Debate In Germany Research Articles

Raising Children to Be (In-)Tolerant: Influence of Church, Education, and Society on Adolescents' Stance towards Queer People in Germany

There recently was a highly emotional debate in Germany regarding what to teach children about sexual plurality; different actors accuse each other of wrongful indoctrination. This paper presents a computational model based on the results of the SINUS youth study 2016 indicating that the dynamics of adolescents finding their own stance towards sexual plurality are resilient towards external pressure by clerical or government activities. Instead, civil society plays a strong role in the process of children developing their own opinions. This underlines that values in society can be reproduced between generations.

Ethics, Epistemology and Ethnography: The Need for an Anthropological Debate on Ethical Review Processes in Germany

Abstract Over the last years, debates on research ethics – and the way the ethicality of ethnographic research is assessed by institutional boards and committees – have flourished in national and international anthropology. This article discusses the state of the debate in Germany where ethical review boards have remained so far largely absent in regard to anthropological research and where the commitment to ‘act ethically’ during fieldwork (and beyond) remains largely voluntary. By drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on HIV / AIDS and social relations in Tanzania, I highlight that medical anthropologists may face particular ethical challenges in their work, due to the often close relationship of their research with human suffering. Furthermore, however, I argue that the sub-discipline can raise important questions concerning the potential institutionalization of ethical review processes in anthropology in Germany and the pitfalls that should be avoided with regard to the ‘fetishization’ of certain ethical ...

Kultur, Ritual, Tabu - und das Zeichen des Schleiers

Abstract Following the refugee crisis 2015 and the terror attacks by Islamists in Europe, there was a media debate in Germany on the yashmaks of female Muslims in Summer 2016, called the burqa-debate. Taking this debate as a starting point, the chapter discusses rituals and taboos of religious communities in a secular society. Proceeding from a sociological definition of rituals, the paper then attempts to present a terminological framework for the analysis of taboos in intercultural communication and applies the critical discussion of stereotypical assumptions to the current debate in secular countries in Europe on women wearing a burqa in public. The example serves for dealing with the problem of asymmetry in taboo discourse.

Dear reader,

In looking at the collection of papers in this volume, an impression of a certain eclecticism cannot be avoided. We have articles on public international law, European human-rights law, legal history, and various aspects of Estonian law, but also, for example, issues in Ukrainian law are dealt with. Moreover, while most of the articles are in English, some key papers are in German, which in times gone by was the lingua franca of the Baltic intellectual universe. Although the substantive themes of this edition of Juridica International are inevitably varied, it seems to me nevertheless that the diverse legal domains and questions all are connected with the expectations that we as lawyers and citizens have for law – be it international, regional, or domestic. Christian Tomuschat’s programmatic article on the current state and future of public international law is connected with a festive event that we celebrated at our university on 1 December 2016, when Professor Tomuschat received an honorary doctorate from the University of Tartu. In this capacity, he has joined the ranks of other distinguished individuals who have become honorary doctors in the field of law here: Boris Meissner (1996), Heinrich Mark (1998), Peter Schlechtriem and Thomas Wilhelmsson (2002), Wilfried Schlüter (2003), Tarja Halonen (2004), Christian von Bar (2007), Werner Krawietz (2008), Erik Nerep (2011), and Joachim Rückert (2014). The question of international law’s future is inevitably linked to the expectations we hold for that law. Professor Tomuschat demonstrates how international law became universal and how this has influenced expectations of it. Of course, the higher the expectations are, the easier it is to fall short of them. When the case load of the European Court of Human Rights became too heavy on occasion, some people said that the Court had become a victim of its own success. In this issue, Judge Julia Laffranque reflects on ethical foundations of, and expectations for, European human-rights law and its interpretations. Legal history, in turn, reminds us that the issue of expectations of law is an age-old one. Ideas from natural law have lived in an uneasy relationship with pure legal positivism. Especially in dictatorships, law does not correspond to ethical standards characteristic of democracies. In some cases, law has even become a tool of outright repression. The Radbruch Formula, known from the history of legal debate in Germany, has not lost its topicality. What are the expectations for national law? We usually expect best practices and legal models – to the extent that these can be established – to be followed. We expect legal certainty and a certain rationality and logic behind the law. Yet law can be likened to Estonia’s capital city, Tallinn, which according to an ancient legend will never be ‘ready’: it can never be complete. Expectations for law are particularly high in countries in transition, such as Ukraine. The University of Tartu (formerly Dorpat) had important links to universities in Ukraine already in the 19th century, and now we keep our fingers crossed that Ukraine will be able to pursue its own strong statehood based on democratic values. What are the expectations for legal scholarship? Since the readers of legal writings are educated in jurisprudence, we all expect to become more enlightened, to find clarification for things that we were not aware of or that we knew less about. If this volume of Juridica International succeeds with that in its readers’ eyes, it has done well enough.

