Europäisierung regionalen Regierens: Mit Sinatra zum „autonomieorientierten Systemwechsel“ im deutschen Bundesstaat?

Within the last years integration theory is focusing on studies analysing the impact of Europeanization on national and regional governance. This contribution demonstrates that the German Länder till the mid 90’ies have developed and still follow a twofold strategy in representing their interests in the European interactive system: interest representation through the German federal system and direct interest representation at the European level. Since some years the guiding ideas of the Länder have changed. Thus, the further development of co-operative and interactive policy-making was no longer on top of the agenda. Despite, the Länder asked for a clear cut of competence within the multi-level system — what is called here Sinatra-strategy, according to the song “I did it my way …”. This discussion at the European level is linked with the demand for reforming German federalism in the sense of “competitive federalism”. The contribution asks whether the Sinatra-strategy at the European level could have an impact on the German co-operative federalism and could help to transform it towards a more “autonomy oriented system”.     

Correctional officers and prevention of HIV transmission among prisoners

The problem of HIV transmission in prisons in Québec and elsewhere is increasingly urgent and requires the attention of federal and provincial authorities. Prison officers are among the key players who should be kept in mind when preventive measures are being developed. We reprint the executive summary of a study conducted in federal and provincial prisons in Québec. The goal of the study was to identify the factors influencing prison officers, with respect to whether they would agree or refuse to make accessible the tools needed for the prevention of HIV transmission among inmates (i.e., condoms, bleach, tattooing equipment, and needles). Among the factors studied are officers' perceptions and beliefs as well as their attitudes, perceived social norms, emotions, and perceived barriers with respect to making preventive tools accessible.     

The evolution of Swedish fascism: self-identification and ideology in interwar Sweden

ABSTRACT

Historians and social scientists generally understand nationalism to be the defining feature of fascism. Kunkeler's study challenges that assumption with his examination of Swedish fascist movements through the notion of self-identification. Using fascist periodicals, he traces the development of Swedish fascists' identification with the movement—in relation to matters of race, nation and the signifiers of ‘fascism’ and ‘National Socialism’—from the early 1920s, when an overt attachment to Mussolini's project was evident, through a National Socialist phase showing cautious commitment to Nazi Germany, and ending with a final phase of strategic anonymity. In the face of criticism that fascism was an alien import, Swedish fascists adapted their public profile to accommodate such national sensitivities, developing a racialist ideology that was not confined by national borders and was believed to be more in tune with Swedish political culture at the time. When public opinion turned decisively against ‘international fascism’ in the mid-1930s, they were forced to discard the name and image of ‘fascism’ altogether and enter a final phase of public anonymity that, in any case, involved no significant ideological metamorphosis.     

Protests Against Energy Projects in Turkey: Environmental Activism Above Politics?

The surge of environmental protest in Turkey has been interpreted as ‘above politics’ activism that strengthens civil society, fosters alternative expressions of identity, and creates new forms of agency outside the state. This article contends that any analysis of the way environmentalism unfolds in Turkey must take into account identity dynamics and the power the state has over these dynamics. Environmental activism seldom remains purely ‘issue-based’, despite the claims and desires of many activists themselves that their protests be ‘above politics’ as a ‘people’s movement’. Drawing on ethnographic and other methods in the study of environmental protest against a gas power plant on the Black Sea coast, this article shows how activists are caught in a dilemma which forces them to tread very carefully if they are to avoid accusations of being separatists or betrayers of the fatherland. Thus, environmental conflicts in Turkey can only be understood within the context of national identity- and party-politics.     

The Debate on the Writer’s Responsibility in France and the United States from the 1920s to the 1950s

The debate on the responsibility of the writer was, in France as in the USA, an attack against literary and artistic modernism. From Charles Maurras to Irving Babbit, the reaction against modernism presented itself as a defense of classicism and of tradition against romanticism. Far from being politically neutral, this attack identified romanticism with revolution and the destruction of the social order. The opposition between responsibility and freedom structured the debate from the end of the nineteenth century until World War II. The war entailed a loss of autonomy of the literary field which fostered, like during World War I, the imposition of national moralism. In both countries, a debate arose on the question of the responsibility of the writer, but it took a different form. Whereas the opposition between art for art’s sake and responsibility continued to structure it in the USA, the notion of responsibility was appropriated in France by the literary Resistance and redefined by Sartre at the Liberation.     

