Russia’s brutal invasion into Ukraine, launched in 2022, has been widely condemned internationally. Using an interdisciplinary perspective, this paper investigates the notions of spheres of influence and personalist authoritarianism as they appear in international relations debates on the war in Ukraine. Interpretative tropes parallel to Russian versus Western spheres of influence as they figure in debates about Ukraine also appear in archaeological narratives of the Neolithic and Bronze Age transformations that progress from demographic growth to increasing competition over resources and exclusionary resource bases. Moreover, the personalist authoritarian system of Putin’s Russia parallels the idea of the exclusionary power of archaeological elites. However, the in-efficiency and corruption of Putin’s personalist authoritarianism as a root cause of the inefficiency of the Russian war effort are rarely raised as issues regarding the concept of elites in archaeology.

We use German administrative and survey data to investigate the heterogeneity of part-time penalties in hourly wages and growth rates. Exploiting tax reforms for identication, we find substantial heterogeneity in part-time wage penalties from −28.3% to −7.2% compared to full-time. The heterogeneity in wage growth penalties is less pronounced. Both penalties do not decrease linearly with additional working hours. More weekly working hours might result in a higher hourly wage penalty. The shape of the penalties is driven by workers with non-demanding tasks and professions where working around 30 weekly hours is uncommon, and relatively many females work.

The author discusses the UN International Law Commission’s 2022 draft conclusions on jus cogens, and suggests that it is in the interest of all States that the General Assembly take note of them in 2023. The debate in the Sixth Committee of the General Assembly in 2022 showed that some States remain highly critical of particular points in the draft conclusions. The conclusions do remain problematic in at least one important respect, the possible effect of jus cogens norms on binding Security Council decisions. Overall, however, they offer carefully judged clarifications on what is an important topic for the present and future of international law.

The systematic and rigorous approach proposed by the ILC’s draft conclusions for the identification of jus cogens norms, and the limited consequences of such norms set out in the conclusions, should enhance stability and the international rule of law. It may be concluded that recent developments in relation to jus cogens represent an advance for the rule of law as compared with 1969 when the term was included in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. This will be particularly so if the General Assembly now proceeds to adopt a resolution annexing the 2022 conclusions. Doing so would help to consolidate a sound understanding of jus cogens, and would be without prejudice to the positions of States on particular points of concern.

Il quinto volume delle “Schriften des Italienzentrums” raccoglie gli atti della giornata di studi “La rima tra filologia, metrica e musica dal Medioevo al Rinascimento” organizzata da Federico Di Santo e Bernhard Huss presso la Freie Universität Berlin il 22 giugno 2018, con il supporto dell’Italienzentrum. L’argomento della rima, nonostante l’assoluta preminenza di questo artificio nella poesia occidentale dal Medioevo sino al Novecento, ha ricevuto un’attenzione piuttosto scarsa negli studi. Molte delle domande fondamentali che essa pone, quando non sono state del tutto eluse, hanno avuto risposte solo parziali e insoddisfacenti. A cosa serve la rima in poesia? Qual è la sua funzione, quale il suo rapporto con l’elaborazione retorica del testo? Da dove ha origine, storicamente? E qual è la sua originaria relazione con la musica, se è vero che la lirica romanza in cui emerge era destinata ad un’esecuzione cantata? L’approccio descrittivo o storico-filologico prevalente in metricologia ha spesso messo in secondo piano le questioni relative al senso e alla funzione dei fenomeni metrici e stilistici, anche e soprattutto in relazione alla rima; e questa tendenza si è ulteriormente accentuata con l’imporsi, negli ultimi anni, di metodologie marcatamente statistiche. Altre importanti questioni, come quella dell’origine o del rapporto con la musica, hanno ricevuto risposte insoddisfacenti poiché richiedono un approccio interdisciplinare spesso osteggiato dalla forte tendenza allo specialismo delle discipline accademiche, e della metricologia in particolar modo. Queste difficoltà ravvisabili in generale nella metricologia si fanno ancor più evidenti in relazione a un fenomeno poliedrico e sfuggente come la rima, che coinvolge insieme una pluralità di livelli del testo, da quello fonico e metrico a quello semantico, retorico, tematico e non di rado persino ideologico. In risposta a questi limiti posti da metodologie strettamente metricologiche, la giornata di studi di cui in questo volume si pubblicano gli atti è stata concepita per seguire invece una prospettiva fortemente interdisciplinare, mettendo a confronto esperti di discipline diverse e incoraggiando un approccio che le facesse interagire: in questo modo, pur nei limiti di un numero ridotto di interventi, si è mirato a fornire della rima un’immagine il più possibile a tutto tondo, che suggerisse, senza pretese di sistematicità, la complessità di questa figura poetica. Gli argomenti degli interventi spaziano dunque da un riesame dell’etimologia della parola “rima” a un’analisi musicologia del rapporto fra le strutture melodiche e la rima nelle cantigas galego-portoghesi, a un esame dell’evoluzione del rim derivatiu nella poesia trobadorica, nella sua interazione fra metrica e retorica, a una radicale rivalutazione del rapporto fra strutture metriche e melodiche nel De vulgari eloquentia dantesco alla luce di una prospettiva oralista, fino a un dettagliato studio tipologico della rima nella satira rinascimentale.