New oral anticoagulants (NOAC) in stroke treatment

Since 2011, new oral anticoagulants (NOAC) can be prescribed for prevention of cardio-embolic ischemic strokes in addition to vitamin K antagonists. NOAC are indicated in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation. Although its use is a matter of debate in Germany, the neurological and cardiological societies recommend the use of NOAC over and above vitamin K antagonists due to a better benefit-to-risk ratio attributed to it, especially because of the lower risk of intracranial hemorrhage in NOAC use. A specific antidote is commercially available for the direct thrombin inhibitor dabigatran only. For the factor Xa inhibitors, an antidote is being investigated in clinical trials. To our best knowledge, there are no direct head-to-head studies between the NOACs. Therefore, none of them can be assumed to be superior and the decision for a specific NOAC should be based on the available scientific data from the NOAC trials considering the individual patient's characteristics and comorbidities.

Feeling the Scope of Solidarity: The Role of Emotions for Volunteers Supporting Refugees in Germany

In recent political debates in Germany, volunteers and citizens who support the cause of refugees are often accused of being “too emotional”. Based mainly on empirical evidence from 10 group discussions and 35 individual interviews with volunteers, conducted in 2016, this article undertakes a sociological analysis of the role of emotions for volunteers.

Reflecting the Post-Development gaze: the degrowth debate in Germany

Post-Development has reproduced the ‘development gaze’ by focusing on interventions and struggles in the South. This paper draws attention to the German version of degrowth, Postwachstum, as a possible Post-Development approach in the North. It thus contributes to the Post-Development agenda by including the North as a ‘development’ problem and by overcoming the view of the North as a homogeneous neo-liberal, capitalist, Eurocentric bloc. The paper examines key Postwachstum contributions with regard to their correspondence to insights of and gaps in the Post-Development debate. It argues that Postwachstum needs to include a postcolonial perspective on global inequalities and question the ‘development’–modernity–coloniality nexus more profoundly in order to provide a valuable contribution to the Post-Development agenda.

(Re)Politicizing Security? The Legitimation and Contestation of Mass Surveillance after Snowden

AbstractEver since the revelations by Edward Snowden, there has been a political debate about the appropriateness of mass surveillance by intelligence agencies. At the same time, surveillance practices based on complex technologies, which are almost invisible in everyday life and interlinked across national borders, have run into scarcely any widespread social protest. That is why this article poses the question: are the powers of depoliticized governance – which can rely on sustained diffuse acceptance based on an ever-widening discourse about dangers and technocratic risk management – making themselves evident here? Or is the post-Snowden debate showing signs of shifting toward (re)politicization of security policy, which is making appropriate measures and actors the subjects of public discourse and politically responsible decision making? By asking these questions, this article questions the widespread thesis of an across-the-board depoliticization of security governance, develops a conceptual framework for a differentiated analysis of politicization processes, with a special focus on the security field, and applies this framework to the specific case of the debate in Germany about the disclosures by Edward Snowden. By following this approach, the article strives to contribute to improved understanding of the dynamics, conditions and limitations of politicization in the purportedly special area of security.

‘. . . But Is It Literature?’

