon lifestyle. To date, most research and discussion of this transition have centered on technological fixes and their psychological equivalent, “getting prices right.” Although both approaches seem to point to reduced levels of consumption as a result of more “efficient” processes and practices, neither really addresses the material and cognitive changes associated with the “low-throughput” economy (along the lines of what Herman Daly called the “steady-state economy) that is likely to follow from the current economic downturn and the need for drastic reductions in carbon-burning. More specifically, there is a glaring contradiction between the impetus for high rates of economic growth and the major modifications of “lifestyle” necessitated by environmental crisis.

“Lifestyle” is usually approached as an individual...

How to Concretize Research on the Coupling of Ecosystems to Human Action? The Case of Plant Communities in Settlements

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Recent ecological studies have integrated human actions as a relevant dimension for maintaining ecosystems and current evolutionary processes. However, most of them rely on indicators which are subject to critical scrutiny in sociological discourse since the 1980s. Therefore, we bring the concept of style up to discussion. Analysing the styles of living can be considered as a strategy to understand the coupling of society to nature.

We examine our assumption in an interdisciplinary approach to urban ecology and landscape research aiming to explain the distribution of native and alien plants and its interaction with urbanization. In a tentative outline we determine four dependent species-related variables in 67 settlements near Frankfurt/Main (Germany). As predictor variables we use geological, habitat-related and infrastructural parameters and also variables based on observed styles of acting and living. The findings indicate that lifestyles, garden styles and spatio-temporal...

Workshop Report: Climate Change Mitigation: Considering Lifestyle Options in Europe and the US

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This report summarizes the presentations and outcomes of a European-American Workshop about lifestyle changes as a mitigation strategies for global warming. The conference was held on May 1, 2009 at the University of California, Berkeley and sponsored by the European Commission. The participants discussed various lifestyle approaches as a promising way to address environmental behavior and action within social and cultural contexts. The presenters and discussants acknowledged the theoretical and practical difficulties of this multi-faceted concept which relies on several sometimes virtually incommensurable traditions. Both a merely individualist interpretation of lifestyles (“green consumption”) and a rather socio-structural view (“green milieus”) are not well-geared to explain the often observed discrepancies between environmental attitudes and people’s action. Lifestyle research must address this gap by explaining individual decisions within societal contexts that provide...

Global Warming And Lifestyle Choices: A Discussion Paper

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

In this conceptual paper, I discuss the lifestyle approach as a possible sociological contribution to the interdisciplinary discourse on climate change mitigation. The lifestyle approach could integrate sometimes contradicting results from micro-economics, social-psychology, cultural anthropology, as well as from social geography, and relate them to resource consumption. Even if the word “lifestyle” is very popular within environmental discourse, it has rarely been used in a sociological sense. Lifestyles are bundles of meaningful routines (not only consumption) embedded in everyday practices that have a cultural-symbolic as well as a material dimension. To assess the potential of behavioral change, it seems not to be sufficient to study the effects of values and attitudes on environmental behavior as separated from other social activities. Con-flicting goals and individual priorities have to be taken into account as well. Lifestyle changes are dependant on individual opportunities...

The Atlantic Alliance and Geopolitics: New Realities and New Challenges

Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This paper is based on the hypothesis that the new geopolitical environment for the Atlantic Alliance is mainly influenced by the following five elements: The renaissance of Germany as the central player on the European theater after the collapse of the Soviet Union; the shift of American geopolitical focus from Europe to the Middle East and central Asia; the increasing geopolitical influence of petroleum energy resources; the increasing power of china; and the differing perceptions of political reality within the Atlantic Alliance. The new situation was clearly demonstrated after 9/11 when the “neocons” were able to implement their ideas about how to handle Iraq and the Germans rejected their arguments and refused to participate. With Obama as president it seems to be a certain rapprochement with the “old Europeans” in substance as well as methods in foreign policy. But the world is moving away from the bipolar world that the military alliance could feel comfortable with and...

Policy Experimentation and the Search for Institutional Change: The Politics of Red-Green Reform in Germany

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The first coalition government in Germany between Social Democrats and Greens aimed primarily at reform legislation in a series of policies. This paper examines three policy areas of direct concern to business – job creation, codetermination, and tax policy. It argues that the coalition suffered an initial defeat in job creation and then settled into a de facto strategy of incremental reform through experimentation in the areas of codetermination and tax policy. This strategy resulted from tensions rather than agreement between the coalition partners. While the Social Democrats pressured organized business and organized labor toward compromise, the Greens wanted to undermine the encompassing control of these organized groups by bringing a broader set of constituencies into the policy process.

