Kuala Lumpur is a diverse city representing many different religions and nationalities. Recent government policy has actively promoted unity and cohesion throughout the city; and the country of Malaysia, with the implementation of a programme called 1Malaysia. In this book, the authors investigate the aims of this programme – predominantly to unify the Malaysian society – and how these objectives resonate in the daily spatial practices of the city’s residents. -/- This book argues that elements of urban infrastructure could work (...) as an essential mediator ‘beyond community’, allowing inclusive social structures to be built, despite cultural and religious tensions existing within the city. It builds on the premise of an empirical study which explores the ways in which different communities use the same spaces, supported through the implementation of a theoretical framework which looks at both Western and Islamic conceptualisations of the notion of community. Through the analysis of Kuala Lumpur, this book contributes towards the creation of more inclusive places in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious communities across the world. (shrink)

Dispositional essentialism is a non-Humean view about the essences of certain fundamental or natural properties that looms large in recent metaphysics , not least because it promises to explain neatly the natural modalities such as laws of nature, counterfactuals, causation and chance. In the current paper, however, several considerations are presented that indicate a serious tension between its essentialist core thesis and natural “metaphysical” interpretations of its central explanatory claims.

In an overview of developments spanning the past seventy years, Siegfried Zielinski discusses how the means of technology-based communication assumed a systemic character and how theory, art, and criticism were operative in this process. [... After the Media] advocates for a distinction to be made between online existence and offline being.

Musik ist anders. Durch Sprechen und Schreiben ist sie nicht zu ersetzen. Dennoch erzeugt sie den Wunsch nach Verständigung: über Musik selbst und über Zusammenhänge, die sie zu dem werden lassen, was sie ist. Auch wenn sie sich medial stets autonom verwirklicht, so ist Musik nicht isoliert. Die klingende Kunst reagiert - auf andere Musik, aber auch auf soziale oder ästhetische Bedingungen ihrer Zeit, wenngleich mit eigenen Mitteln. Der Band versammelt 35 Beiträge zur Musik von der Renaissance bis zum Bebop (...) und Techno, die aus musik- und literaturwissenschaftlichen, theologischen, philosophischen, philologischen und analytischen Perspektiven an diesen Gedanken anschliessen. (shrink)

Summary Young people differ widely in their sports behavior and show high drop-out rates from organized sports. One explanation from socialization theory refers to the transgenerational mediation of sports behavior and orientations toward sports within the family. The present study investigates the relevance of orientations toward sports and behavioral patterns within the family to young people’s sports behavior. Using methodological triangulation between multiple linear regression and qualitative interviews of young people between the ages of 15 and 20, the study investigates (...) the relationship between individual sports behavior and family influences such as the importance of sports, regularity of sports activity within the family, social support, sports-related health awareness, and communication about sports in the family. (shrink)

In the former socialist countries the relation of philosophy to social reality, as shaped by the political interests of the State, must be considered for each particular case with a view to the historical dynamics of its own development. The Polish case is not typical in this regard -- it was determined by the failure of forced sovietization at the institutional, cultural level and the maintenance of Poland's traditional contacts with Western European culture. In this regard Polish universities played an (...) important role since they preserved 'normal' structures of academic activity. Philosophy in Poland has been marked by three currents which managed to rebuff the advances of Marxism. Best known among them is the Lwów-Warsaw school of logic and analytic philosophy. Its contribution is especially important in the methodology of philosophical inquiry and the style of responsible philosophical discourse. Though not a bed of political opposition the school's members mounted a 'spiritual opposition' to Marxism, especially during the Solidarity period. Catholic philosophy, as represented by the Catholic University of Lublin, has been and remains a completely independent force in Eastern and Central Europe. Doctrinally, Catholic philosophy in Poland has been divided between a more traditional, dated Thomism and the more progressive circles in Cracow where Western European philosophy, especially phenomenology, existentialism, and hermeneutics, has been influential. The third major current, centered in Cracow, is the phenomenology of Roman Ingarden, whose influence is manifest in a style of philosophizing that has attracted professional philosophers as well as committed intellectuals from different disciplines. Against this diversified background Marxism had to prove its mettle, a requirement that explains the unique internal differentiation and pluralism within Polish Marxist philosophy. The decisive factors in its development were its rejection of Soviet Marxism-Leninism and the opening to Western Marxism. The often remarked 'revisionist' character of Polish Marxism consists in the recognition by its most talented representatives of the fundamental incompatibility between Marxism as the ideological legitimation of the Communist state and as a philosophy subject to rational criteria. In effect, Polish Marxists thought the theory through to its end, and in this sense brought to light its inherently unstable nature: to be a philosophy it would have to cease to be Marxist, to be Marxist means having to pander to ideology. The confrontation of the diverse currents in Polish philosophy contributed to an unfortunate result: for political reasons non-Marxists steered clear of social philosophical questions, while official Marxism, which suppressed the 'revisionist' trend, obfuscated the relation between philosophy and social reality. Today philosophy in Poland has the urgent task to contribute to the reconstruction of a social rationality combining a critical consciousness with moral elements of commitment and responsibility. (shrink)