Categoria: works, projects, publications

Taming of the Screw*

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, projects, publications

Taming of the Screw*

Mapu ñuke – Mother Earth

Mapu ñuke, mapu ñuke
tami rewkvleci jawe
coyvmkey kom puh ka kom antv
fvxa kuifi kakerume fvh,
wefkey bewfv reke
ka dewkey pehoykvleci xayen,
alofkvleci wagvben keciley,
dewmalekenmu, coyvlekenmu
fij kuyfike kekerumeci folil.

Mapu ñuke, mapu ñuke
mi pu pvxa jeqkey pu mapuce,
amuleci hegvmvwvnmu
naqvn antv meu ka pu liwen

Lelfvn mew ka mawida mew,
xiwe, peweh ka foye
leliwvlnieygvn ta kaifvwenu,
wixapvray tami pu toki
mi kisu gvnewam ka mi rumekagenuam
ka tami poyeatew ka ayvatew
mapu ñuke

**

Mother earth,
in your undulating body
the eternal germs
pullulate at day and night.
like rivers they debouch
and outpour in cascades
of enigmatic stars
sprouting, burgeoning –
the roots of the ancestors.

Mother earth,
in permanent change
elevating from dusk and daybreak
your inmost bears Mapuces.

In the valleys, in the mountains
Rewes, Pewenes and Canelos are standing
the countenance directed to the sky,
raise the Tokis
to liberate you, to protect you
to love you fondly.
Mother Earth

(Rayen Kvyeh; translation P.H.)

*****

A study trip – officially it came to its end on Friday night, when UCC’s Higher Diploma Course in Social Policy went together for dinner, returning to Cork then on Saturday lunchtime. For my part, I could not join, some work still needs to be done.
And as part of this I date the end of the study trip on Sunday afternoon – Orhan Akman, deputy of Die Linke in the city council in Munich, whom the student group met on Friday morning in the town hall, is again my host. This time it is in the building of the Trade Union – and it is on an entirely different occasion. The title of the event is

Struggle for Freedom, self determination and human dignity by Kurds and Mapuche.

While I go there I read Frigga Haug’s Die Vier-in-Einem-Perspektive. Politik von Frauen für eine Neue Linke (Four-in-One-Perspective. Politics by Women for a New Left). The book is a plea for recognising the need to approach different facets: employment, reproduction, politics and culture as organic whole.

Orhan welcomes me – as I am arrived before the official beginning I have the opportunity to talk a little bit with him. And also with Rayen Kvyeh, the writer, poet and activist of the Mapuche.
It is such a difference: the meetings during the week, all in their own way highly political, the reading of Frigga’s book – surely radical but nevertheless very much so much dealing with the reality as we know it from our daily experience – and now the confrontation with an apparently entirely different array. After Orhan’s general opening remarks – the personal welcomes of some participants and the speakers, after giving an outline of the event: the presentations, the open discussion and the ‘cultural event’ at the end – he gives a brief introduction into the topic, namely ….

Chile under Fire
…., the student movement, the massive protests against an educational system which is by its high costs extremely exclusive, not allowing ordinary people to access it … – and the fact that the students are expressing their solidarity with the Mapuche. But who did ever hear about the Mapuche, who knows that it is a minority living to a large extent in Chile, having been dispelled from their own land, resisting and asking to be recognised as ethnic group, claiming as such the recognition of their own rights. A people who resisted the conquest – first by Christobal Colón who arrived by a navigation error in 1492 in the Americas rather than in India, the subsequent ‘import of capitalism’. They resisted and continue to resist not least by maintaining collective property and sustainable economic development.
A people of the moon rather than the sun – the first being female, the second being male; a people not knowing pyramids – triangular, hierarchical constructions – but maintaining ‘levelled structures’ of collective governance. As such their resistance is not least geared against the establishment of reservations aiming on reocupación – re-occupation. – Rings a bell?

Something they have in common with the Kurds …, they have in common like the

Luna of Ashes
The eyes, blinded with a black bandage
the air compressed into a meter by a meter
captivated, tormented silence
between cables, bashes and blood

My comprehension goes astray
in endless labyrinths
made of the raw realities and its dark imaginations

Sweating cold, rage shivering
my skin
spans across the flayed skeleton
it begins leaving is life behind itself
in slow, pertinacious agony

My children are calling for me
under the chime they call
immersing my eyes, engrossing in drifty flood
my body purifying, laving in the warmth
my moribund thoughts

step by step, a small step
my blinded eyes stride
the narrow paths of my soil

Aside the loom
my grandmother gins the maize
a kiss from the auricaria, you are collecting
pignolias,
sweating in the oven
you shed tears
the streets conquered by the military forces

A forest of affection strikes roots
deep
in my body
and gives raise
to a rebellious fruit.

