Societal Entities Research Articles

Enactivism and Digital Learning Platforms

Within the field of education, the concept of active learning building on constructivism has emerged as a dominant framework of the past three decades. This perspective is critical to the objectivist idea that knowledge is something static, as an object to be acquired from the external world. Instead, it states that the learner is responsible for the knowledge construction, and therefore shall become autonomous towards this goal. From an epistemological point of view, despite the important shift of assumptions that this viewpoint has brought to education, constructivism still presents some shortcomings in terms of a change of the instructional paradigm. This paper takes a step forward and explores enactivism, as an alternative philosophical and educational worldview. It presents a theoretical discussion of the enactivist perspective and its differences from objectivism and constructivism. Enactivism proposes a more radical alternative to dualistic and objective approach, as it focuses on the intertwined and multiple interactions between mind, body and the environment. The two main perspectives of enactivism, which we grouped into the categories of “embodied cognition” and “situated cognition”, are present in the field of education. The paper relates them to the two core concepts of reflection and intentionality. Drawing on these theoretical considerations, the paper applies the framework of enaction to a fieldwork research in a Danish school discussing how this concept may provide some new lenses to understand the potential of participatory approaches to the implementation of a digital learning platform. The intervention was organised through two workshops. The first workshop use the technique of the future workshop (Jung & Müller, 1984), which includes a critique phase and a fantasy phase. The second workshop (14 days later) was a design-workshop. This intervention is an example of how to understand enactive modelling, considering the relations between the participants and the environment as a dynamic and emerging relation of autonomy-dependency, a symbiosis. The analysis shows that the implementation takes place into an ecological living system made up of humans, non-humans, things, and societal entities. For the teachers (and more general the humans) to possibly accept, appropriate, act and re-enact such a learning infrastructure, it is of great importance to establish spaces for reflections, which e.g. a future workshop provides, and to support and facilitate (alternative) enactments of some of the more hidden affordances of the digital learning platform.

Empowering robust biometric authentication: The fusion of deep learning and security image analysis

Many societal entities now have more excellent standards for the efficacy and dependability of identification systems due to the ongoing advancement of computer technology. Traditional identification methods, such as keys and smart cards, have been supplanted by biometric systems in highly secure environments. This research presents a smart computational method for automatically authenticating fingerprints for identity (ID) verification and personal identification. Compared to more traditional machine learning algorithms, the results from applying Deep learning (DL) in areas like computer vision, image identification, robotics, and voice processing have generally been positive. Due to their capacity to analyse big data size and deal with fluctuations in biometric data (such as ageing or expression problems), DL has been heavily used by the artificial intelligence research community. Several biometric systems have succeeded with automatic feature extraction employing deep learning approaches like Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). In this research, we provide a biometric process that uses convolutional neural networks. This work introduces a deep learning-based biometric identification system that uses Monte Carlo Dropout (MC Dropout). Combining these two systems makes the authentication process more secure and dependable. Fingerprint image enhancement techniques involve the application of Gabor filters and structure-adaptive anisotropic filters, which have proven to be effective in enhancing the clarity and distinctiveness of fingerprint patterns. To improve the efficiency of deep learning models, this work proposes the Inception-Augmentation GAN (IAGAN) model for data augmentation. The study adds to security development by integrating novel biometric identification and authentication approaches with cutting-edge neural network technology. In this research, we provide a new activation function to speed up the convergence of deep neural networks. The results of 99.6% on Gabor filters and 99.8% on the structure-adaptive anisotropic filter with GACNN with MCD show that deep neural networks can excel over competing approaches with enough training data.

Building digital resilience against crises: The case of Taiwan's COVID‐19 pandemic management

AbstractDigital technologies are playing an increasingly central role in crisis management. Despite concerted efforts by information systems (IS) scholars to explore the capabilities of digital technologies to foster resilience against crises, very few have investigated the dynamics of building digital resilience in turbulent times. This study, drawing upon the resource orchestration view (ROV) and through an empirical investigation of Taiwan's COVID‐19 pandemic management, unpacked the black box process of governments leading heterogeneous societal entities to promote resource orchestration actions for the development of digital resilience. The research findings revealed four patterns of digital resource orchestrations—dual‐purposing existing IS, balancing data exploitation, enacting online co‐production, and augmenting social network effects—that led to rapid and effective pandemic crisis management in Taiwan. We incorporated our findings into a research model of digital resilience in the making, thereby providing a mechanism for building digital resilience at a societal level. The research outcomes foreground temporal and societal aspects of digital resilience that contribute to the literature by adding new insights to the currently limited research on the operational process of building digital resilience.