As a hybrid between ‘high’ literature and ‘trivial’ comics, graphic adaptations have been the subject of extensive debate in Germany. This article discusses the specific cultural conditions of graphic adaptation in Germany, which have been influenced by a process of emancipation from deeply rooted prejudice against comics as a medium of popular culture. To illustrate the changes brought about by the term ‘graphic novel’ around 2000, this article analyses two examples of a newer generation of graphic adaptation in detail. Flix’s Faust (2009–2010) and Drushba Pankow’s Das Fräulein von Scuderi [Mademoiselle de Scudery] (2011) represent a new self-confident approach to classic literature, but they also reflect on their own status as adaptations and thus contribute to ‘closing the gap’ between ‘high’ and popular culture.

Die Bedeutung des muslimischen Kopftuches. Eine kleidungssemiotische Untersuchung Kopftuch tragender Muslimminnen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland by Reyhan Şahin

Reviewed by: Die Bedeutung des muslimischen Kopftuches. Eine kleidungssemiotische Untersuchung Kopftuch tragender Muslimminnen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland by Reyhan Şahin Kate Zambon Die Bedeutung des muslimischen Kopftuches. Eine kleidungssemiotische Untersuchung Kopftuch tragender Muslimminnen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. By Reyhan Şahin. Berlin: LIT, 2014. Pp. v + 527. Paper €44.90. ISBN 978-3643119001. With new regulations on female covering up for debate in Germany and France, it appears that the European preoccupation with Muslim women's clothing continues to grow. These debates betray a public fixation on Muslim femininity, mining images of covered heads for evidence of patriarchal tyranny. Linguist Reyhan Şahin's first book engages the Muslim headscarf as a matter of semiotics, taking it as a communicative medium that wearers mobilize for a broad variety of personal and communicative reasons. Şahin begins by deconstructing common narratives built around the headscarf, contesting its use as a symbol of an East-West divide. The book opens with a brief overview of head covering across time, space, religion, and gender. Şahin disrupts the common association of Islam with patriarchy and Christianity with liberal equality, showing that the Bible has much clearer prescriptions demanding submission and female covering than the Koran. Şahin challenges both leftwing feminist and patriarchal religious approaches that impose their interpretations of the headscarf on wearers, abstracting the headscarf for their own political use. This book makes a clear political intervention by using semiotic analysis to center the manifold motivations and meanings held by the wearers themselves. This book is based on Şahin's dissertation and includes many conventions of the genre, including an extended review of relevant literature and theory. Because of its origin as a dissertation, this book provides more details than most readers will want, particularly in its theoretical and methodological justifications. However, the book is clearly organized and is well mapped out in its table of contents, allowing readers to pick and choose areas of interest. The first half of the book develops the theoretical and methodological foundations for the study of the headscarf in terms of a "feminist semiotics of clothing" (feministische Kleidungssemiotik) (19). This section engages foundational theories of linguistics and semiotics, laying the groundwork to consider the whole person—and the whole headscarf wearer—as a sign. Doing so requires considering the headscarf in relation to the habitus of the wearer, including her approach to style, her gestures and mannerisms, and her social context as well as her religious views. This method reveals the fallacy of speaking of the headscarf in the singular. The first section also draws on German jurisprudence on the right of self-expression to declare the right 1) to cover or uncover one's hair, 2) to freely choose the style of head covering and to combine it with more or less discreet styles of clothing, and 3) to deny the instrumentalization of headscarf wearers for symbolic uses by third parties (25). The second half of the book demonstrates the polysemy of this contentious form [End Page 480] of clothing through Şahin's empirical work with a transnational group of second- and third-generation German residents of Sunni Muslim faith. Şahin began by interviewing university students, but, after noticing a distinct fashion orientation among some headscarf wearers, she expanded her investigation to include what she calls "expressive-fashionable" (expressiv-modisch) wearers who tended to be high school students or young retail workers. This empirical portion of the work also uses photographs for visual analysis of informants' use of the headscarf (fabric, color, coverage, binding style) and general dress and style (clothing fit, makeup, accessories). The images are combined with structured interviews and participant observation to tease out the diverse motivations and meanings behind informants' sartorial choices. This book makes several important original contributions to work on German and European studies, semiotics, feminist theory and methodology, and European Islam. Şahin calls her method a feminist semiotics of clothing. This method draws together the sparse literature examining fashion and clothing through semiotics and develops it using foundational linguistic theory. The key methodological contribution is the addition of critical feminism. This normative and politically engaged approach outlines legal norms that include dress under the right to self-actualization. This allows two apparently...

