BiUP General – serie

The work of Pierre Rosanvallon has increasingly found itself at the center of debates in democratic and political theory – although only few of his numerous monographs have thus far been translated from French. This interdisciplinary volume, the first comprehensive collection on his political thought in English, seeks to lay the groundwork for the study of this eminent political thinker and historian. Following a hitherto untranslated opening essay by Rosanvallon, the chapters – written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives including political theory, political science, philosophy, and history – cover a wide range of topics from the history of democracy to sovereignty, populism, and the function of the press in liberal democratic regimes.

Debates about the possibility of an open culture – or indeed about the possibility of an open debate about the openness of culture – often turn on questions of standards. But since no benchmark can be absolute, judgement is a proliferation of comparisons.Through a series of case studies in everyday and academic comparison (literature, history, politics, philosophy), Haun Saussy calls out the typical vices of comparison and proposes ways to unseat them. For however much it is abused, distorted, and manipulated, comparison retains an essential link to the idea of justice.

Practices of comparing shape how we perceive, organize, and change the world. Supposedly innocent, practices of comparing play a decisive role in forming categories, boundaries, and hierarchies; but they can also give an impetus to question and change such structures. Like almost no other human practice, comparing pervades all social, political, economic, and cultural spheres. This volume outlines the program of a new research agenda that places comparative practices at the center of an interdisciplinary exploration. Its contributions combine case studies with overarching systematic considerations. They show what insights can be gained and which further questions arise when one makes a seemingly trivial practice – comparing – the subject of in-depth research.

As a powerful tool in the production of knowledge, comparing plays a crucial part in the sciences and the humanities. This volume explores the relationship between comparing and narrating in epistemic practices and clarifies the ways in which narratives enable or impede practices of comparing. It takes into account related activities, such as measuring and classifying, modeling, establishing norms and categories, as well as organizing and popularizing knowledge, to analyze the ambivalent relationship between narratives, scientific explanation, and understanding. The contributions bring out the epistemic role of narratives, and elucidate how narratives are connected to comparisons and scientific explanations.

Why did »equality« become prominent in European societies based on hierarchy during the Enlightenment? What does »equality« imply for societies, politics, or legal systems? The contributors to this volume draw on various historical case studies, from visionary practices in revolutionary France and the collection of data on the poor in 19th-century Germany, to claims raised under the minority regime of the League of Nations and the anti-discrimination politics of the UN and India. The dynamics of universalizing equality are contrasted with a concept asserting that equality must be limited to and by order. The contributions thus explore concepts of equality from the perspectives of history and law and show that practices of comparing were essential when it came to imagining others as equal, fighting discrimination, or scandalizing social inequalities.

Across the globe, a growing number of social movements, such as demonstrations in support of equal civil status or reproductive freedom and against sexualized violence, show that women's and gender rights are highly contested. Against the backdrop of a long history of unequal rights implementation, the contributors to this volume deal with the questions of why and in which ways gender equality has become contested in various political contexts. Local case studies examine the relevant structural, institutional, and socio-cultural causes of the global challenges to equality. This book follows an interdisciplinary approach and unites scholars from law, linguistics, cultural studies, history, social sciences, and gender studies in diverse contexts.

Hate is being reinvented. Over the last two decades, online platforms have been used to repackage racist, sexist and xenophobic ideologies into new sociotechnical forms. Digital hate is ancient but novel, deploying the Internet to boost its allure and broaden its appeal. To understand the logic of hate, Luke Munn investigates four objects: 8chan, the cesspool of the Internet, QAnon, the popular meta-conspiracy, Parler, a social media site, and Gab, the »platform for the people.« Drawing together powerful human stories with insights from media studies, psychology, political science, and race and cultural studies, he portrays how digital hate infiltrates hearts and minds.

Faith Development Interviews offer great insight into people's ways of (non-)religious meaning-making, and of looking at their life and relationships. Ramona Bullik portrays nine longitudinal case studies in a mixed-methods design with narrative analysis granting insight into the developments and stabilities in the interviews. The focus on religious married couples allows to carve out the role of faith and the changing view on the spouse and the joint life. The portraits of three non-religious women show how meaning is made outside the frame of organized religion. Individual survey data are put into relation with a larger sample, answering the claim for idiothetic research.

How has faith developed in the US and German societies across the last decades? In a three-wave longitudinal investigation of faith development, this study presents the changes of worldview and meaning-making that people associate with their religious, spiritual, agnostic and atheist identifications. For almost two decades, research teams in Chattanooga (USA) and Bielefeld (Germany) have invited and re-invited hundreds of people to participate in a personal interview and to answer an extensive questionnaire in order to better understand the reasons and the consequences of their continuity or discontinuity in religious, spiritual, or non-theistic faith.

Comparisons affect various ways of perceiving and interpreting the world, characterized by distinct legitimization strategies and knowledge application routines by different actors. The contributors to this volume explore the link between change and practices of comparing, focusing on order, representation, and models. They delve into how comparing influences knowledge production, but also focus on persisting orders of knowledge. This collection centers on the role of models and modeling in relation to practices of comparing, thus highlighting the representational and operational force of comparing as a way to form and organize reality.