Böcker utgivna av ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon

A peculiar war is raging in Quebec's largest city: one talks about 'linguistic battles' being fought daily in the streets of Montreal, where Anglophones are concentrated in the otherwise predominantly French-speaking province. The language dichotomy lies at the heart of Montreal's cultural history and reflects a relationship fraught with tensions between Canada's so-called Founding Nations. Following a history of francophone conquest, defeat, and reconquest, the two linguistic communities have at last reached a more harmonious modus vivendi at the turn of the twenty-first century.Writers have always engaged in and contributed to the debate. But how does contemporary literature broach English-French relations years after such pivotal events in Québécois history as the Quiet Revolution, the FLQ crisis, the implementation of Bill 101 and the two referenda on independence? Neil Bissoondath and Monique Proulx, two authors presently living and writing in Quebec, have scrutinised interactions between Anglophones and Francophones in present-day Montreal and translated cultural memory in their works of narrative fiction. Reading Montreal literature as a contact zone where Self and Other meet and grapple with each other, Stefanie Rudig's study shows how the clashes with l'Autre leave each side modified, usually for the better.In Bissoondath's novel Doing the Heart Good, the protagonist and first-person narrator Alistair Mackenzie takes a retrospective look at his life, during which the monolingual Anglophone has frequently been forced to deal with Francophones. Proulx also places her characters in situations in which they encounter alterity and alienation in her short story collection Les Aurores montréales. In addition to the anglophone or francophone Other, Proulx depicts migrants in her short narratives and how they participate in Montreal's linguistic duality. Though neither of the two texts is overtly didactic, both Proulx and Bissoondath suggest ways to overcome all remnants of the historically conditioned English-French antagonism and promote an effectively multilingual and pluriethnic Quebec society that thrives on difference.This edition also includes a ten-page summary in French.

Low income households are faced with various types of risks, increasing their vulnerability to poverty. In Cambodia, conditions of the rural poor - with the majority engaged in agriculture - are characterized by low productivity, limited capacities in terms of land and assets, volatile income sources, fluctuating farm input and output prices, debt and lack of credit worthiness. A microfinance institution operating in rural Cambodia and aiming to offer financial products to a large number of poor households is Angkor Mikroheranhvatho Kampuchea (AMK) Co. Ltd. Through its internal Market and Social Research Department, AMK staff annually collects socio-economic information about selected loan clients (household profiles, cash-flow analysis), as well as non-clients as a control group. Their survey tool includes questions about household's food consumption, main risk sources and coping strategies. The present research study draws information from this AMK survey database. The measures taken are applied to socio-economic cross-sectional data as of 2006/07 and validated with panel data from 2008.A theoretical framework is developed to examine the mechanisms through which the effects of the AMK services on its clients influence the household's ability to manage risk. It includes measurement aspects of a forward-looking concept of vulnerability to identify and capture its linkages to risks, shocks, and risk strategies of rural households. Secondly it incorporates the dynamic aspects of poverty by looking at temporal changes in absolute poverty levels. Moreover, it seeks to identify gaps and opportunities of microfinance services as a risk management strategy to reduce vulnerability.The results show that the fraction of vulnerable households (85%) facing a risk of poverty is considerably greater than what the static poverty assessment suggests. Results further show that the majority of the sample households are poor (72%) as of 2006 and 2007. Among the non-clients the figure is substantially lower with 58% poor households, whereas 75% of the AMK microfinance clients fall below the poverty line. This particular confirms the intended outreach targets of AMK.Furthermore, it could be ascertained that those clients who remained clients could significantly accumulate assets and became less dependent on agricultural activities. This is a good indication that AMK clients have safety nets and more strategic possibilities in case of future shocks.

The recent global macroeconomic crisis creates an exceptionally interesting possibility to investigate the linkages of the microfinance sector to mainstream markets and its connections with domestic markets as well as international markets - a subject whose significance has increased in recent years due to the growing importance of microfinance as part of local financial systems of developing countries and with more and more involvement of commercial investors. Sascha Huijsman's book is one of the very few studies on this relationship. She provides a rigorous analysis of the impact of the financial crisis on microfinance institutions (MFIs) by using data from a worldwide survey with MFI managers and utilising monthly financial data of almost 60 MFIs. Although microfinance-specific characteristics, such as socially oriented, highly committed investors and the nature of microfinance enterprises, which typically operate in the informal sector, so far nourished the assumption that MFIs were isolated from the impact of fluctuations on mainstream markets, Huijsman's study convincingly shows that through different linkages microfinance is to a certain extent connected to formal market movements Interestingly, however, it turns out there are considerable differences between the impact on MFIs in different regions; especially MFIs in Eastern Europe have been affected. Moreover, MFIs offering savings services to their clients turned out to be more resilient to the crisis. Huijsman's study provides plenty of unexpected results and certainly is a must-read for practitioners and researchers in the field of microfinance.

Tamara G. Stryzhak researches the stability of solutions of the system of linear difference equations with random Markovian coefficients. She also deals with Lyapunov functions which were used to receive the necessary and sufficient conditions of the stability of the solutions in the average quadratic mean.As an example, Stryzhak discusses the stability of solutions of a single difference equation with one random Markovian coefficient which takes on two values.The series on Modern Mathematics for Engineers is addressed to upper-course University students in Mathematics specialties, to graduate students and to researchers who apply Mathematics in different spheres.

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.