(Rayen Kvyeh; translation P.H.)

A song concludes the first presentation – the sounds of Victor Jara.

****

Songül Karabulut, member of the board of the Kurdish National Congress, presents: the history of the Kurds, making the point that a people living according to their origins cannot be easily erased. As people of freedom they first contributed – during the Ottoman wars and the dissolution of the Empire between 1908 and 1918 – to the liberation of Turkey. However, it meant laying the ground for their own oppression by the new Turkish regime, the fate they shared with the communists. Genocide, psycho-genocide, assimilation – the traditions of the divide et impera – against the Mesopotamian people who stood at the crèche of civilisation.

***

On the way back I remember Frigga’s book, her reference to Marx’ Grundrisse, where he states that it is finally the economy of time that is at the core of all economy. She argues against glorifying the past, rebukes the neglects of developing the productive forces.

However, the oppression of women, structurally linked to the dominance of increasing profit as Leitmotif has to be limited in favour of “goals of quality of life”. (116)

***

It had been a long day – the conclusion of the study trip in its own way. Surely the end of a week with diverse impressions:

  • A quick overview over four-hundred year’s of Western arts: the development of Western culture in a nutshell: From Duerer’s Four Apostles to the work by Chamberlain.
  • The confrontation with the most barbarian derailing which may be the most pronounced culmination of the ambiguity of a modernism which turned a people of thinkers and poets into a people of judges and hangmen (a Volk of Dichter und Denker wurde zum Volk der Richter und Henker)
  • The various impressions of The Taming of the Screw*: the well-ordered system, its success peaking in the fact that Lenin described by saying that there surely will not be a revolution starting n Germany as the German’s will first buy a ticket for the Platform before they conquer the railway lines
  • And the insights in silent revolutions – germs of resistance, confessions and the adaption of rational rules in order to change …

A circle coming to a close – on a personal level: Monday it will come to a close, providing a stage for new steps. Not as means of strangulation but as point allowing a new departure: The collaboration on Human Rights I started with Mehmet from ODTUe some time ago; this Monday’s meeting with Lorena from the MPI, hoping that we develop cooperation on this topic and linking it to her country: Bolivia. Drawing a bow between the three of us – and in some way brought together by the activists: Rayen and Orhan.
Many facets, laboriously and playfully coming together like the different individual bars and melodies in a symphony. A process of relational appropriation – it may be a machine of alienation and oppression but it also may evolve as an artful symphony which allows individuals to develop with their own timbre, merging to a gorgeous masterpiece of humanism.

There is a good reason for thinking more about what taming may mean.

***************

by any means we should erase any negative undertone when talking of a screw, highlight instead the independence and resistance.

Where to go …? – Obituary for Vaeterchen Franz, Looking Ahead

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, projects, publications

It had been the first program day of this year’s study visit with a group of students from Ireland: The Higher Diploma in Social Policy. A small group of students, entering with entirely different backgrounds from their first studies, doing this postgrad-course in order to be able to move on in studying social work, social policy, or just to leave it there after obtaining some fundamental knowledge in social (political) science. I had been near to write “basic” but it is really more about fundamentals. Not so much about how this society works at the moment and what contemporary issues are about. It is more about gaining an understanding of the principles …
…, and of course this includes some fundamental issues on political economy – what do figures mean: from the changes of some figures we don’t learn much as long as we do not know that the profit rate is not just a different name for turn over, corporate income or the like) and philosophy of law (paragraphs and regulations may change more or less on a short term basis – but law, legal systems will maintain their character as means of control: oppression and establishing a very specific hegemony for a long time, lasting much longer than their frequent offspring). And for the first time I took the opportunity to include a little bit history of arts: the tour through the exciting exhibitions of the old and the modern Pinakothek.