Assisted suicide in the movies - what is (not) shown?

Whereas changes to the existing legal situation regarding assisted suicide have been atopic of controversial debate in Germany for the last few years, this issue has long been of interest for international film-makers. Since the mid-1980s, the theme of assisted suicide has repeatedly been taken up by cinema, predominantly as central to arelationship drama. Asick person asks somebody close to them for help. Often this somebody is aphysician or anurse, ultimately an obvious way of solving the practical problem of how the assistant is to gain access to alethal substance. At the same time, this constellation enables aphysician or nurse to be forced into adramatic conflict between professional ethics and apersonal obligation towards aloved one.Alongside more classic clinical pictures such as terminal cancer, recent films about assisted suicide have featured neurodegenerative diseases and physical disabilities. Another new development is that elderly patients are no longer alone in requesting assistance; films also and increasingly portray young adults. Besides afear of unbearable pain, more recent films have also increasingly addressed the worry that permanent nursing might be required, as well as the subjectively experienced loss of dignity. The possibilities offered by palliative care hardly play arole in feature films. However, we should not forget, that movies are fictional and orchestrated, or, in other words, they are neither educational nor documental. They neither need nor want to portray reality, although they do wish to draw upon real experiences. They exploit highly emotional and ethically controversial themes to create tensions and stir up emotions in the audience, but ultimately they seek to entertain. Movies about death and dying are always "die-tainment".

PRM82 - A Systematic Review on the Evidence of Adequate Discount Rates for Vaccines in Germany

Prophylactic health technologies (e.g. vaccines) differ in several ways from therapeutic interventions. A key aspect concerns the timing of the occurrence of costs and benefits. Consequently, analysts have suggested adapting the methods of health economic evaluation for vaccines. There is an ongoing debate in Germany about the appropriate discount rate for the evaluation of vaccines. This study aims to contribute by reviewing evidence and providing an overview of arguments. A systematic literature review was performed in PubMed for articles published in English and German between 2000-2015. The search strategy aimed to identify studies answering the question: what is an adequate discount rate for the evaluation of vaccines in Germany? Abstracts were screened independently by two reviewers. Studies included in the qualitative analysis were categorized according to publication type and analyzed by the nature of arguments. 459 records were identified and 16 studies included in the final analysis. 8 were categorized as reviews, 4 as empirical and another 4 as methodological papers. A variety of theoretical, empirical and normative arguments were identified. Due to the unclear economic outlook since the 2008 financial crisis, there is no clear evidence for an appropriate discount rate of costs. Furthermore, there is even less evidence for an appropriate discount rate of effects. However, there is a strong body of evidence for discounting costs and effects differently for vaccination programs or any other preventative medical program for which the benefit is accrued far over time. Although there is no consensus about what should be a right discount rate for vaccinations or medical prevention, using 3% for costs and effects similar to the German guidelines for therapeutics seems inappropriate if the benefit is largely displaced over time. The rates for cost and effect should be lower than 3% and different from each other.

Fragmented national public media debate on international forest issues: a case study of Germany

Over the past two decades, a number of international forest-related policies have evolved at the global and regional levels. The elements of this International Forest Regime Complex, however, are not equally relevant to all countries. This study analyzes the main actors’ positions in the public media debate in Germany and identifies links to the interests of the actors. First, the study explores the international regime related forest issues. A qualitative content analysis of the public media debate in one high-quality newspaper and in internet sources of relevant state and private actors analyzes the arguments of these actors in the issues. The results show that the debate of international forestry issues is fragmented and conflicting in Germany and that the conflict between use and protection structures in the public media debate is not supported by the data. Drivers of conflicting arguments are mainly associations representing protection, as well as user interests. The ministries avoid confrontation in public. Alliances between public agencies and lobby groups are seldom. Due to the strategic use of the public media, the debate does not indicate very well the existing conflicts about the main issues of the international forest regime in Germany.

