Public extension services play a key role in the implementation of strategies for rural development based on the sustainable management of natural resources. However, the sector suffers from restricted financial and human resources. Using experiences from participatory action research, a strategy for rural extension in the Amazon was defined to increase the efficiency and the relevance of external support for local resource users. This strategy considered activities initiated and coordinated by local people. Short-term facilitation visits provided continuous external support for (...) the purpose of establishing locally based planning and learning mechanisms. In collaboration with the municipality of Muaná in the Eastern Amazon, the strategy was tested in two traditional communities – Monte Moriat and Boa Esperança. Both communities recognized as most important the need to reduce their dependence on açaí (Euterpe oleracea Mart.), the principal source of food and income. This forest resource has been overexploited, seriously affecting açaí stands and diminishing the forest benefits fundamental for survival. Two local groups decided to raise chickens as a way to reduce nutritional problems and as an alternative source of income. Supported by monthly, short-term planning and evaluation visits, the groups managed to achieve significant progress in their endeavor. The groups identified (1) the control of decision-making and information, and (2) the absence of external obligations to be the greatest advantages of the development initiative. The study confirmed the potential of participatory strategies for public extension in the Amazon. Special attention was given to realistically define the role of forests for local development. However, drastic measures are necessary to smooth the way for real participation in governmental and non-governmental organizations acting in the Brazilian Amazon. (shrink)

This Elibron Classics title is a reprint of the original edition published by Leopold Voss in Leipzig, 1878.

What does philosophy mean when it uses the terms light and darkness? In this study, the author claims that these are not simply metaphors but genuine philosophical figures of thought for affirmativity and negativity which essentially determine philosophy in its conflict between these two ways of thinking"--From publisher's website.

If critique does not want to be more than just a ‘passion of the head’ it has to engage in dialogue with the worst-off in society. However, there are several mechanisms that hinder the excluded from giving words to their suffering. Furthermore, there are processes of invisibilization that impede even the perception of the excluded and their critique in the public space. The aim of this article is to conceptually explore the mechanisms of formulating critique by the excluded and of (...) understanding critique in the public space. Therefore, I first provide a brief overview on the meaning of critique before then presenting suffering as a language of critique. In a third step, I explore the multiple mechanisms that hinder suffering from becoming visible and end up discussing some (fragmented) solutions for overcoming these invisibilities. Although the excluded is hindered in formulating public critique in linguistic form, the suffering of the excluded can be understood as the ground for a powerful form of social critique. (shrink)

This article discusses the role of communication research in the Cold War, moving from a US-centered to a comparative-transnational point of view. It examines research on prop-aganda and mass communication in the United States and the Soviet Union, focusing not only on the similarities and differences, but also on mutual perceptions and transnational entanglements. In both countries, communication scientists conducted their research with its benefits for propaganda practitioners and waging the Cold War in mind. It has been suggested that after (...) an initial period of close cooperation between politics and communication science, early expectations of the potential of systematic research for controlling the hearts and minds of people through propaganda started to fade. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, communication research eventually became a ‘normal’ scholarly discipline. (shrink)

In two pre-registered online studies during the COVID-19 pandemic and the early 2020 lockdown (one of which with a UK representative sample) we elicit risk-tolerance for 1,254 UK residents using four of the most widely applied risk-taking tasks in behavioral economics and psychology. Specifically, participants completed the incentive-compatible Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) and the Binswanger-Eckel-Grossman (BEG) multiple lotteries task, as well as the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Task (DOSPERT) and the self-reported questions for risk-taking used in the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) (...) study. In addition, participants in the UK representative sample answered a range of questions about COVID-19-related risky behaviors selected from the UCL COVID-19 Social Survey and the ICL-YouGov survey on COVID-19 behaviors. Consistently with pre-COVID-19 times, we find that risk tolerance during the UK lockdown (i) was higher in men than in women and (ii) decreased with age. Undocumented in pre-COVID-19 times, we find some evidence for healthier participants displaying significantly higher risk-tolerance for self-reported risk measures. We find no systematic nor robust patterns of association between the COVID-19 risky behaviors and the four risk-taking tasks in our study. Moreover, we find no evidence in support of the so-called “risk compensation” hypothesis. If anything, it appears that participants who took greater risk in real-life COVID-19-relevant risky behaviors (e.g., isolating or taking precautions) also exhibited higher risk-tolerance in our experimental and self-reported risk-taking measures. (shrink)