(Sure, mighty proud that Martha and Lorena, colleagues and friends from the Institute, joined – aren’t we all glad if people listen who do not have to listen, people who just are interested in what we are saying?
And also glad that the students asked me if I would join them the afternoon – apparently they cannot get enough from me 😉 – so we went for a visit at the memorial: KZ Gedenkstaette Dachau)

… the first program day, visiting two agencies, one working with ‘unaccompanied minor refugees’, the other an umbrella organisation, supporting self-help.

In the evening I still have some time left, thinking about the insights from the visits, also thinking about the words I read the other day:

that one cannot write about social policy issues like writing a music score, with the different chimes coming together, building one large symphonic piece.

And then I come across a sad news: Vaeterchen Franz …

Franz-Josef Degenhardt, born in December 1931 in Schwelm in Westphalia passed away the afternoon. Our first study day – the day he drew his last breath:
bearing the academic degree of Doctor of Law – a great poet, satirist, novelist, and – first and foremost – folksinger/songwriter left us, standing for decidedly left-wing politics.

Remembering having met him, remembering his songs … – perhaps he had been doing the impossible with his songs as it is perhaps more in general arts we have to pay more attention to as it is about:

writing about social policy issues like writing a music score, with the different chimes coming together, building one large symphonic piece.

He is gone – so it is even more now up to us not to forget and to move on, looking for the truth.

And we have to continue – we can hear the challenge ahead here: ….

Academic Strangulation – or …

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, works, projects, publications

… what is the parallel between modern academic life and fox hunting?

Much had been written on the effect of bureaucratisation, the emergence of an ‘iron cage’, contributing to the ‘specialist without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of humanity (Menschentums) never before achieved’ as Max Weber developed it in his work on the protestant ethics. A process of rationalisation, entering into all pores of life. As such this bureaucracy is not much more than the political-administrative complement of what Karl Marx analysed as the penetration of daily life by the complete commodification of the capitalist economy- the hegemonic system with the two firm legs.
And in academic life we complain frequently about managerialisation as principle that brings these two legs as crutches into the university. We complain about the administrative burden and also about the requirements defined by cost-efficiency of research and the need of applicability of research results.
Surely, there are good reasons to ask researchers to show that what they are doing is ‘good’, is useful for society and not the waste of money in ivory towers.

But most part of the weeks work here in Barcelona – on PERARES (Public Engagement with Research and Research Engagement with Society) – overall surely an exciting enterprise, not least due to a highly committed team that runs the overall project – showed a dimension we do not take sufficiently into account, we easily forget by the more or less short-term orientation of the complains: the shift to ‘project’ financing of academic work and research is not just an administrative burden and a permanent threat – for many an existential threat. Beyond that – and reaching much deeper – is the adaptation of a narrowed thinking, not really reaching much beyond the three (or the like) project circle and instead even looking for ‘real questions’. Action plans instead of research plans – accountable and calculable … action research rather than search for sound social practice. Researchers being more politicians than anything else.
But politicians not in the sense of generalists with spirit, activists led by their heart; but like politicians of the mainstream ‘democracies’ of Western shape: hunting success measured in lack of substance: sentences written in figures and letters forced into calculations.

Thinking in particular about young colleagues, growing up in the environment of good-will hunting: projects – at least a desk for some time, some kind of title …. – and …
… it reminds me a little bit of the life in the part of the world where I live, where fox hunting is still alive. In these hierarchies every member of the community has  a place. And everybody knows about the place: its opportunities and limitations …. – and as long as there is a fox we can hunt everybody is ‘better off’.
It is a little bit like researching about social exclusion: as long as we, the researchers know the terms and (claim to) define them we are better off. So it keeps all us busy, running like the fox: hoping for the ditch where we can hide, knowing that it will allow us only minutes of rest; hiding behind the next tree, allowing us to avoid for short times at least to face the barrel of the hunter, fleeing into a kennel, forgetting about the pack of hounds waiting for us at the exit.

When will we learn how to run together …? And when will as well younger colleagues learn again that are asked to do research and not write sentences rather then filling in forms …

… – at the end the experience of the week’s work shows: it is surely not a question of age and it is not true that all is and all are the same. There are even bright lights, also making shadows more visible.

Perhaps that made it especially enjoyable to visit before all this work started the Liceau, listening  to Scenes from Goethe’s Faust. Isn’t most important who is the last to break out in joyful Mephistophelean laughter?

Surely not another third way

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, works, projects, publications

In a presentation, titled

Quines són les competècies qu l’alumnat universtari necessita per a l’emprenedoria social?