The Royal Court in Rio de Janeiro and Napoleon’s Black Legend

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Napoleon and the European war were not the primary concerns of Brazil's inhabitants. They had their own agenda and saw the British as their mercantile competitors. Most of all they resented the 1810 treaty of alliance and the article on the abolition of slave trade. Not even a a Constitution was asked for in Brazil because Brazilians were happy enough with the presence of the royal family to think of a change in government.

The paper was presented at the conference on The End of the Old Regime in the Iberian World sponsored by the Spanish Studies Program and the Portuguese Studies Program of UC Berkeley on February 8-9, 2008.

The “Perfidious Invasion” of 1808: Ideological Disquiet and Certainty in Moratín

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This paper revisits the afrancesados’ role in Spanish historiography as well as their political positioning prior to, during and after the French invasion of 1808. Taking the famous playwright Leandro Fernández de Moratín as a case study, the paper explores his political ideas beyond established labels such as “supporter of enlightened despotism” coined by Sánchez Agesta. To this end the article reviews a variety of Moratín’s texts, including Carta de un vecino de Foncarral a un abogado de Madrid sobre el libre comercio de los huevos, Apuntaciones sueltas de Inglaterra, Viaje a Italia, a Prologue to Isla’s Fray Gerundio de Campazas, as well as Moratín’s correspondence. The essay argues that despite his confessed social, economic and even political liberalism, Moratín never supported any specific form of political organization, neither absolutist nor liberal. His open skepticism locates him beyond prevailing ideologies.

The paper was presented at the conference on...

Slavery, Science, and the End of the Old Regime in the Luso-Brazilian Empire

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This paper provides a preliminary examination of some of the late eighteenth-century bases for the reception of liberalism and debates on slavery, specifically the Luso-Brazilian engagement with natural science and the work of the Lisbon Royal Academy of Sciences. The Academy’s work most directly concerned with the question of slavery and the slave trade appealed to economic principles of utility, efficiency and productivity to identify ways to reform the practice of enslaving Africans in the interest of increasing the wealth generated within the colonial and imperial economies. Thus, even as slavery was being assailed internationally on both philosophical and religious grounds, Luso-Brazilian Academic writing insisted it was an economic rather than moral problem. At the same time, however, Academic inquiries into the question of human difference often undercut claims about Africans that were invoked elsewhere in the Atlantic world to justify the perpetuation of slavery and...

Staging the Revolution(s)

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Spanish playwrights in the period between the French Revolution and the Spanish War of Independence became increasingly sensitized to militarization and conflict. Manuel José Quintana's ground-breaking Pelayo (1805) drew on tropes from Spain's historical past to discuss current and coming events. A new reading of Quintana's play suggests that he, among others, marked this rapidly changing cultural and political milieu with works that projected a growing nationalism and defense of Spain against the threats from north of the Pyrenees.

This paper was presented at the conference on The End of the Old Regime in the Iberian World sponsored by the Spanish Studies Program and the Portuguese Studies Program of UC Berkeley on February 8-9, 2008.

Mexican Silver for the Cortes of Cadiz during the War against Napoleon, 1808-1811

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In this essay attention is focused on the persistence of colonial loyalties despite the profound crisis at the center of the Spanish monarchy as a result of the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian peninsula. One clear indicator of colonial support can be found in the review of the numerous loans and donations collected in colonial Mexico for the purpose of assisting the patriot forces in Spain in their struggle against Napoleon. The financial contributions were considerable. Between late 1808 and early 1811, over 25 million pesos in tax monies, loans and donations were sent from New Spain to Cádiz, principal seat of patriot resistance in southern Spain.

The Spanish American financial contributions to the treasury of the Junta Central in Seville and Cadiz in 1809 and the Cadiz Parliament in the years 1810-1812 underscore the significance of fiscal and financial contributions of Mexico and the other colonies to the struggle against Napoleon during this period and demonstrate...

