PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) is a relatively new drug-based HIV prevention technique and an important means to lower the HIV risk of gay men who are especially vulnerable to HIV. From the perspective of biopolitics, PrEP inscribes itself in a larger trend of medicalization and the rise of pharmapower. This article reconstructs and evaluates…[Read more]

Diskriminierung und Menschenrechtsverletzungen gegenüber LSBTI-Personen werden heute international thematisiert und angeprangert – ein vergleichsweise neues Phänomen. Dennoch tragen die herrschenden Normen von Zweigeschlechtlichkeit und Heterosexualität weiterhin zur Diskriminierung bei: So sind gleichgeschlechtliche Partnerschaften in fast alle…[Read more]

Menschenrechtsverletzungen aufgrund sexueller Orientierung und Geschlechtsidentität (SOGI) wurden auf internationaler Ebene lange Zeit kaum zur Kenntnis genommen. Doch seit einigen Jahren wird dem Thema in den Vereinten Nationen breiterer Raum eingeräumt. Die Yogyakarta-Prinzipien und eine Studie des Amtes des Hohen Kommissars für Me…[Read more]

In der Debatte um Freiheit bei Foucault wird das „Freiheitsproblem“ verhandelt: Wie können Freiheit und Widerstand innerhalb von Foucaults Theorie der Macht und Subjektivierung konzipiert werden? Der Aufsatz leistet eine Rekonstruktion und interne Kritik der besten Interpretationsstrategien von Foucaults Werk, die die Lösung dieses Problems zum Z…[Read more]

The annexation of Crimea is not an ordinary event in contemporary international relations. Since WWII, there has been no precedent in Europe when one state under dubious premises has forcefully annexed a part of another state. This article scrutinizes the Crimean case in the context of the ongoing Ukrainian crisis and uncovers the rationale behind…[Read more]

The article aims to uncover the nature and distinctive features of the contemporary messianic narrations in the Russian public discourse, as well as estimate their impact on the actual policy-making. For this reason, the article scrutinizes the political philosophy of Aleksandr Dugin, Nataliia Narochnitskaia, Egor Kholmogorov, and Vadim…[Read more]

This is a lecture course for upper-level undergraduates, and is offered in English through the French department. It is designed for 50-60 students, with 30 hours of grading assistance.

This article traces the attempts by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries to devolve economic powers to the regions and the ultimate failure of this project, which was a contributing factor to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This article is concerned with the popular imaginaries associated with internships and
unpaid labour and their implications for emerging subjectivities and conceptualisations of
work. It draws on a comparative analysis of three prime-time television series about young
women’s experiences of their first entry in the world or work. By analysing t…[Read more]

Collective article by Precarious Workers Brigade and Carrot Workers Collective. In: Joy Forever: The Political Economy of Social Creativity. Edited by Michał Kozłowski, Agnieszka Kurant, Jan Sowa, Krystian Szadkowski and Jakub Szreder.

Repair has visibly come to the fore in recent academic and policy debates, to the point that ‘repair studies’ is now emerging as a novel focus of research. Through the lens of repair, scholars with diverse backgrounds are coming together to rethink our relationships with the human-made matters, tools and objects that are the material mesh in whi…[Read more]

A report published by the Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission this week, ‘Elitist Britain’, found that two fifths (39%) of Britain’s ‘leading people’ were educated privately, more than five times as many as in the population as a whole, with almost one quarter (24%) graduating from Oxbridge. I therefore thought it would be timely to publis…[Read more]

Review of THE CHENWEI RIDDLE: TIME, STARS, AND HEROES IN THE APOCRYPHA. By Licia Di Giacinto. (Deutsche Ostasienstudien, vol. 13). Gossenberg: Ostasien Verlag, 2013. Pp. xi + 332. 25 Figures, 40 Tables, 4 Appendices, List of Illustrations, Bibliography.

The rapid development and adoption of technological care equipment for remote monitoring, self-diagnosis and other forms of telemedicine risks splitting care work: on the one hand, well-paid professionals developing or operating new technologies; on the other, much poorer and much less qualified assistants to take care of the operations that are…[Read more]

This paper deals with the political ideology of late pre-imperial and early imperial China as documented by remnants of an under-explored genre known in English as weft (wei 緯) writings or “Confucian Apocrypha”. It focuses on the transcendence of hierarchy and sovereignty, the transfer of dynastic legitimacy, and the pragmatic vehicle of “tang…[Read more]

This week the Indonesian presidential election has been a contest between the incumbent Jokowi, who has promised an ambitious programme of agrarian reform, and the descendent of the military dictator Suharto. In this article, Frans Ari Prasetyo exposes the contradictions of the Jokowi government’s dependence on the World Bank and local c…[Read more]

Few of Arendt’s writings have drawn more criticism from her own supporters than “Reflections on LIttle Rock,” in which she opposes the federally mandated desegregation of schools. I take Arendt’s comments as a way of opening up problems in her conception of the relationship among political storytelling, plurality and judgment. I do this through a…[Read more]

From Charles Taylor to Marcel Gauchet, theorists of the social imaginary have given us new ways
to talk about the shared structures of meanings and practices of the West. Theorists of this group
have argued against the narrow horizons of meaning that are deployed by deliberative political
theories in developing their basic normative concepts…[Read more]

The British State has been terraformed over recent decades through the changing spatio-temporal dynamics of capital accumulation in the world-system entailed in financialisation, neoliberalsiation, and the emergence of global cities. A new post-industrial constellation of political domination has thus emerged in that state that requires urgent…[Read more]

The household as a social formation is being assigned a renewed function in
the provision of social welfare via neoliberal austerity politics. Government inaction regarding
housing provision is forcing millions of young adults into “parental co-habitation”. In
contrast to the dominant ideological view of the family as a school of liberty thr…[Read more]