Die durch europäische Migrationspolitik hervorgerufene Illegalisierung von Migration hat erhebliche Auswirkungen auf betroffene Migrant*innen in europäischen Städten. Trotz dem kontanten Versuch, illegalisierte Menschen abzuschieben, leben allein in Spanien schätzungsweise 500.000 Menschen ohne gültige Arbeits- und Aufenthaltserlaubnis. Diese Studie fokussiert sich auf die Stadt Barcelona, die sich als Refugee City deklariert. Untersucht werden die Aushandlungen von Grenzregimen auf städtischer Ebene, die zwischen dem nationalen Migrationsregime, der Kommunalpolitik und Migrant*innen selbst stattfinden. Sin Papeles in Barcelona haben Formen des Widerstands gegen die Illegalisierung geschaffen und sich als politische Akteur*innen positioniert.

Der Anspruch der vorliegenden Masterarbeit ist es, eine kritische Perspektive auf Unterstützungsarbeiten für Flüchtende im Transit in Bihać (Bosnien und Herzegowina), durch vorwiegend weiße Freiwillige aus mitteleuropäischen Ländern zu entwickeln. Um diese zu bilden, wird die Arbeit in die Theorien zu white saviorism und Solidarität eingebettet. Der Fokus liegt auf kleinen, inoffiziellen Gruppen in Bihać, die ihre Versuche Menschen im Transit zu unterstützen mit Solidarität zu diesen begründen. Die Autorin vermutet die Freiwilligen in einem Spannungsfeld zwischen Versuchen solidarischen Handelns auf der einen Seite und paternalisierenden und rassistischen Verhaltensweisen auf der anderen Seite, durch welche weiße Privilegien reproduziert und Machtasymmetrien verstärkt werden. Anhand einer konkreten Fallstudie wird auf das Zusammenspiel vielseitiger Motivation, Überzeugungen und Werte der Freiwilligen eingegangen und zudem nach dem Stellenwert gefragt, welcher die Reflexion der eigenen Privilegien für die Freiwilligen einnimmt. Mit der Methode des problemzentrierten Interviews werden die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven von sechszehn Personen bezüglich ihrer Motivationen für die Arbeit und Reflexionen des Verhaltens vor Ort erkundet und unter Hinzuziehung des white savior complex nach eurozentrischen, diskriminierenden und paternalisierenden Verhaltensweisen unter dem Deckmantel der altruistischen Freiwilligenarbeit gefragt.