Forging Catholic National Identities in the Transatlantic Spanish Monarchy, 1808-1814

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

By 1810, with the convening of the Cortes of Cádiz, the opening of the public sphere and war threatening to tear apart the monarchy, Spaniards began to forge a new national identity and an inclusive transatlantic nation. The common cultural idiom of religion and the language of national sovereignty provided a unifying symbolic repertoire for Spanish national identities during the transition from the Old Regime to liberal ascendancy. Yet American independence severed the ties of a transatlantic Spanish monarchy and an inclusive national identity as prescribed in the Constitution of 1812. The Virgin of Guadalupe, which had been appropriated by royalists as well as insurgents during the War of Independence in New Spain, soon emerged as the symbolic image of the Mexican nation. Religious imagery that had served to unite Spaniards on both sides of the Atlantic fragmented into regional identifications in the Americas, and Spain itself emerged as a sovereign nation that had broken...

Problems of Democratic Control in European Security and Defense Politics – a View from Peace and Conflict Research

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Since EU members have agreed to establish integrated military forces and to decide jointly on their deployment in European institutions, the EU’s “democratic deficit” is no longer confined to issues of common market governance but also includes foreign, security and defense politics. Drawing on recent debates in peace and conflict research, I will argue that a democratic deficit in European security and defense politics is not only worrying for its own sake but also because a growing body of literature regards the democratic control of security and defense politics as the best guarantee to maintain peaceful and cooperative relations with other states.

The Italian Stabilization of 1947: Domestic and International Factors

Wed, 16 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The paper examines the 1947 monetary stabilization in Italy, tracing the domestic and international political dynamics that allowed ideas and theoretical concepts developed within the Bank of Italy to be applied in a successful action to subdue spiraling inflation. The combination of events and circumstances necessary for the good outcome in a critical juncture of Italian economic history was the fruit of the efforts made by Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi in both the domestic and international political arenas and of the collaboration he received from Luigi Einaudi and Donato Menichella. The Government’s economic action in this crucial episode constitutes perhaps the first outstanding example of cooperation between politicians and experts in the annals of the Italian Republic.

Making and Unmaking Money: Economic Planning and the Collapse of East Germany

Tue, 1 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This paper locates the collapse of East German communism in Marxist-Leninist monetary theory. By exploring the economic and cultural functions of money in East Germany, it argues that the communist party failed to reconcile its ideological aspirations a society free of the social alienation represented by money and merchandise with the practical exigencies of governing an industrial society by force. Using representative examples of market failure in production and consumption, the paper shows how the party’s deep-seated hostility to money led to economic inefficiency and waste. Under Honecker, the party sought to improve living standards by trading political liberalization for West German money. Over time, however, this policy devalued the meaning of socialism by undermining the actual currency, facilitating the communist collapse and overdetermining the pace and mode of German unification.

Castilian, or the Colonial Uncanny: Translation and Vernacular Theater in the Spanish Philippines

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines the origins of nationalism in nineteenth century Philippines through cultural translation practices. Its central thesis is that Filippino nationalism did not originate with the discovery of an indigenous identity by the colonized and his/her subsequent assertion of an essential difference from the colonizer. Rather, its genesis lay in the transmission of messages across social and linguistic borders among diverse people whose identities and identifications were far from settled. The paper traces this process along three fronts: Spanish conversion practices, vernacular plays, and Phillipine nationalist activism.

Due to a shortage of missionaries in the archipelago, Spanish clergy chose to learn the numerous languages of the colonized rather than preaching in their own, and in so doing, made translation into an evangelical instrument. This practice rendered native languages ‘foreign’ in some respects to their local users, and turned conversion into a...

A Hidden Language – Dutch in Indonesia

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This paper discusses the impact of Indonesian language politics on the formation and consolidation of Indonesian national identity. Maier’s central argument is that Indonesia’s claim to have completely eradicated colonist language from that of the independent state is a myth. He contends rather, that the revolutionary fervor that drove the creation of a new language and national culture in Indonesia also contributed to the repression of the ongoing presence of Dutch in both its language and national infrastructure. Indeed, Indonesian leadership has endeavored since Independence to disregard both the state’s colonial antecedents, and ongoing Dutch physical and cultural presence in it. Indonesians have been extremely reluctant for instance to acknowledge that the basis of modern Indonesian was laid by Dutch scholars. Maier maps this linguistic foundation through the work of earlier Dutch students of Malay, such as Van Ophuijsen, Takdir Alisjahbana, Gerth van Wijk and De Hollander....

Jay translation, ki ma qal Abdiche