Discursive constructions of women managers in German mass media in the gender quota debate 2011-2013

Purpose This study aims to explore the main discursive images of women managers as reproduced by selected German newspapers at the time of the political debate surrounding gender quota on management boards between 2011 and 2013. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on critical discourse analysis according to Wodak (2001), an empirical analysis of media articles on women managers in two German newspapers, Welt and Bild, has been conducted. Findings The results of the study show that despite the diversity of images fabricated by the media in reference to women managers, the debate surrounding the issue of establishing a gender quota in management boards is dominated by dualistic categories and reductionist identity ascriptions, like women managers as being “over-feminine” or “over-masculine”, “exclusive” or “outsiders”. Research limitations/implications As the empirical focus of the study lays on two right-wing newspapers in Germany, the results do not allow for generalizations regarding the German media landscape. Social implications Public dispute surrounding gender quota in German companies tends to reproduce stereotypical discursive figures regarding women managers instead of challenging them. A fundamental change in the media reports on women managers is needed. Originality/value The research contributes to the analysis of media representations of women managers, by providing context-sensitive results from the current political debate in Germany. The findings reveal the stability of discursive structures over time, particularly gendered bias in the case of media representations of women managers, notwithstanding political aspirations to change established practices.

Political Claims and Discourse Formations: A Comparative Account on Germany and Greece in the Eurozone Crisis

The economic crisis following the financial meltdown in 2007 had disparate impacts for citizens of the southern and northern Eurozone member states. In this study, we analyze public debates in Germany and Greece, two countries that have attracted global attention during the crisis, through a political claims analysis based on newspaper articles published between 2005 and 2014. The article makes use of multiple correspondence analysis to detect the patterns governing the discursive construction of the European financial and economic crisis. Our findings corroborate the expected differences between the Greek and German debates in regard to core issues and assessments. However, the de‐alignment of political cleavages in both countries is notable and stresses seemingly an underlying mainstreaming process that limits the diversity of crisis‐related claims.Related Articles in this Special Issue Zamponi, Lorenzo, and Lorenzo Bosi. 2016. “.” Politics & Policy 44 (): 400–426. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12156/abstract Temple, Luke, Maria T. Grasso, Barbara Buraczynska, Sotirios Karampampas, and Patrick English. 2016. “.” Politics & Policy 44 (): 553–576. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12161/abstract English, Patrick, Maria T. Grasso, Barbara Buraczynska, Sotirios Karampampas, and Luke Temple. 2016. “.” Politics & Policy 44 (): 577–603. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12160/abstract

Prescriptions of psychotropic drugs to children and adolescents in Germany

Pharmacotherapy of children and adolescents with psychotropic medication ongoing public debate in Germany. Increasing use of psychotropic medication was sometimes interpreted as overprescribing. In this systematic review prescribing patterns of stimulants, antidepressants and antipsychotics for children and adolescents and its development from 2000 to 2012 have been analyzed. An increase of prescriptions was observed in stimulants, antidepressants and antipsychotics. Compared with international data frequency of prescribed medication cannot be considered as overprescribing in general. Antipsychotics seem to be used mainly in behavioral use with an increasing frequency. Data indicates a trend towards more prescribing based on guidelines and evidence based treatments. Next to child and adolescent psychiatrists, pediatricians are most important prescribers.