Excluded and/or marginalized social groups frequently face problems involving representation in the public sphere. Moreover, the very notion of exclusion typically refers to communicatively or discursively produced mechanisms of being considered irrelevant in public processes of communication. Exclusion and marginalization, understood as processes of silencing or invisibilizing social groups, are particularly serious in cases involving social suffering, i.e. socially produced suffering and/or suffering that can be eliminated or alleviated socially. Making silence heard, giving voice to the silenced and bringing the (...) invisibilized back into the public domain are therefore fundamental tasks of solidarity in reaching a higher degree of social integration. The main aim of this article is to reveal how it is possible to disclose and understand the social grammar of the normative claims of silenced and invisibilized social groups. Therefore, grounded in Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition, I first develop a theoretic model of criticism that elucidates silent and invisible suffering as universal normative language. Next, I develop a typology of silencing and invisibilizing that allows research attention to be directed towards specific fields of normative claims with different validity claims. Finally, I offer some general advice with regard to performing empirical research aimed at normative social criticism that considers the grammar of the silenced and invisible language of suffering. (shrink)

The Dark Triad traits – narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy – have been found to be associated with intra- or interpersonal deception production frequency. This cross-sectional study (N = 207) investigated if the Dark Triad traits are also associated with deception detection accuracy, as implicated by the recent conception of a deception-general ability. To investigate associations between maladaptive personality space and deception, the PID-5 maladaptive personality traits were included to investigate if besides Machiavellianism, Detachment is negatively associated with response bias. Finally, (...) associations between the Dark Triad traits, Antagonism, Negative Affectivity and confidence judgments were investigated. Participants watched videos of lying vs. truth-telling senders and judged the truthfulness of the statements. None of the Dark Triad traits was found to be associated with the ability to detect deception. Detachment was negatively associated with response bias. Psychopathy was associated with global confidence judgments. The results provide additional support that dark and maladaptive personality traits are associated with judgmental biases but not with accuracy in deception detection. The internal consistencies of 4 of the 8 subscales of the used personality short scales were only low and nearly sufficient (αs =.65–.69). (shrink)

The present cross-sectional study (N = 205) tested the hypothesis that the Dark Triad traits – narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy – and the PID-5 maladaptive personality traits – Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition and Psychoticism – are associated with specific deception-related perceptions: perceived cue-based deception detectability, perceived deception production, and deception detection ability. Participants completed personality and deception measures in an online setting. All three Dark Triad traits and Antagonism were associated with perceived deception production ability, but not (substantially) with (...) perceived deception detection ability and cue-based deception detectability. The results provide a more fine-grained picture of biases associated with the Dark Triad traits in the context of deception and further support the relevance of Antagonism and Detachment as deception relevant personality traits. (shrink)

What is space? And why are questions of space important to social theory? Society, Action and Space is the first English translation of a book which has been widely recognized in Europe as a major contribution to the interface between geography and social theory. Benno Werlen focuses on the issues which are at the heart of the most important debates in human and social geography today. One of the most significant recent developments in social analysis has been the increasing (...) interchange among geographers, sociologists, anthropologists and social philosophers concerning "the spatial." This debate involves the work of Giddens, Foucault, Bourdieu, Lefebvre, Harvey, Gregory, Soja, and many others. From these new developments a whole series of new forms and empirical work, as well as theoretical innovations, have come into being. Spatial considerations are no longer confined to the realm of geography, but are now seen as fundamental to all forms of social theorizing, especially under conditions of late modernity and globalization. Society, Action and Space links discussions in the philosophy of social science with theories of action which have direct relevance to concepts of space. Benno Werlen provides a discussion of Popper's critical rationalism, and connects it to ideas drawn from phenomenology. This epistemological debate is linked with the sociological action theories of Pareto, Weber, Parsons, and Schutz. The book closes with an evaluation of how "the spatial" can be systematically integrated into action theory. Ambitious, original, and persuasive in its arguments, it raises exciting new implications for the study of space and social theory. (shrink)

In this article we argue that puzzle of tax compliance can be explained, at least in part, by recognizing the typically neglected role of ethics in individual behavior; that is, individuals do not always behave as the selfish, rational, self-interested individuals portrayed in the standard neoclassical paradigm, but rather are often motivated by many other factors that have as their main foundation some aspects of “ethics.” We argue that it is not possible to understand fully an individual’s compliance decisions without (...) considering in some form these ethical dimensions. Specifically, we argue here that there is much direct and indirect evidence that ethics differ across individuals and that these differences matter in significant ways for their compliance decisions. We then put this in the larger context of the inability of the standard neoclassical paradigm to explain compliance of at least some individuals, and we suggest several possible avenues by which theory can be expanded to incorporate ethics. We conclude by arguing that a full house of compliance strategies is needed to combat tax evasion, strategies that include the traditional “enforcement” paradigm suggested by and consistent with neoclassical theory, a less traditional “service” paradigm that recognizes the important role of a “kinder and gentler” tax administration in encouraging compliance, and, importantly, a new “trust” paradigm that is built on the foundation of ethics, in which the tax administration must recognize that it can erode the ethics of taxpayers by its own decisions. (shrink)

