Bøker utgitt av ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon

This book includes contributions by African, East and West European, Asian and North American scholars which deal with and compare ideological and non-ideological approaches to the analysis of literary, artistic as well as popular works (popular music) mostly by American authors. Most of the essays deal with a way various aspects of American identity are depicted, represented, treated, ideologized and aestheticized in different literary genres, forms of art and media. The contributions offer multidisciplinary, cross-cultural and comparative perspectives and represent a diversity of scholarly voices ranging from the general discussion on the relationship between ideology and art (Anton Pokrivcák), ideology and multiculturalism (Cristina Garrigós). They also give the analysis of poetry (Pokrivcák, Obododima Oha), postmodern fiction (Pi-Hua Ni, Cristina Garrigós), drama (Zoe Detsi-Diamanti, Csaba Csapó) as well as the comparative analysis of the depiction of the identity of North American Indians in such different media as literature and film (Michal Peprník). In addition to this, the book includes the analysis of Black rap music (Wojciech Kallas).

This book offers far-reaching insights into perceptions of conflict in South Africa. Claude-Hélène Mayer's approach is remarkable, because she imparts the recollections of numerous people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The author captures the essence of about one-hundred interviews reflecting disparate attitudes towards social changes in the post-apartheid Republic of South Africa. Unexpected statements - for example, with respect to the continued existence of internalized apartheid - are carefully analyzed and hermeneutically understood. At the beginning of the research, presumptions might have raised expectations for the similarity between the narrative interviews. However, it becomes clear during the reading of this work that each interview was itself unique and each created a unique situation between the interviewer and the interviewee, inviting the reader to listen again and again to the spoken and analyzed words. The thorough, months-long field stays, from 1999 until 2004, emphasize the researcher's exhaustive effort better to understand the perspective of the interviewees. In addition to the book's research-related merits, its data can increase the cultural competence of those readers who are interested in information on specific predominant-cultural standards in present day South Africa. Readers can more fully appreciate how the people in South Africa live a special, dynamic form of their unmatched "unity in diversity."

The European Union is increasingly facing a dilemma between democracy and technocracy. On the one hand, the EU is today accused for lacking sufficient democratic legitimacy, and on the other, public policy-making is getting more and more complex and technical, making politicians reliant to a certain extent on the technical knowledge of specialised experts. The European Parliament, being the only directly legitimated body within the institutional set-up of the EU and thus the symbol of democracy, plays a key role in this respect. In this book Brigitte Reck analyses the role of expertise for the European Parliament. It is assumed that, in order to fulfil the new challenges posed by its enhanced role in EU decision-making, the European Parliament depends to a high degree on internal and external help in the form of expert knowledge, policy advice and parliamentary assistance. It discovers, mainly on the basis of interviews with politicians and officials in Brussels, which sources of expertise the European Parliament can rely on and to what extent Parliament has adapted its internal capacities to the new challenges arising mainly from co-decision, but also from enhanced complexity. Finally it suggests how to improve the internal expertise capacities of the European Parliament which are necessary if the institution is to bridge the gap between democratic control and good quality outcomes.

Jaroslav Künír's book American Fiction: Modernism-Postmodernism, Popular Culture, and Metafiction is a sequel to his previous study on American postmodern fiction entitled Poetika americkej postmodernej prózy: Richard Brautigan and Donald Barthelme [Poetics of American Fiction: Richard Brautigan and Donald Barthelme]. Pre¿ov: Impreso, 2001. It explores various aspects of American postmodernist fiction as manifested in the works by Richard Brautigan, Donald Barthelme and other American postmodernist authors such as Robert Coover, E. L. Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut and Paul Auster. Analyzing various short stories and novels, the author shows differences between modernist and postmodernist literature in the works of Donald Barthelme; the way postmodern parodies of popular literary genres give a critique of some aspects of American cultural identity and experience (the American Dream, individualism, consumerism); and he also shows different ways postmodern authors such as Robert Coover, Kurt Vonnegut and Paul Auster create metafictional effect as one of the most significant aspects of postmodern literature.

Would you like to acquire intercultural competencies that would open new perspectives to you, and new options for action, and new options, especially in negotiations, and situations of conflict? This book gives information on procedures and processes of mediation in Western and intercultural contexts, and explains them. Readers come in contact with what is special about mediation, and working with conflict, in interaction between Germans and Africans. Finally, the authors place at readers' disposal introductory training methods, necessary for all who wish to work responsibly in intercultural contexts.The book's "constructivist" approach affords the perception of new aspects and perspectives of German-African realities, and of the current discussion on intercultural conflict-management.