Narratives of Risk: Interdisciplinary Studies is the result of an international project involving authors from institutions of higher education in Denmark, Greece, Malta and Norway. Twenty-one contributions, partly in German and partly in English, discuss stories of risk circulating within different fields of research: linguistics, translation studies, comparative literature, rhetoric, education, theology, psychology, sociology and political science. The concept of risk is multi-faceted. As these articles illustrate, stories can be about risk, but they can also be risky in themselves. For example, a technical manual can help people avoid dangerous situations; however, a faulty translation can lead to injury or even death. Likewise, a novel for young adults can persuade them to avoid risky behavior, while another may actually encourage them to take chances. Narrative des Risikos. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge ist das Ergebnis einer Kooperation von Wissenschaftlern aus Dänemark, Griechenland, Malta und Norwegen. Der Band thematisiert Erzählungen über Risiken, aber auch Erzählungen, die ein Risiko in sich bergen. Beispielsweise können Gebrauchsanleitungen und ihre Übersetzung eine Hilfe für die Benutzer von technischen Geräten, aber auch eine Bedrohung für Leben und Gesundheit sein. Ebenso können Jugendromane vor riskantem Verhalten warnen, aber auch dazu verleiten. Die in diesem Band versammelten Beiträge, teils in englischer, teils in deutscher Sprache, entstammen verschiedenen Fachgebieten wie Literaturwissenschaft, Linguistik, Rhetorik, Erziehungswissenschaft, Theologie, Psychologie, Soziologie und Politikwissenschaft.

Taking the cue from the currency of risk in popular and interdisciplinary academic discourse, this book explores the development of the English novel in relation to the emergence and institutionalization of risk, from its origins in probability theory in the late seventeenth century to the global ‘risk society’ in the twenty-first century. Focussing on 29 novels from Defoe to McEwan, this book argues for the contemporaneity of the rise of risk and the novel and suggests that there is much to gain from reading the risk society from a diachronic, literary-cultural perspective. Tracing changes and continuities, the fictional case studies reveal the human preoccupation with safety and control of the future. They show the struggle with uncertainties and the construction of individual or collective ‘logics’ of risk, which oscillate between rational calculation and emotion, helplessness and denial, and an enabling or destructive sense of adventure and danger. Advancing the study of risk in fiction beyond the confinement to dystopian disaster narratives, this book shows how topical notions, such as chance and probability, uncertainty and responsibility, fears of decline and transgression, all cluster around risk.

What is online risk? How can we best protect children from it? Who should be responsible for this protection? Is all protection good? Can Internet users trust the industry? These and other fundamental questions are discussed in this book. Beginning with the premise that the political and democratic processes in a society are affected by the way in which that society defines and perceives risks, Children in the Online World offers insights into the contemporary regulation of online risk for children (including teens), examining the questions of whether such regulation is legitimate and whether it does in fact result in the sacrifice of certain fundamental human rights. The book draws on representative studies with European children concerning their actual online risk experiences as well as an extensive review of regulatory rationales in the European Union, to contend that the institutions of the western European welfare states charged with protecting children have changed fundamentally, at the cost of the level of security that they provide. In consequence, children at once have more rights with regard to their personal decision making as digital consumers, yet fewer democratic rights to participation and protection as ’digital citizens’. A theoretically informed, yet empirically grounded study of the relationship between core democratic values and the duty to protect young people in the media-sphere, Children in the Online World will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences with interests in new technologies, risk and the sociology of childhood and youth. Book: The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

This volume provides a collection of new perspectives on linguistic aspects of language criticism. It aims to offer a systematic account of the linguistic dimensions of all complex actions and discourses that can be the subject of critical language theory, which tries to link language and society. In contrast to conventional language criticism, the linguistic branch builds its conditions on the basis of a systemic analysis of its objects of inquiry. Its main goal is the formation of a linguistic awareness regarding the criterion of appropriateness with view of situational, contextual, and cultural factors.The contributions in this volume reflect the multitude of different factors of and interrelations between linguistic aspects of language criticism. They show the extent to which critical linguistic practices impact societal issues and discourses but also how they function in everyday and institutional contexts such as new media and face-to-face interactions. They also discuss the didactic challenges and opportunities that come with the teaching of language criticism in schools and universities.This book is primarily aimed at linguists as well as lecturers and teachers but also at general readers interested in all aspects of language criticism.

Fifty years ago, the two leading German philosophers and sociologists since the Second World War, Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, embarked on a sweeping and contentious debate that would continue for decades. Their coauthored 1971 book Theory of Society or Social Technology laid out their opposing positions on meaning, communication, consensus, and dissent—and ultimately the foundations of modern social thought. Habermas and Luhmann would elaborate their disagreement in the years to come in a controversy whose aftershocks divided social theorists by presenting what appeared to be two fundamentally divergent views of the nature of society and what systems theory was capable of explaining. This is the first book in English about one of the most important conflicts in social theory today. Gorm Harste analyzes the Habermas-Luhmann debate from its inception through Habermas’s most recent works, exploring issues such as methodology, ideology, truth, history, and politics. He contextualizes their positions in terms of how each grappled with the legacy of Nazism and sought to provide grounding for an antitotalitarian politics. Harste follows the evolution of the debate, as the fundamental dispute over the normative and practical desirability of agreement and disagreement came to touch upon political questions including the rule of law, the separation of powers, human rights, individualization, and secularization. Ultimately, Harste emphasizes the convergence between Habermas and Luhmann—and the pressing need for social theorists to further unite these two formative accounts of contemporary society.