(Facultat Pedagogia. Universitat de Barcelona – November 2nd, 2011), another dimension of the globalisation and crisis challenge will be looked at – different from what had been presented recently in the “ten arguments” adopted by the scientific council of attac.

Many debates on Third Ways can be found, accompanying revolutionary movements, aiming on overcoming the need for revolutionary changes or seeing themselves as some kind of fundamental change itself. Leaving these debates aside, there are especially in the current crisis surely good reasons to think about the co-operative sector or social economy. And doing so surely requires taking a perspective that is going beyond the more traditional stance of seeing them as ‘entrepreneurs with a broader understanding of entrepreneurial goals’. Point of departure is not another look at the enterprises of the social economy. Rather, central point of reference for the presentation will be a look at the processes of societal (dis)integration and (de-)focussing, in particular

* the loss of the wider understanding of economic processes as genuinely social, including the reference to processes of relational appropriation as matter of working on “different goals” such as the provision of goods and services, social integration, environmental maintenance and others;
* the loss of an integrated understanding of the different stages of production: from generating raw materials to processing them, manufacturing, distribution, exchange and consumption;
* the loss of local reference of production and consumption (the well-known strawberries for Christmas dinner in Alaska);
* last but not least, the dissolution of use value and exchange value as integrated moments of the overall process.

In this perspective, the social economy (rather than primarily the enterprises of the social economy) may actually function as at least one facilitator for a new debate on perspective global for economic development, complementing other areas. Also, this may open perspectives for teaching that is not oriented along lines of moral commitment, pleading for corporate social responsibility. We need indeed a new perspective in economic development that focuses again on political economy rather than improved economics and management techniques.

more or less a normal thing ….

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, works, projects, publications

… and nevertheless something that cannot be accepted in any way: the financial crisis. A normal thing as it is

the escalation of the financial instabilities that are unavoidable in capitalist societies.

And nevertheless, these are excesses that need to be answered on the two levels: the search for immediate intervention, aiming on ways to avoid the entire burden falling on the shoulders of those who barely can cope with life with the “normal burdens” of daily life; and the search for long-term policies that require at the end a fundamental overcoming of the conditions that actually caused the crisis.

The Scientific Advisory Board of attac published a document with

Ten Arguments for Dealing with the European Financial Crisis.

the downloadable file is kindly hosted by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Globalisation – Dissolution or consolidation of a Global Social Policy (and Security).

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, works, projects, publications

The following outlines a new teaching unit, organised for December at the University of Eastern Finland. The title reads as follows

Globalisation – Dissolution or consolidation of a Global Social Policy (and Security).

The unit continues from the lecture in Wismar* and is divided into four arrays of thought.

* First it will look at very basic issues not least of social policy, outlining the economic mechanisms behind the global division of labour. This is not least about the very core issues of learning about value theory.

* Second, an outline of globalisation will be provided, using the world systems theory as point of reference.

* Third, against this backdrop it will be explored what these emerging patterns mean for social policy beyond and possibly without nation states as main framework.

* Fourth, it will be explored which implications this has for law as means of regulation of social policy. Part of this is also the ventilating on some new approaches to human rights (the latter as part of work in progress together with Mehmet Okyayuz [Orta Dogu Teknik Üniversitesi, Ankara]).

______________________

* Participation in the Weimar lecture, held in September 2011 is not condition for participating in the Finland-lectures

New Perspectives ….

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, works, projects, publications

One advantage, or should I say privilege of moving around, working in different places, is that it allows to easily take up new challenges, finding new opportunities to make life difficult. Well, at least I challenged myself, and now I am allowed doing so in an official framework. For my stay in Budapest in my role as visiting professor at Faculty of Economics, Department of World Economy and also as fellow of the Balassi Institute, Budapest (late spring/summer 2012) I had been invited to give an additional course for PhD-students.

Then, accepting challenging students means to stretch things a little bit. And also thinking about globalisation and looking at the repeatedly point made in this context: gobalisation is a complex and multifaceted matter motivates to think about a different approach, providing an insight of how globalisation is actually lived. And isn’t one way of defining culture as exactly this: the way in which we live our daily life, now the life in a globalised and globalising world?