Visible wounds of invisible repression: A perspective on the importance of investigating the biological and psychological impact of political repression.

Exposure to psychological trauma is a well-accepted risk factor for the development of mental and somatic diseases. However, chronic stressors not fulfilling the criteria of traumatic experience can have similarly adverse health consequences. While the harmful impact of chronic stressors is generally recognized among researchers, there is a lack of acknowledgment within clinical, political, and societal entities. This becomes evident in the experiences of victims of political repression in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), an authoritarian state in East Germany. Repression in the GDR included covert measures, such as "Zersetzung" (engl: disintegration), consisting of wiretapping, spreading rumors, or provoking failure in professional and social domains. It aimed to systematically undermine the psychosocial integrity of individuals, inducing anxiety, social isolation, and confusion. This article integrates findings on repression in the GDR with existing trauma and chronic stress literature. "Zersetzung" shares key features with severe psychosocial chronic stressors. Like trauma, experiencing "Zersetzung" likely dysregulated the biological stress systems, thereby predisposing victims to the health consequences they frequently experience to the present day. Certain severe chronic stressors, such as "Zersetzung," do not appear to differ in their negative health consequences from Criterion A traumatic events. Identifying the biological and psychological impact of political repression techniques is essential, not only for public acknowledgment, and proper health care of victims of GDR repression, but also for those individuals suffering from similar repression methods today. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

TINUNGGLU’S GOVERNING : TRADITIONAL FOOD BUFFER SYSTEM IN MENTAWAI AS GOVERNANCE

This paper elaborates on Tacit-governing food buffer systems in Mentawai island, Tinungglu. Tinungglu is the old system of agriculture system of the Mentawai People, especially on Siberut Island. its role as a buffer stock food system when their life is in a vulnerable situation. This analysis focused on looking at three significant sets of variables contributing to the governability of societal entities, including the natural resources valued by those entities: those entities considered a system-to-be-governed (SG), those governing these entities, labeled the governance system (GS), and the interrelation between these two, worked out in terms of governing relations or interactions (GI). Finally, its results identify the area of governability whereas the intersection among government and traditional systems on tinungglu.

Foreign Cinema and its Representation of Society and its Entity

Cinema as an artwork form and a technology which has best existed for a hundred years. Primitive cinema gadgets appeared and were used inside the Nineties, nearly concurrently, within the USA, France, Germany, and Great Britain. inside two decades, cinema had unfold all over the world; It had advanced state-of-the-art technology and become properly on its manner to turning into a first-rate enterprise that provided the most famous shape of entertainment to city audiences round the arena and attracted the eye of marketers, artists, scientists and politicians. The film medium started out for use for education, propaganda and clinical research in addition to amusement. Initially a combination of elements which includes vaudeville, popular melodrama, and illustrated lecture, it fast won inventive distinction and is now beginning to fade, along with other kinds of mass media and amusement which have emerged alongside it to threaten its hegemony. In the new millennium, India, the US, China, Nigeria, and Japan have end up foremost filmmaking facilities round the world. Cutting-edge filmmaking strategies are based on absolute creativity and superior technological programs. The arrival of coloration, stereophonic sound and widescreen has made the technical understanding required of a director nowadays a lot broader and extra complex. Overseas cinema has endured to dominate filmmaking script in the twenty first century. The proposed study is an attempt to examine the representation of various entities of society in foreign cinema. The study will focus on how various societal entities were presented and misrepresented in cinema. This study will explore on how with changing times, society-based cinemas started gaining popularity.

Book Review

In Participation Without Democracy, Garry Rodan argues that as a response to the dynamics and contradiction inherent in the capitalist development, the regime—representing the dominant coalition of interest, the ruling/dominant political elites—‘invent’ ways to contain conflicts with societal entities (i.e., opposition parties, civil societies, labor unions) in a way so that such conflicts do not yield politically harmful impacts. 
 This argument is based on two propositions. First, the development of capitalism has caused inequality to deepen. Both the ruling political-economy elites and the marginal groups found this inherent inequality and disruption in capitalism created political challenges, which, as a consequence, demand mitigation strategies. Second, the established coalition of interest's tactics handle political dissents towards the regimes move beyond the binary scenarios, not just merely opening political participation or applying coercion means such as crackdown and arrest. Instead, while the elites design the participation and representation institutions as a response to domesticating dissents and conflicts, the marginal groups also respond to those channels beyond being co-opted or merely refuse to join it. Opposition parties, radical NGOs, marginal groups seek to utilize the institutions for their transformative agenda. In short, both the ruling elites and the marginal groups have been engaged in the participating institutions with different goals in mind.