What is a better world is answered very differently, especially in intellectual circles, but also in society as a whole. At the same time, the existence of a “bad” world is implied. In my observation, the constants have shifted towards a “better” world in the last twenty years: the clear differentiation of society into rulers and ruled is no longer obvious and decisive, for example, within North American and European late capitalist societies or between the global North and the global South. The structural differentiation into ruling and oppressed classes has given way to a constructivist diversification of issues. The shift of financial resources by the rulers of the South to the North also points to the fact that the global differentiation of power structures no longer corresponds to the classical scheme of “imperialist” exploitation. Overall, we can observe not only an atomisation of individuals, but also an individualisation of resistances against a supposed late capitalist system.

Since the 1970s, scholars like Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and Jorgen Randers (Meadows et al. 2022 [2004]: 383–454), have been actively proposing actions to guarantee the sustainability for life outside of the ideological framework imposed within the ‘Capitalocene’ (Moore 2016). In this specific context, activist archaeology certainly has a role to play in answering the questions: “is archaeology useful?” (Dawdy 2009: 131), or “why archaeology?” (Tilley 1989: 105; McGuire 2008: xi). The genesis of these questions likely emerges from the aim of millennial and Gen Z archaeologists to use their archaeological skills meaningfully, or at least in a way that does not harm people or the environment and preferably is somehow beneficial to communities. Thus, an activist archaeology is about reorienting the focus of archaeological research and emphasizing action itself as the heart of future research programs (Stottman 2010: 9) or even as a rescue program that seeks social, economic, political, and ecological justice. This active approach challenges and transgresses the traditional bounds of academic archaeology, rather than conceptualizing activism as a potential by-product of archaeological practice (McGuire 2008: xii).

Diesen Text schreibe ich aus meiner persönlichen Perspektive. Einerseits bin ich Archäologin, andererseits Aktivistin und verorte mich im linken politischen Spektrum. In einem selbstorganisierten Projekt habe ich 2015 auf Lampedusa Fluchtspuren mit archäologischen Methoden aufgespürt, dokumentiert und Objekte zur Anschauung mitgebracht, um im deutschsprachigen Teil Europas über die Grenzsituation aufzuklären, denn „the most violent element in society is ignorance“ (Goldman 1917: 2). Mit archäologischen Methoden möchte ich dieser Form der Gewalt entgegentreten, denn ich sehe den Nutzen archäologischer Methoden für Aktivist*innen. Dabei erfahre ich wiederholt Kritik aus dem Kollegium, welches befürchtet, die Wissenschaftlichkeit gehe durch solche Aktionen verloren. Im Folgenden beschäftigte ich mich daher mit beiden Aspekten. Hierbei werde ich beispielhaft immer wieder auf die Untersuchung der Fluchtspuren zurückgreifen und weitere Formen des Aktivismus aus dem linken Spektrum einbeziehen.

We seem to live in an age of euphemism. A recent article in The Guardian titled “Iraqi discoveries help shed light on British Museum treasures” explains the lack of provenience of some antiquities as “owing to the circumstances of their discovery and retrieval during the buccaneering period of early archaeology.” Neither the word “circumstances” nor “buccaneering” do justice to the colonial legacy of the discipline and the complex and asymmetrical power relationships that led to the exhibition of such “discoveries” in Britain. Even in the well-documented case of the Benin Bronzes, a journalist for the New York Times prefers to put the word “looting” in quotation marks in the article’s title and speaks of the “so-called looted works of art” in the text, despite the fact that the curator who is interviewed in the same article refers to the same sculptures as “indisputably looted.”

A guiding frame for much of my activism is contending with the juxtaposition of how the world is and how I believe the world ought to be (i.e. just). I also think deeply about how our research practice can create the conditions to get there (i.e. to a just world). Within this process I have found that justice flourishes within frameworks of care, generosity, and a heart-centered approach.1 These acts of kindness and care are radical within the (settler) colonial frameworks which inform, code, and maintain archaeological practice in most of the world today: a world in which care is coded as unscientific and biased. It is important to recognize that it is precisely in those spaces of care and kindness that transformative practices emerge.2 These gestures have the capacity to become healing balms for the many bodies of difference who experience the violence of the institution and academy.