Children and youth belong to one of the most vulnerable groups in societies. This was the case even before the current humanitarian crises around the world which led millions of people and families to flee from wars, terror, poverty and exploitation. Minors have been denied human rights such as access to education, food and health services. They have been kidnapped, sold, manipulated, mutilated, killed, and injured. This has been and continues to be the case in both developed and developing countries, and it does not look as if the situation will improve in the near future. Rather, current geopolitical developments, political and economic uncertainties and instabilities seem to be increasing the vulnerability of minors, especially in the wars and armed conflicts currently being waged not only in Europe, but on almost every continent. How can risks children and youth are exposed to in times of transition be reduced? Which role do state agencies, non-governmental organisations, as well as children's coping strategies play in mitigating the vulnerabilities of minors? This volume addresses risks to which children and young people are exposed, especially in times of transition. The focus is on different groups of children in the European wartime and post-war societies of the Second World War, 'occupation children' in Germany, teenage National Socialist collaborators in Norway, and more recent cases such as child soldiers, refugee children, and children of European "Islamic State" fighters. The contributions come from international scholars and different academic disciplines (educational and social sciences, humanities, law, and international peace and conflict studies) and are based on historical, quantitative, and/or qualitative analyses.

Die Komplementärbegriffe Risiko und Vertrauen sind dazu geeignet, biblisch-theologische, systematisch-theologische, ethische und sozialtheoretische Perspektiven in ein produktives Gespräch zu bringen. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes nehmen die Fäden für dieses Gespräch auf und entfalten innovative Impulse für Theologie und Kirchenleitung, für Recht, Ökonomie und Zivilgesellschaft sowie für den Diskurs mit den Naturwissenschaften und die Ethik. Probleme der theologischen Anthropologie kommen dabei ebenso zur Sprache wie das ökonomische Risikomanagement, Risiko und Vertrauen im kirchenleitenden Handeln und das Problem des Rechtspopulismus. Der Band ist Michael Welker zum 70. Geburtstag gewidmet und vereint Beiträge von Autorinnen und Autoren aus Deutschland, den USA, Großbritannien, Ungarn, den Niederlanden und Südafrika. [Risk and Trust] Risk and Trust are complementary terms that can help shape a constructive conversation between biblical, theological, ethical and social theoretical perspectives. Contributions of this volume enter this conversation by unfolding impulses for theology and the church, for law, economics and the civil society as well as for the sciences and ethics. Topics include theological anthropology, trust and risk in economy and the political and theological challenges due to populism. This book is dedicated to Michael Welker for the occasion of his 70th birthday. It consists of contributions by authors from Germany, USA, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and South Africa.

Sense of Place and Sense of Planet analyzes the relationship between the imagination of the global and the ethical commitment to the local in environmentalist thought and writing from the 1960s to the present. Part One critically examines the emphasis on local identities and communities in North American environmentalism by establishing conceptual connections between environmentalism and ecocriticism, on one hand, and theories of globalization, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism, on the other. It proposes the concept of "eco-cosmopolitanism" as a shorthand for envisioning these connections and the cultural and aesthetic forms into which they translate. Part Two focuses on conceptualizations of environmental danger and connects environmentalist and ecocritical thought with the interdisciplinary field of risk theory in the social sciences, arguing that environmental justice theory and ecocriticism stand to benefit from closer consideration of the theories of cosmopolitanism that have arisen in this field from the analysis of transnational communities at risk. Both parts of the book combine in-depth theoretical discussion with detailed analyses of novels, poems, films, computer software and installation artworks from the US and abroad that translate new connections between global, national and local forms of awareness into innovative aesthetic forms combining allegory, epic, and views of the planet as a whole with modernist and postmodernist strategies of fragmentation, montage, collage, and zooming.

Building on the pioneering work undertaken by Fiori (1999) on Roman conceptual thought about letting and hiring, this book fills an important gap in the current scholarly literature.

The Conference of the Tongues offers a series of startling reflections on fundamental questions of translation. It throws new light on familiar problems and opens up some radically different avenues of thought. It engages with value conflicts in translation and the social accountability of translators, and turns the old issue of equivalence inside out. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary and historical examples, the book teases out the translator's subject-position in translations, makes notions of intertextuality and irony serviceable for translation studies, tries to think translation without transformation, and uses a controversial sociological model to cast a cold eye on the entire world of translating. This is a highly interdisciplinary study that remains aware of the importance of theoretical paradigms as it brings concepts from international law, social systems theory and even theology to bear on translation. Self-reference is a recurrent theme. The book invites us to read translations for what they can tell us about translating and about translators' own perceptions of their role. The argument throughout is for more self-reflexive translation studies.