PROKLA - Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft
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Das Ende der Immobilienblase in den USA
Get PDFThe US economic expansion which began in 2002 has been strongly driven by consumer spending financed by borrowing against sharply rising house prices. But the house-price boom came to an end in early 2006, raising fears of a new recession. Until now, house prices have stopped rising rather than actually falling, and higher employment and earnings are helping to prevent a collapse of consumption. But as earnings begin to rise, the corporate sector might find it difficult to sustain the current record levels of profitability, and if it responds by cutting back investment, this could signal the end of the current expansion
Immigrant Rights Campaigns: Transnationale Migranten als Träger neuer städtischer sozialer Bewegungen in den USA
Get PDFWith 15 millions new migrants the 1990s are the decade, in which the USA had the most migrants in its history. This changed deeply the character of the cities. The US-American cities were not only confronted with a deepening in social-spatial disruption and economic polarization, they also became centers of new social movements and organizing efforts. Los Angeles and Chicago serve as examples for explaining and discussing immigrant rights campaigns
Von der Verbetriebswirtschaftlichung psychosozialer Arbeit: Warum wir unsere Sprachspiele ernst nehmen sollten
Get PDFThe article critically confronts the adaptation of management parlance to the field of psychosocial work. It insists on criteria of quality which cannot be represented in terms of efficency but are to be grounded in the recognition of subjects and political norms of social justice
Fixierung und Entgrenzung: Theoretische Annäherungen an die politische Form des Kapitalismus
Get PDFThe tradition of reducing state analysis to the detection of elements which differentiate capitalist states from states in other historical epochs has been criticized by the participants of the socalled derivation debate. They endeavoured to derive the political form of capitalism from capitalist social relations. Since these conceptions did not translate into research agendas for concrete historical transformations regulation theory became widely accepted. Recent developments provoked debates on the relationship between the plurality of capitalist states and the world market. It might be useful to try to reformulate central questions of the derivation debate by taking into consideration historical developments
„Kundenorientierung“ in der Altenpflege? Potemkinsche Dörfer sozialpolitischen Qualitätsmanagements
Get PDFGrowing financial problems of the German System of public long term care insurance have stimulated cost cutting and rationalisation in the care home industry. The resulting decline of care standards has fuelled government policies to expand control procedures. Thereby concepts drawn from market research like „consumer satisfaction“ play a prominent role. Results from an empirical study are presented which show that feelings of personal dependency and fear from being sanctioned prevent care home residents from giving adequate answers in standardised questionnaires developed to measure consumer satisfaction. Consequently, the application of such instruments may easily lead to the construction of Potemkin villages pretending a high quality of care and an overall satisfaction of care home residents
Links und frei: Eine Antwort auf Alex Demirovic
Get PDFEs ist ein Glück für einen Autor, wenn einer seiner Beiträge eine Erwiderung findet, die ihn zu neuerlichem Nachdenken und auch zu Klarstellungen anhält. Alex Demirovi ý hat mir dazu Gelegenheit gegeben, wofür ich ihm dankbar bin. Manches, was er schreibt, berührt wunde Punkte meiner Konzeption. Anderes beruht auf Missverständnissen, die der kritisierte Autor sich selbst zuschreiben sollte: Offenbar hat er sich nicht so klar ausgedrückt, dass ein scharfsinniger Leser wie Demiroviý ihn nicht missverstehen konnte. Leider bleibt Demiroviý seinerseits unscharf, wo er eine grundlegende Alternative zu meiner Aufnahme liberalen Gedankengutes andeutet. Er zitiert Marx, wo eigene klärende Erläuterungen nötig gewesen wären. Bei allem Respekt vor dem Altmeister: Dieser war, wenn es um Alternativen zur bürgerlichen Gesellschaftsordnung, ihrem Wirtschaftssystem, ihrem Rechts- und ihrem Demokratieverständnis ging, alles andere als genau. Solche Ungenauigkeiten sollten wir uns, nach so vielen niederschmetternden Erfahrungen mit „marxistischer“ Politik, nicht mehr leisten. Ohnehin geht Demiroviý allzu leichtfertig mit dem Verdacht um, der Marxismus habe sich in den despotischen Systemen, die in seinem Namen errichtet wurden, nicht allein zur Unkenntlichkeit, sondern auch zur Kenntlichkeit verändert (um Ernst Bloch zu paraphrasieren). Dazu jeweils knappe Hinweise
Islam, Gewalt und westliche Ängste
Get PDFThe disappearance of the Sowjet- Union resulted in the loss of the image of an enemy, precondition for the construction and definition of the otherness of the “We”. The lack of a collective threat was rapidly and systematically replaced by a new image of the enemy: Islam. The old – racist - orientalist characterization of the “genetic” inferiority of Semitic people was re-invented as the “cultural specificity” of “Islam”, which became the new aggressive, irrational threat of Western culture and its “rational modernity”. The invention of the “clash of civilizations” not only became constitutive for the construction of Western identity in the post cold-war world, it is used as well for legitimizing the demolition of the norms of international and humanitarian law. The “war on terrorism”, justified as the struggle against the fanatic and irrational evil, consequently destroys the humanitarian principles on which civilization has been based since the Age of Enlightenment, provoking what it intends to combat: terrorism
China und Lateinamerika: Hat die“Exportorientierte Entwicklung“ angesichts der Exportoffensive Chinas noch eine Chance?
Get PDFChina\u27s socioeconomic accumulation in the last 30 years has been probably one of the most outstanding global developments and has resulted in massive new challenges for core and periphery countries. The article examines how China\u27s rapid and massive integration to the world market has posed new challenges for countries such as Mexico - and most of Latin America - as a result of China\u27s successful exportoriented industrialization. China\u27s accumulation and global integration process does, however, not only question and challenges the export-possibilities in the periphery, but also the global inability to provide energy in the medium term
„Film ab“: zur Transformation der Distributions- und Konsumverhältnisse in der digitalisierten Spielfilmindustrie
Get PDFWith the implementation of digital technologies in the movie industry, the established relations of distribution and consumption were partly undermined by peer-to-peer-filesharingnetworks and the private use of CD- and DVD-burners. This process was accompanied by heavy protests and campaigns of the movie industry labelling “movie piracy” as a serious crime. Drawing on the framework of materialist state theories, this article examines the struggles in the legal re-regulation of the German Urheberrecht concerning the accepted use of digital technologies for private use in the process of movie distribution and consumption (forms of intervention), and the institutional selective access of social forces to the political decision process’ in the state apparatus’ (forms of representation). Secondly, this article is concerned with the struggles in the German civil society that are centred around the initiation of a new hegemonic world-view consisting of the acceptance of the industry’s private property rights on digitalised movies: the included the different threat and surveillance strategies pursued by the movie industry and the different forms of protest and resistance against it
Entwicklung und digitale Spaltung – Zusammenhänge und Prioritäten
Get PDFAfter a brief introduction of definitions and causes of the digital divide, particularly with regard to developing countries, the so-called “Simputer” and “One Laptop per Child” projects, which were designed to close the digital divide in developing countries, will be presented. It shall be argued that both projects are flawed by technological determinism and false assumptions about the impact of technology on social problems. As a conclusion it shall be predicted that the “One Laptop per Child” project is very likely to fail as the “Simputer” project already has failed