In late nineteenth-century Germany, the onset of modernity transformed how people experienced place. In response to increased industrialization and urbanization, the expansion of international capitalism, and the extension of railway and other travel networks, the sense of being connected to a specific place gave way to an unsettling sense of displacement. Out of Place analyzes the works of three major representatives of German Realism-Wilhelm Raabe, Theodor Fontane, and Gottfried Keller-within this historical context. It situates the perceived loss of place evident in their texts within the contemporary discourse of housing and urban reform, but also views such discourse through the lens of twentienth-century theories of place. Informed by both phenomenological (Heidegger and Casey) as well as Marxist (Deleuze, Guattari, and Benjamin) approaches to place, John B. Lyon highlights the struggle to address issues of place and space that reappear today in debates about environmentalism, transnationalism, globalization, and regionalism.

Originally published: London: Laurence King Pub., 2006.

The controversy over Jacques Derrida's legacy is one of the most effective engines driving the contemporary debate, far beyond the bounds of philosophy. By now, the variety of contesting positions is so wide that it calls for a critical assessment to achieve a unified theoretical scheme. The dyad of deconstruction and reconstruction, to which the title of the volume refers, aims at composing a kind of map of this debate. The three sections of the book include essays that investigate specific aspects of Derrida's reception, from the view of 1. philosophy, 2. literary studies and 3. politics and law. These contributions study the implications of deconstruction beyond its original scope and intervene by taking stock of its most relevant aporias.

Bridges the gap between the history and theory of twentieth-century architecture and cultural theories of modernity. In this exploration of the relationship between modernity, dwelling, and architecture, Hilde Heynen attempts to bridge the gap between the discourse of the modern movement and cultural theories of modernity. On one hand, she discusses architecture from the perspective of critical theory, and on the other, she modifies positions within critical theory by linking them with architecture. She assesses architecture as a cultural field that structures daily life and that embodies major contradictions inherent in modernity, arguing that architecture nonetheless has a certain capacity to adopt a critical stance vis-à-vis modernity. Besides presenting a theoretical discussion of the relation between architecture, modernity, and dwelling, the book provides architectural students with an introduction to the discourse of critical theory. The subchapters on Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, and the Venice School (Tafuri, Dal Co, Cacciari) can be studied independently for this purpose.

In order to achieve a transition from a transport system centred on the individual car to one centred on (electrified) rail a new focus in infrastructure planning is needed. The preparation of project proposals for the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2030 on the sub-national level in Germany provides an opportunity to study decision-making processes in ministries and compare their respective results in this respect. Using document analysis, expert interviews, qualitative content analysis as well as QCA, this thesis in political science analyses how decision-making processes within bureaucracies impact the decision output in transport infrastructure planning. It contributes to the discussion on bureaucracy-politics interactions that is relevant beyond the German case. One result is that ministries tend to use complex decision-making processes for topics deemed salient as long as the available capacity permits it. Consequently, in order to conduct legitimacy-enhancing steps – such as public participation – a well-funded bureaucracy is indispensable.

E-Co-Affectivity is a philosophical investigation of affectivity in various forms of life: photosynthesis and growth in plants, touch and trauma in bird feathers, the ontogenesis of human life through the placenta, the bare interface of human skin, and the porous materiality of soil. Combining biology, phenomenology, Ancient Greek thought, new materialisms, environmental philosophy, and affect studies, Marjolein Oele thinks through the concrete, living places that show the receptive, responsive power of living beings to be affected and to affect. She focuses on these localized interfaces to explain how affectivity emerges in places that are always evolving, creative, porous, and fluid. Every interface is material, but is also "more" than its current materiality in cocreating place, time, and being. After extensively describing the effects of the milieu and community within which each example of affectivity takes place, in the final chapter Oele adds a prescriptive, ethical lens that formulates a new epoch beyond the Anthropocene, one that is sensitive to the larger ecological, communal concerns at stake.