The article examines the compatibility of agonistic democracy and populism as well as their relationship to the idea of constitutionalism. The first part shows that Chantal Mouffe’s recent attempts to reconcile her normative approach of an agonistic pluralism with a populist style of politics are not fully convincing. Although there are undeniable commonalities between an agonistic and a populist understanding of politics – the appreciation of conflict, the rejection of moralistic and juridical modes of conflict resolution etc. – the populist (...) mode of the construction of the people (and the denunciation of political opponents as enemies of the people) risks impeding the transformation of antagonistic into agonistic modes of political contest. The tensions between agonism and populism are especially evident in matters of constitutionalism. This topic is examined in the second part of the article, which provides some ideas for reducing the normative and institutional blind spots of contemporary theories of agonistic democracy. It focuses on elementary principles for an agonistic concept of democratic constitutionalism that differs from the populist view of the relationship between politics and law, especially in respect of its interpretation of the concept of ‘resistibility’ of legal norms. (shrink)

Human beings inhabit a symbolic reality that articulates meaning. This is culture understood as a web of meanings that actually builds our identity by providing guidance in the complexity of our environment. It is the complex interplay between identity and alterity, between interiority and exteriority, between familiarity and strangeness. Worldviews set up borders that delimit one's own world and others' ground by establishing stereotypes and prejudices. This article presents the results of a research project on prejudices towards the other in (...) students majoring in Education and Psychology with the aim of offering some reflections on what is at stake in social exclusion policies. (shrink)

This article argues that ‘Critical International Relations’, often counterpoised to ‘mainstream IR’, has come to function as a major theoretical category in its own right. It argues that critique involves ‘minor theorising’, defined as the practice of disturbing settled theoretical assumptions in the discipline. The article examines the role and significance of ‘minor theories’ in the context of ongoing debates about Critical IR. It argues that critique is defined by context, and is politically and ethically ambiguous. The article concludes that (...) the scope for critique could be advanced if the terms ‘Critical IR’ and ‘Critical IR Scholar’ are dropped from scholarly parlance. (shrink)

The Leuphana Semester at Leuphana University Lüneburg, together with the module “Science bears responsibility” demonstrate how innovative methods of teaching and learning can be combined with the topic of sustainable development and how new forms of university teaching can be introduced. With regard to module content, it has become apparent that, due to the complexity of the field of sustainability, a single discipline alone is unable to provide analyses and solutions. If teaching in higher education is to adequately deal with (...) this complexity, then it is necessary to develop inter- and transdisciplinary approaches that go beyond a purely specialist orientation. (shrink)

This article discusses the issue of social and cultural ‘autotranscendence’ - self-production, creativity - in the debates on self-organization. The point of departure is Cornelius Castoriadis’s idea of ‘self-creation’. First, a schisma between mechanical and ontological modeling is indicated and used to introduce the idea of a ‘creative organization’. This is further discussed in relation to Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s concept of social ‘autotranscendence’ by ‘complex methodological individualism’, with particular respect to the incomprehension of the social. Following Johann P. Arnason’s treatment of (...) the question of cultural articulation in Castoriadis, the article argues that the problem of autotranscendence presents a further problem of self-creation discernible in Castoriadis’s notions of phusis/nomos, living being/human, and constraint/magma. The article closes with a consideration of Duncan Watts, Alberto-László Barabási and Bernardo Huberman’s sketch of a network sociology. (shrink)

El presente artículo describe el impacto en las universidades del impulso aportado por la Conferencia sobre “Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo” de Río de Janeiro en el año 1992, que incorporó un capítulo sobre el rol de la “ciencia al servicio del Desarrollo Sustentable”. Tras esto, el primer intento por incorporar este tema lo emprendió la Conferencia Europea de Rectores de Universidades (CRE) a través del programa COPERNICUS, que se convirtió para más de 300 universidades europeas en la base para una (...) política universitaria sustentable. El artículo ejemplariza este proceso en la Universidad de Lüneburg. (shrink)