Archaeologists have been in contact with Indigenous communities since the origins of the discipline during the 19th century. From the beginning, this relationship was fundamentally structured by the fact that academic archaeology reflects the development of European/Western modernity, nationalism, and imperialism. As a consequence, during archaeology’s long and complex history, the relationship with Indigenous communities has often been characterised by confrontations, disputes, and misunderstandings. The dominant worldview upon which archaeology stands, rooted in Enlightenment philosophies and materialism, is often in contradiction to Indigenous perspectives. This applies, for example, to notions of time and history, the position and roles of humans within the natural world, ancestry and personhood, distinctions between life and death, and the animated and unanimated. These fundamental differences, and the associated unequal power relations between researchers on the one hand and Indigenous communities on the other, have caused innumerable instances of the appropriation and/or destruction of heritage sites and built structures and the removal and theft of artefacts and human remains. Accordingly, archaeological practices have been causing pain and suffering for Indigenous communities. However, these aspects are not restricted to archaeology but are more broadly related to the idea and reality of modern science and research practice itself. The perspective of Indigenous communities is encapsulated in Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s statement that “scientific research remains inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism […] The word itself, ‘research’, is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary” (Tuhiwai Smith 2012: 232). This understanding reflects the extensive and continuing experiences of objectification by Indigenous people in their engagements with researchers. It unmasks the position of Western (and other imperially rooted) science as yet another facet of extractive and exploitative practices of European domination. Indigenous communities have criticised that scientific practices can extract and claim ownership of Indigenous ways of knowing and heritage while excluding the people themselves from these processes and the subsequent results (Tuhiwai Smith 2012: 240).

Wer denkt bei „Aktivismus“ nicht zunächst an die Aktionen der Extinction Rebellion, den Aktivisten*innen von „Ende Gelände“ oder auch Fridays-for-Future-Demonstrationen? Diese werden oftmals mit spektakulären Aktionen verbunden, und leider zu oft werden diese nicht nur von einer rechten oder rechtskonservativen Presse mit Begriffen wie „radikal“, „militant“, „extremistisch“ oder gar „terroristisch“ belegt wie die jüngsten Ereignisse zu Lützerath oder die Bewertung der „Letzten Generation“ zeigen. Dabei gerät leicht aus dem Blick, das Aktivismus zunächst einmal ein politisches, soziales, ökologisches oder humanitäres Handeln meint und ein essentieller Bestandteil demokratischer Aushandlungsprozesses sein sollte.

The Indiana Jones memes have spoken: the Nazis are back, and archaeologists need to start punching heads. The current resurgence of the political far-right across many parts of the world presents a distinctive set of challenges and threats. Within archaeology some have responded with outrage, activism, and acts of resistance. Others remain uncertain how to respond: whether as citizens, professionals, intellectuals, or activists? How can we organise to amplify our messages and strengthen our efforts? Where should these efforts be targeted?

Das Working Paper stellt die Ergebnisse einer strukturierten Recherche zu Forschungsprojekten, die sich mit verschiedenen Formen von Engagement in der Bewältigung von Krisen und Katastrophen befassen, dar. Insgesamt werden 70 Projekte mit primärem Bezug zu Deutschland und Ergänzungen aus dem internationalen Kontext vorgestellt und thematisch geclustert. Die Projekte fokussieren die Themen Spontanhilfe, App-Entwicklung, Kooperation, Organisationsbindung, Motivation und Wandel von Engagement. Die Forschungsprojektrecherche bildet die Grundlage für eine Metaanalyse von Forschungsprojekten und Praxisansätzen, die im Forschungsprojekt ATLAS-ENGAGE durchgeführt wird.