Managing Shutdown Decisions in Merchant Commodity and Energy Production: A Social Commerce Perspective

Problem definition: Merchant commodity and energy production assets operate in markets with volatile prices and exchange rates. Plant closures adversely affect societal entities beyond the specific plant being shut down, such as the parent company and the local community. Motivated by an aluminum producer, we study if mitigating these hard-to-assess broader impacts of a shutdown is financially viable using the plant’s operating flexibility. Academic/practical relevance: Our social commerce perspective toward managing shutdown decisions deviates from the commonly used asset value maximization objective in merchant operations. Identifying operating policies that delay or decrease the likelihood of a shutdown without incurring a significant asset value loss supports socially responsible plant shutdown decisions. Methodology: We formulate a constrained Markov decision process to manage shutdown decisions and limit the probability of future plant closures. We provide theoretical support for approximating this intractable model using unconstrained stochastic dynamic programs with modified shutdown costs and explore two classes of operating policies. Our first policy leverages anticipated regret theory, and the second policy generalizes, using machine learning, production-margin heuristics used in practice. We compute the former and latter policies using a least squares Monte Carlo method and combining this method with binary classification, respectively. Results: Anticipated-regret policies possess desirable asymptotic properties absent in classification-based policies. On instances created using real data, anticipated-regret and classification-based policies outperform practice-based production-margin strategies. Significant reductions in shutdown probability and delays in plant closures are possible while incurring small asset value losses. Managerial implications: A plant’s operating flexibility provides an effective lever to balance the social objective to reduce closures and the financial goal to maximize asset value. Adhering to both objectives requires combining short-term commitments with external stakeholders to avoid shutdown with longer-term internal efforts to reduce the probability of plant closures.

Fact Searching in Investigative Reporting in Indonesia: A Case Study of Tempo and Gatra Magazines

Investigative journalism is a new development in the Indonesian press and the study is at infancy. However, news magazines have investigated quite a number of scandals and problems in Indonesia during the Reformation era, post-New Order authoritarian regimes. This research examines fact searching activities at two main news magazines in Indonesia namely Tempo and Gatra in the process of producing investigative stories. This study deploys case study and an in-depth interview in its exploration of identifying specific processes involved in the process of producing investigative stories in these two news organizations. The interview was conducted with six informants including journalists at Tempo and Gatra news magazine, book authors and journalism analysts. The results of the study indicate that news magazines in Indonesia reveal various issues and cases, which are deliberately hidden to the community. The findings also demonstrate that the facts searching process encompasses several styles that effectively complement each other in news narration, especially with the particular concept, attitude, direction and effort to report its best to the society. This suggests that investigative stories in Indonesia news magazines emphasize the originality of news with in-depth coverage based on independent position, free from the influence of other societal entities, government’s pressure, as well as from other interests. Keywords: Investigative journalism, reformation era, news magazine, Tempo, Gatra.

Re-conceptualizing civil society in rentier states

ABSTRACTCivil society is typically understood as weak or irrelevant in Gulf rentier states, the assumption being that rent-derived wealth allows the state to co-opt or repress associational life. However, for all these claims about the relationship between rents and civil society, rentier state theory relies on a number of assumptions regarding the nature of civil society itself, specifically that civil society is, by definition, independent of the state, formal and public in organization, and pro-democratic in orientation. This article examines where relaxation of these assumptions allows us to better understand the political activities of civil society groups in Gulf rentier states, even as co-optative and repressive governance tactics continue to limit space for political activity. Instead of focusing on traditional forms of civil society, we should instead search for those parts of Gulf society that fulfil the function of civil society in terms of societal entities that act collectively to pursue a political purpose (including both engagement with the state over policy matters and debates on moral and social societal norms).

Boundary Objects, Translation Practices and Unstable Entities. Drawing the Boundaries of the Needy

Within organisational studies, the translation of boundary objects has provided new ways of understanding success of cooperation across different societal entities without consensus or shared value...