The ‘Business Judgment Rule’ and the Problem of Hindsight Bias – Observations from a German Company Law Perspective

This paper introduces selected aspects of the German Business Judgment Rule (German BJR). The German BJR is explored in context with the internal liability of a member of the management board of a German stock corporation, Aktiengesellschaft (German AG). Recent rather spectacular litigations involving the liability of company organs have provoked a debate in Germany on whether or not the internal liability of the organ vis-à-vis the company under German law should be reformed. Against this backdrop controversies surrounding the effectiveness of the German BJR have also gained momentum. The German BJR is viewed mainly as a tool to limit the internal liability of company organs, in particular that of a member of the management board of a German AG. Is the German BJR in this context an effective legal instrument? Or does it rather require a reform to achieve its ambitious legislative goals? These questions stimulated the interest in analysing this topic in this paper which aims to prepare the way for responses. The tour d’horizon regarding the German BJR might not only allow a better understanding of the internal liability regime of a German AG which has become an issue of considerable practical importance. It also aims to provide some more general insights into German legal reasoning and the ‘operation’ of the German law of stock corporations (Aktienrecht). Its findings might not only be instructive to the practice of courts and practitioners of other legal systems in the realm of directors’ civil liability. As a concise ‘country report’ on the German BJR it could also be used as a basis for further comparative law explorations.

Investigating the Secular Body: The Politics of the Male Circumcision Debate in Germany

In the fall of 2012, Germany witnessed a heated debate on male circumcision, triggered by a four-year-old Muslim boy who had suffered complications following a circumcision conducted by a doctor in Cologne. Engaging with Charles Hirschkind's posed question “Is there a secular body?” the article uses this controversy as a starting point to push recent critical scholarship on secularism a little further. It argues that in order to understand the powers of secular governmentality, we need to take more seriously the entanglements between modes of power operative by the secular nation-state and the embodied attachments to the secular, as articulated both in social practices and in epistemological underpinnings of knowledge production bound and enabled by modern nation-state structures. Accordingly, the article suggests that the debates on male circumcision reflect a broader discursive framework in which the ongoing division between proper and improper religious practice is part of the (re)production of a secular body politic and embodied forms of secularity. Its genealogy can be traced back to the nineteenth century and has currently gained a reconfigured currency through the Muslim question in Europe.

Blank spaces: In search of community music in Germany

Abstract In light of the scarcity of the term ‘community music’ (CM) within German academic discourses, this article tries to unfold probable reasons for this from the viewpoint of music education. It questions the accuracy of previous statements on the relevance of CM and spurs on a more precisely conducted debate in Germany.

Assisted suicide in Germany: medical diagnoses and personal reasons of 117 decedents

In Germany both scientific and public debates on physician assisted suicide often focus on patients with unbearable suffering in terminal condition. Proponents of physician assisted suicide bring forward the argument that there are end-of-life situations where only assisted suicide can bring relief from intolerable pain, dyspnea or other symptoms. But does focusing on unbearable symptoms in terminal condition reflect the reality of assisted suicide? Our data from 117 assisted suicides in Germany indicates that the reasons for assisted suicide are more complex than the current debate in Germany suggests. We analyzed diagnoses and reasons that prompted patients to suicide with the help of the German right-to-die organization "Sterbehilfe Deutschland" (StHD) between 2010 and 2013. 118 case reports of assisted suicide published by StHD were evaluated retrospectively. Between 2010 and 2013 StHD provided assistance in 118 suicides. 71 % of the deceased were women. 67 % were aged 70 years or older. 25,6 % suffered from metastasized cancer, 20,5 % had a severe neurological disease. 23 % suffered from age-associated diseases or disability. 14,5 % of the decedents had a predominant psychiatric diagnose, 7,7 % were physically and mentally healthy. The main reasons for suicide were loss of life perspective in the face of a severe disease (29 %), fear of care dependency (23,9 %), weariness of life without any severe disease (20,5 %). Only 12,8 % named non-treatable symptoms as a reason. Loss of life perspective in the face of a severe disease, fear of long-term care and weariness of life without any severe disease rather than unbearable suffering of non-treatable symptoms seem to be the most common reasons for members of StHD to commit suicide. These empirical findings should be mentioned in future debates on assisted suicide in Germany.