Um das Recht auf sich selbst zu erringen, mussten die Menschen den GÖTTERN das Recht auf den Menschen nehmen. Seither verstanden sie sich immer weniger von den Pflichten einem HETERONOMEN Willen gegenüber als von ihren autonomen Rechten her, ihre Bedürfnisse zu befriedigen. Diesem Selbstverständnis des westlichen Menschen sind jedoch, will es nicht zur gefährlichen Selbstgerechtigkeit erstarren, Grenzen gesetzt. Denn das ästhetisch-materielle Glück, welches diesem zu Grunde liegt, ist weltweit weder sozialisierbar noch im Hinblick auf die Zukunft der Menschheit ökologisch vertretbar. (...) So müssen erneut die GÖTTER, ein HETERONOMER Wille, herhalten, um ein Selbstverständnis zu legitimieren, das sich der Negation eben dieses Willens verdankt und dessen Handlungsfolgen die Menschen nur allein zu verantworten haben. Benno Hübner, ehemals Professor an der Universität Zaragoza, schreibt, reist und diskutiert weiterhin mit Studenten aus dem lateinamerikanischen und russischen Sprachraum. (shrink)

The article discusses installation art and its potential contribution to a transdisciplinary research practice, in which not only artistic, but also aesthetic theoretical approaches could play a central role. However, as the article shows, this firstly requires a change in perspective concerning the way we approach art. Secondly, it entails changes to a common understanding of aesthetic theory and, thereby, philosophy. A term of central significance in this context is the notion of aisthesis. The article will illustrate these thoughts through (...) the examples of Bruce Nauman, Ilya Kabakov, and Arnold Berleant. (shrink)

Comparative study of wall paintings in churches dedicated to St Clement in Stará Boleslav and Rome reveals the wide international networking of contemporary agents in artistic transfer. The importance of late twelfth-century wall paintings in St Clement’s in Stará Boleslav – among Bohemia’s foremost medieval monuments – is underscored by their close proximity to the place of the martyrdom and the center of the cult of the country’s patron, St Wenceslas. The Bohemian church’s consecration echoes the Cyril and Methodius mission, (...) resonating with the transfer of St Clement’s relics from the Crimea to Central Europe, then to the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome. The frescoes in the Roman basilica’s lower church have been recognized as an important source for the concept of the paintings. The extensive, and iconographically exceptional, image cycle of St Clement’s life was commissioned by a high-ranking cleric, possibly the Salzburg archbishop, Adalbert of the Přemyslid family. The recent fresco restoration survey has yielded insights into the painting technique and will become the basis for the future rescue and rehabilitation of the Romanesque church’s wall decoration. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Zur Ontologie von Gesellschaft und Raum -- Bd. 2. Globalisierung, Region und Regionalisierung -- Bd. 3. Ausgangspunkte und Befunde empirischer Forschung.

The topic of colour vision is one that integrates research from psychology, neuroscience, biology, ophthalmology, physics, and genetics. How do we make sense of colour in the world, and how has such an ability evolved in humans? How does the brain interpret colour images? Do men discriminate colours differently from women? Why do some people have problems perceiving colours? Mollon, Pokorny, and Knoblauch are leading authorities on this topic, and together they have brought together a stellar list of contributors, (...) encompassing all these fields. (shrink)

Marxism has often been associated with two different legacies. The first rests on a strong exposition and critique of the logic of capitalism, grounded in a systematic analysis of the laws of motion of capitalism as a system. The second legacy refers to a strong historicist perspective grounded in a conception of social relations that emphasises the centrality of power and social conflict to the analysis of history. This article challenges the prominence of structural accounts of capitalism by showing how (...) the tension between these legacies has played out within Political Marxism, both orientations already having co-existed, somewhat uneasily, within Robert Brenner’s original contributions to the Transition Debate. Through this internal critique and re-formulation of Political Marxism, we wish to open a broader debate within Marxism on the need for a more agency-based account of capitalism, which builds more explicitly on the concept of social relations, to recover the historicist legacy of Marxism. (shrink)