Public technology: nuclear energy in Europe

ABSTRACTThe concept of ‘public science’ has been fruitfully used to indicate the intricate interrelatedness of science and society. In studies of knowledge and its publics, however, technology has been routinely subsumed under science and the distinctive nature of technical knowledge neglected. We are aiming in this article at conceptualizing the public nature of technologies. First, we start with surveying the literature on public science. Second, we scrutinize various conceptual approaches to better understand the social and cultural factors embedded in technologies. In so doing, we reflect upon the twentieth-century history of technologies as public things. Third, we focus on nuclear energy in Europe as an exemplary case of a large-scale technology which has been shaped as part of public culture. We suggest that the specificities of the nuclear as a publicly shaped societal entity can be understood as an example of the wider category we propose to call ‘public technologies’.

Event-Driven Distributed Information Resource-Focusing Service for Emergency Response in Smart City with Cyber-Physical Infrastructures

The smart city has become a popular topic of investigation. How to focus large amounts of distributed information resources to efficiently cope with public emergencies and provide support for personalized decision-making is a vitally important issue in the construction of smart cities. In this paper, an event-driven focusing service (EDFS) method that uses cyber-physical infrastructures for emergency response in smart cities is proposed. The method consists of a focusing service model at the top level, an informational representation of the model and a focusing service process to operate the service model in emergency response. The focusing service method follows an event-driven mechanism that allows the focusing service process to be triggered by public emergencies sensed by wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and mobile crowd sensing, and it integrates the requirements of different societal entities with regard to response to emergencies and information resources, thereby providing comprehensive and personalized support for decision-making. Furthermore, an EDFS prototype system is designed and implemented based on the proposed method. An experiment using a real-world scenario—the gas leakage in August 2014 in Taiyuan, China—is presented demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed method for assisting various societal entities in coping with and efficiently responding to public emergencies.

A System-of-Systems Framework for Improved Human, Ecologic and Economic Well-Being

“Advances in technology and management not keeping pace with the ever-increasing urban problems” is attributed in this research to the poor understanding of person-focused governance of societal, environmental and economic entities. The objective of this paper is to present an adaptive institutional model of person-driven effectiveness and ineffectiveness. The model proposes that human, ecologic and economic outcomes are heavily influenced by a complex system of systems, spanning from individually unique “non-physical influencers” to a broader set of social and environmental influencers that have a common impact on the larger society-environment-economy (SEE) system. At the heart of the model is an analytic formulation that explains the phenomena of non-physical blocker, enhancer and indifferent, which are responsible for the adaptation and maladaptation of social agents and, accordingly, for the sustainability and unsustainability of SEE systems. Examples are provided to illustrate the model applications: (a) the non-physical and maladaptive syndromes as antecedents of multi-morbidity; and (b) the broadened and narrowed minds as sources of sustainability and unsustainability at the SEE system level within the context of emerging technologies such as engineered nanomaterials.

Managing Shutdown Risk in Merchant Commodity and Energy Production

Problem definition: Merchant commodity and energy production assets operate in markets with volatile prices and exchange rates. Plant closures adversely affect societal entities beyond the specific plant being shutdown such as the parent company and the local community. Motivated by an aluminum producer, we study if mitigating these hard-to-assess broader impacts of a shutdown is financially viable using the plant's operating flexibility. Academic/Practical relevance: Our social commerce perspective towards managing shutdown decisions deviates from the commonly used asset value maximization objective in merchant operations. Identifying operating policies that delay or decrease the likelihood of a shutdown without incurring a significant asset value loss supports socially-responsible plant shutdown decisions. Methodology: We formulate a constrained Markov decision process to manage shutdown decisions and limit the probability of future plant closures. We provide theoretical support for approximating this intractable model using unconstrained stochastic dynamic programs with modified shutdown costs and explore two classes of operating policies. Our first policy leverages anticipated regret theory while the second policy generalizes production-margin heuristics used in practice using machine learning. We compute the former and latter policies using a least squares Monte Carlo method and combining this method with binary classification, respectively. Results: Anticipated-regret policies possess desirable asymptotic properties absent in classification-based policies. On instances created using real data, anticipated-regret and classification-based policies outperform practice based production-margin strategies. Significant reductions in shutdown probability and delays in plant closures are possible while incurring small asset value losses. Managerial implications: A plant's operating flexibility provides an effective lever to balance the social objective to reduce closures and the financial goal to maximize asset value. Adhering to both objectives requires combining short-term commitments with external stakeholders to avoid shutdown with longer-term internal efforts to reduce the probability of plant closures.