Advance directives in bipolar disorder, a cognitive behavioural conceptualization

Mental Health Advance Directives (MHADs) are potentially useful for bipolar patients due to the episodic characteristic of their disease. An interest for the development of a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach in the creation process of MHADs arises because of a lack of efficiency of the non-collaborative processes, the potential impact of psychopathology and the awareness of the illness in MHADs' content, the link between the patient's directives interest and the case manager's interest, and the lower interest reported by the potentially high MHADs beneficiary. The CBT intervention in the MHADs creation process that is proposed in this article is based on: the self-determination model for adherence, the cognitive representation of illness model, and the concordance model. The principles of the intervention were adapted from Motivational interviewing's (MI), emphasising personal choice and responsibility, and focusing on the patient's concerns about the treatment through Socratic dialogue. During the course of 2004, 20 advance directives written by patients (17 with bipolar disorder, 3 with schizoaffective disorder) have been collected following the described intervention. Therefore, this intervention seems to be relevant for patients with bipolar disorder.     

Testing telephone and web surveys for studying men's sexual assault perpetration behaviors

Three pilot studies were conducted to obtain information about sexual assault perpetration from adult men in the United States. Each used the same random digit-dial sampling and recruitment strategy. One pilot was administered by telephone and two via the Web. Response rates in all pilots were low. Although results cannot be generalized beyond the sample, of the 97 men who completed the surveys, approximately 40% in each pilot reported some sexual assault behavior, broadly defined. Contrary to expectations, telephone respondents reported a wider range of sexual assault behaviors. Suggestions for improving response rates include offering a choice of participation methods.     

Alice Notley's disobedient cities

The American poet Alice Notley has described one of her goals as being to take up ‘as much literary space as any male poet’ (Notley, 2005: 6), a phrase that questions the nature of ‘literary space’, and its relationship to material and political spaces. In Disobedience (2001), as in her earlier book The Descent of Alette (1992), the city is imagined in relation to what lies beneath it. Both of these extended poem sequences set up urban underground geographies, Alette – a mythical underground of caves and ghostly trains, and Disobedience – a largely subterranean Paris that shifts between the ‘real’ metro and a series of filmic dreamscapes. In challenging the scope and scale of canonical epics with feminist reconfigurations of form, her work engages with the public space of the city. This article will explore the connection between the extended poetic forms she uses in these two books, and ways in which her work conceptualizes the gendering of city space through relationships between the body and language. Through reference to readings of Michel de Certeau by Meaghan Morris and Doreen Massey, I will show how Notley's approach to problems of language and form, and their potential solutions, are not only enmeshed in certain spatial concepts but also able to offer a critique of them.     

Narrators’ perspectives: communicating the EU in Ukraine,Israel and Palestine in times of conflict

ABSTRACT

The role of newsmakers as intermediaries in the shaping of external perceptions and reception of narratives advanced by different actors remains sparse in EU studies. This contribution fills this gap and addresses the personal images of the EU of newsmakers. We contribute to the understanding of those personal perceptions and their link to professional values of audience interest, newsworthiness and objectivity in reporting the EU. The article will demonstrate that all journalists perceive EU coverage in their respective locations are led by local priorities. Negative views of the EU as a weakening, biased, ineffective, elitist and arrogant actor are dominant. Arguably, they create conditions for the birth and dissemination of Euro-distant and even Euro-sceptic media narratives. The article will explain why this is the case while drawing on political/ideational and business/financial explanations.     

At Home with the Women's Guild of Arts: gender and professional identity in London studios,c.1880–1925

This article explores a recently discovered archive, pertaining to the Women's Guild of Arts, in order to deepen understanding of the ways middle-class women, working in the fine and applied arts, constructed artistic identity in London, c.1880–1925. The Women's Guild of Arts was formed as women artists were not allowed to join the Arts and Crafts male-only Art Workers' Guild. Analysis of the Women's Guild of Arts archive, alongside the personal memoirs of members of the Guild, show the importance women artists placed on the acquisition of studios, and the significance of studios in building a professional network of female sociability and artistic contacts. Analysis of a sample of studios belonging to Guild members develops knowledge about how professional identity was achieved, and mediated, by women artists. The archive provides the opportunity to consider how both singular, and collective, studio activity was gendered. It reveals the persistent concerns members had about the appropriate use of space in their quest for professional status and examines their views on drawing rooms, exhibitions, male-only spaces, and their adapted use of At Homes in their studios.