My personal interest in what is called the fine arts, developed some years ago with beginning some arts studies during a lengthy stay in Rome, and furthered by several smaller exercises over the following periods put a stumbling block into the way – to be used as stepping stone. So, having been asked for this additional course I proposed

New economic philosophies. Its reflection in 6 paintings since the Renaissance

I now got the clear way for this – and so I am thinking about six paintings … And I am sure, Flemish painters like Hals, van Rijn will be amongst them. And I am equally sure that a look into the workshops of some of the artists will tell quite a lot of what the life had been like – that life about which we learn little about textbooks like on Macroeconomics as for instance that by Abel/Bernanke/Croushore (just randomly taken, one of the books frequently used).

It would surely be exciting to develop this further: … in six paintings, six novels, six poems … – sure, this is in many cases about the fine arts, also as arts of the fine people. Still, it looks like an interesting challenge …

Before that I will try a little pre-exercise: when going with my social-policy students on a study trip during next month I will try myself in a guided tour through two arts galleries: the old and the modern Pinaktothek. On the program amongst others Duerer’s Apostles, Boucher’s Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour and Marc’s Mandrill– just an indulgence of grand narrative of history.

Max Weber wrote on the state

Every state is founded on force,’ said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed right. If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, then the concept of ‘state’ would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as ‘anarchy,’ in the specific sense of this word. Of course, force is certainly not the normal or the only means of the state–nobody says that–but force is a means specific to the state. Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one. In the past, the most varied institutions–beginning with the sib–have known the use of physical force as quite normal. Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that ‘territory’ is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence. Hence, ‘politics’ for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.

Max Weber, 1919: Politics as a Vocation

And it is exactly here where Antonio Gramsci stepped in, developing this legitimacy further, elaborating from a Marxist perspective the meaning and working of hegemonic power systems. – Fine-arts – in many cases also an idol for mass-culture but also a source of fracture – have surely a role to play here. And exploring these expressive means may also mean that we can understand in a much clearer way in which way political economy is very much also a matter of the Zeitgeist: the spirit of the times.

Not an easy task, not a simple work to be accomplished – but surely more exciting as following the beaten track of downplaying lived arts as artefact.

PS: Actually, a first attempt into this direction: of bringing in fine arts as point of reflection had been undertaken in the working paper on

Rethinking Precarity in a Global–Historical Perspective

Ireland – Economy and Politics

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, works, projects, publications

Returning home yesterday on my two wheels I passed two roundabouts. …. – Ops, returning after about 6 month I see they are not roundabouts anymore, They are now back to ordinary junctions.

Surely a strange way of dealing with the fact that the Irish economy isn’t anymore spinning around as it did. Late recognition of the fact that we are at a junction, in need of a fundamental decision on where to go?

Surely an honest one – and not just for Ireland as we recently discussed in the Euromemorandum group.

Looking Back – Looking for an Agenda

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, works, projects, publications

April 5th 2011, 7:15 a.m. – a journey beginning: ORK-LHR-WRS

October 1st 2011, 5:15 p.m. – EI 837 arrives at Cork airport, over 4300 hours, about 18,702.72 km, more or less four topics that followed me the way:

(i) the fundamental changes in the economic system which we cannot grasp by simply looking at the current crisis but where we have to think about the fundamental changes of the productive forces (see in this connection also the introductory contribution in: ‘Precarity – More than a Challenge of Social Security. Or: Cynicism of EU’s Concept of Economic Freedom’ (published with Europaeische Hochschulschriften in the series Studies in Comparative Social Pedagogies and International Social Work and Social Policy)

(ii) the connected changes of the socio-political system – in earlier thinking, published in the book New Princedoms (published with Rozenberg I talked tentatively about re-feudalisation (see as well the contribution in the recently published book All the Same – All Being New. Basic Rules of Capitalism in a World of Change (published with Europaeische Hochschulschriften in the series Studies in Comparative Social Pedagogies and International Social Work and Social Policy)

(iii) the linked question of changes of the actual meaning of Human Rights which apparently deserve more thorough consideration in the perspective of the changes of the economic formation, and

(iv) the topic of the role and function of research and education in this context – but the latter more in the search of a responsible undertaking, i.e. the responsibility of researchers as potential contributors to a counter-hegemony. At least few short reflections, looking back at the 4300 hours, may be useful.