Introduction

Introduction Joseph Garcea and Robert Vineberg, Special Guest Editors Immigration, settlement and integration are multifaceted and complex phenomena. These issues have been studied and debated since large-scale immigration to Canada began in the early nineteenth century. Various facets of the phenomena become the focus of academic and applied publications at different points in time as a result of patterns of continuity and/or change either in immigration flows, settlement patterns, settlement services, and integration dynamics, or in any policies and programs related thereto. We have chosen, for this special issue of Canadian Ethnic Studies, an eclectic group of articles on settlement and integration services and needs of newcomers. Some of the articles are general and wide-ranging in nature, particularly Wilkinson et al. and Ashton et al., while others delve into specific situations and specific settlement issues. However, it is our hope that, taken together, the reader will find the whole to offer a reasonably comprehensive look at some contemporary settlement and integration issues. Within this issue, some of the subjects covered have received extensive attention in the extant literature while others have received very little, if any, attention. These articles address the following topics: economic integration challenges faced by newcomers; the devolution of responsibility for housing for refugees from the state to the community; the increased role of municipalities and neighbourhood organizations in the settlement of newcomers; the capacities of service provider organizations to operate and provide services in medium- and small-sized communities in the Prairie provinces; reforms to modernize the federal settlement services provision program; power relationships and their effects on racialized professionals in the social work profession; the challenges of providing services designed to eliminate and to mitigate the adverse effects of honour-based violence among the members of certain newcomer groups; and the resettlement of refugees. Lori Wilkinson et al. (Understanding Job Status Decline Among Newcomers to Canada) examine the problem of the extent of skill devaluation for newcomers in the Canadian labour market. The analysis of data collected from more than three [End Page 1] thousand respondents in Western Canada with a focus on their pre-arrival and post-arrival job statuses reveals a significant decline in the job status for newcomers. The analysis also reveals variance among them based on where they were educated, their province of residence, and the length of time in Canada. Ray Silvius (Neo-liberalization, Devolution, and Refugee Well-Being: A Case Study in Winnipeg, Manitoba) focuses on the role of the state and society in meeting the housing needs of refugees. More specifically, his article examines the impact of neo-liberal ideology in shifting the extent of support for housing from the state to various societal entities, including ethnocultural agencies, religious agencies, and familial or kinship networks of the refugees. In addition to drawing attention to the different sources of housing supports for refugees, this article provides interesting and important insights into what the author refers to as the “possibilities and limitations” of community-based approaches to providing various types of supports and services to refugees. Shibao Guo and Yan Guo (Immigration, Integration and Welcoming Communities: Neighbourhood-based Initiative to Facilitate the Integration of Newcomers in Calgary) provide compelling evidence of the importance of municipal governments for the successful settlement of newcomers. A central theme in their article is that special efforts should be made to involve municipalities, even more than has been the case to date, as key partners in the multi-level governance context in which all governmental and non-governmental stakeholders are involved. The article sheds light on some important roles assumed by the City of Calgary in partnership with various community partners at the neighbourhood level in developing what they refer to as “a hub model of community-based initiatives” in the settlement and integration of newcomers. Bill Ashton et al. (Assessment of Settlement Services Systems in Western and Northern Canada: Perceptions of Settlement Provider Organizations) provide an overview of the perceptions of officials from SPOs in almost three dozen medium-and small-sized rural and remote communities regarding their capacities to provide settlement services, communicate and coordinate with stakeholders, meet reporting requirements established by governments, and invest in governance and strategic planning...

The idea of a ‘Just State’ (Rechtsstaat) (with reference to a unique feature of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa)

In South Africa the acquisition of full political and civil rights for all rectified the former political situation of apartheid South Africa. Against the background of key developments in the political legacy of the West, including the opposing theoretical orientations of individualistic and universalistic approaches, the historical roots of those conditions which eventually were recognised as essential for the idea of a just state are highlighted. Adding a mere multiplicity of individuals (atomistic social contract theories) or postulating one or another encompassing whole (such as Rousseau's volonté générale) precludes an insight into the own inner laws of distinct societal spheres. The concept of sovereignty appears not to be sufficient to delimit state-law properly. An alternative view is introduced by Althusius (1603) with his objection to the application of the whole-parts relation to society and the state. He acknowledges ‘leges propriae’ (proper laws for each societal collectivity and thus opened up an avenue for introducing the principle of sphere-sovereignty, which leaves room for the internal spheres of law of non-political societal entities as well as for personal freedom. If the spheres of public law, civil private law and non-civil private law are intact, political freedom, personal freedom and societal freedoms are secured—the structural conditions for the just state. The Constitution of South Africa incorporates these requirements for a Rechtsstaat and in addition contains a unique equity content. The future of the South African democracy is therefore crucially dependent upon the internalisation of a truly Rechtsstaat political culture.