First the search for courage. Aren’t we too much complaining, not taking up the opportunities? But it is a much deeper question of course: Aren’t we in our work as academic and also in the work as politicians to much caught in an agenda of different approaches which are glued to the existing societal patterns of fundamentally individualist and capitalist (re)production? There cannot be any doubt that we always have to secure ‘anschlussfaehigkeit’: the ability to connect to existing realities. However, we should not forget with this the need to transcend these conditions, to seriously apply the dialectical principle of preserving what is needed in order to overcome it, developing something fundamentally new. This new has to start from the real understanding of the existing – going beyond the analysis of appearances. And this means not least: going beyond a moral rebuke of individual behaviour.

Second, it is the challenge to think about the reach of the existing patterns. Human Rights and the Social/Welfare State are surely valuable concepts in the development of human kind and the political development. But by simply aiming on their maintenance we easily overlook that they emerged on the basis of restrictive systems. As a kind of last resort of systems that are in their own terms totally self-destructive. This is also true for the capitalist growth model, of which we should know at this stage that the attempts of moving to pre-2007 states are not anything else than determined ways to failure. Even the recent EU-, World Bank, OECD and IMF-outlooks make clear that we arrived at a point of no return. But what they do not show and what unfortunately only few who are seriously looking for alternatives ask is: what are the actual changes of the formation that are taking place. For instance what is the overall meaning of more and more sovereign functions are actually taken over by ‘private capital’ which, however, is not the same as the capital which political economy still considers as ‘entrepreneurial’.

Third, implied is the need to critically reflect on the use of terms as neoliberalism and globalisation, catchy and increasingly empty formula. It is easier, of course, hiding behind them than it is to openly and thoroughly discuss the relevant issues.

This brings me to the fourth point – and the last major stop of my journey: the celebration of the retirement of my colleague and friend Josef Scheipl, now professor emeritus. Although we did not really have much contact over the years it had been sufficient to develop a high appreciation for his approach. Social pedagogue in the best sense, politically engaged and historian. And never isolating the different areas from each other, seeing them as essentially bound together, relational. And most fundamentally, permanently asking questions which he saw as the main task of thorough research. Yes, ASKING QUESTIONS. We should be honest to ourselves: we are in so most of the cases too much engaged in giving answers: in the form of research reports, in form of certificates … – and easily forgetting what research is really about: ASKING QUESTIONS. I am glad that I had been invited to contribute to the Festschrift which had been handed over to him during the ceremony in Graz: Anastasiadis, Maria/Heimgartner, Arno/Kittl-Satran, Helga/Wrentschur, Michael (Eds.): Sozialpädagogisches Wirken; Wien/Berlin: LITVerlag, 2011.

Sure, I didn’t mention many things tag I could enjoy during these over 4300 hours, on the way of about 18,702.72 km. Meeting friends, making new friendships, meeting people who ask, teaching students here and there, contributing to a few conferences, writing and marking the exam papers of students which ‘followed me’: scanned and demanding their right … – and I didn’t mention the joys of answers that had been given at earlier times: Don Giovanni, (a little bit of) studies of arts – continuing something I took up yesteryear in Rome) and nostalgia as the encounter with Maria Farantouri, the meetings in beer gardens, coffee shops, and surely the Simit and Türk kahvesi.

Asia Studies – A New Book Series

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, works, projects, publications

This weekend, during the 3rd Annual Conference of Asian Studies Ireland Association a new book series will be launched. It is published by Rozenberg publishers and will thus provide high-quality books on issues that are interesting for developing an in depth debate on current issues. and the books will be available for a reasonable price. The title of the series is

Asia Studies – Within and Without

Edited by the School of Asian Studies at the University College Cork General Editors: Fan Hong, Auke van der Berg, Peter Herrmann

This book series aims on opening different perspectives on Asian studies by publication of relevant documents in the present framework. Publications are focusing on the subject area of Asia – the understanding of which is not taken in a restrictive way, but a wide understanding. Focussing on Asia includes looking at relationships and connections between countries within this region..

Publications in this series are looking at issues from an insider perspective – studying Asian issues sui generis, as issues of academic interest without interest in (immediately) applied knowledge. They are also looking at Asian issues as they arise in the context of relation- ships and increasingly globalisation.

Although the series is edited by the School of Asian Studies at the University College Cork it will gather contributions from a global pool of experts.

The first volume, written by Nicholas O’Brien, is titled

Irish Investment in China Setting New Patterns

At least my personal interest when joining the editorial team had been about launching a series of publications that provides more in-depth material that allows serious debates on important issues of global political-economic issues.