THE CORPORATE CONSTITUTIONALISM APPROACH IN THE FORMULATION OF CSR

The 21st century is the era of the development of corporate social responsibility (CSR). It is encouraged by the development of the company as a business and societal entities that balances public and private interests. If there is a balance of public and private interests in the company, the application of CSR should be able to accommodate the public interest. However there are a lot of companies in Indonesia that do not involve the community in the formulation of CSR implementation model. This resulted the implementation of CSR which is often not well targeted. In that context, the theory of corporate constitutionalism becomes a relevant theory to answer this problem. The theory of corporate constitutionalism puts deliberation as one of the principles to achieve the legitimacy of decision-making in the corporation. Through a process of deliberation formulation of CSR model with the community, not just the interests of shareholders that can be accommodated but also the interests of stakeholders. Thus, CSR can actually be an instrument solvingto solve the global and local challenges.

Sustainability as a Change Agent? Lessons From the European Airspace Regulation

The contribution at hand follows the sociologist Niklas Luhmann in framing ecological problems as communicative ones. This approach offers valuable insights for the difficulties in finding society-wide accepted solutions. Reflexive steering (RS) as well as reflexive governance (RG) took up basic assumptions but also added proposals for working towards solutions. Because actors from different contexts cannot escape from a “vicious circle of first-order reflexivity”, they have to be forced to take into account the big picture (claim 1). In the RG literature it is argued that notions such as “sustainable development” may ease triggering communication across different societal domains by working as a “change agent” (claim 2). Both of these claims are examined by introducing a case study on European airspace regulation (“Single European Sky”). It shows that economy – usually the system that is intended to be changed – makes use of sustainability as a change agent in order to redirect the pressure to reflect and adapt towards others. It is concluded that, on the one hand, public credibility is a powerful means to induce changes within idiosyncratic societal entities. On the other hand, terms such as “sustainable development” are so widely diffused that they allow for being used by almost any societal actor able to communicate publicly. This multi-directionality has been neglected in the literature so far which calls for thinking of new communicative solutions – especially beyond procedural proposals which are favored by many approaches from RS to RG.

The Place of the State in a Differentiated Society: Historical and Systematic Perspectives

What used to be called primitive societies may best be designated as traditional societies or as undifferentiated societies. While focusing on the place of the state within a differentiated society, it is meaningful to account for the differences between differentiated societies and undifferentiated societies, because such an analysis will help us to advance important systematic distinctions. Usually, the extended family (Grossfamilie) is seen as the smallest undifferentiated society with a typical undifferentiated form of organization. Even the lowest level of undifferentiated societies contains an ordering and relations of super- and subordination. Paying attention to the sib or clan is followed by a characterization of the tribe and Roman law. Diverse undifferentiated societies of the medieval era are found in the feudal system, guilds, and manors. All of these societies included activities which within a differentiated society are performed by societal entities with their own distinct forms of organization. Therefore, the state was not yet visible as a distinct societal entity. In the absence of tribal punishment, only relatives would take revenge, owing to the fact that there was not yet an integrated monopoly of power on a limited territory capable of enforcing the resolution of legal conflicts. Within early Germanic as well as early Greek and Roman Law, the practical enforcement of liability therefore had to appeal to private execution. After the Renaissance, the idea of popular sovereignty surfaced, but it was only when church and state parted ways that we observe the process of development which led to what we currently experience as differentiated societies. In such societies, the limitations of undifferentiated societies are superseded through an acknowledgment of the fact that every human being transcends any and all societal collectivities in which such a person merely functions without being fully absorbed by these functions. Finally, attention is briefly given to the legal competence of a government and to the nature of cultural–historical power within the state (its ‘sword-power’). As a public legal institution, the state is supposed to integrate all (and only) legal interests on its territory within one public legal order. Just as little as societal entities which are distinct from the state are parts of the state, is it correct to sacrifice the state by surrendering it to any non-political community or collectivity. Only this perspective avoids a totalitarian view regarding the place of the state within a differentiated society.