Böcker utgivna av Verlag Peter Lang

This book is based on papers originally presented at the international conference ¿Activating Human Rights and Diversity¿ held in Australia in 2003. It advances a powerful and convincing affirmation of the importance of human rights in the twenty-first century and explores the vital connections between the theory and practice of human rights. It asks what kind of vision for humanity is necessary, given the harsh realities and challenges of the twenty-first century. Through a range of perspectives ¿ reconciliation, refugees, women, indigenous issues, same-sex sexualities, conflict resolution, environmental degradation, political freedoms and disability ¿ this collection highlights the fact that the survival of humanity depends on our ability to connect a vision with the reality of activating human rights.

This book takes as its starting point the boom femenino or the explosion in publishing by women in Mexico since the 1980s. Powerful changes in women¿s roles in Mexico over the last three decades have resulted in women occupying a position of profound ambivalence with regard to the processes of modernisation. The boom femenino constitutes an integral part of this process of change. By incorporating a variety of critical approaches within a feminist framework, the author argues that Mexican women writers participate in a crucial project of unsettling dominant discourses as they strive for new ways of capturing the ambivalent position of the Mexican women in their texts. The author offers close readings of work by Silvia Molina, Sara Sefchovich, Susana Págano, Brianda Domecq, Guadalupe Loaeza and Rosamaría Roffiel. She also considers the reactions to and reception of best-selling author, Angeles Mastretta, with an assessment of the different vested interests in the world of literature, including those of critics, writers, readers and publishers.

Right across denominational boundaries lay theology is dominated by negatives: the laity simply defined as the non-ordained, the alleged exclusion of the laity from full participation, the sole focus on what they cannot or should not do, and, above all, the total absence of an ecumenical lay theology. In a unique approach, this volume sets out to find ways of overcoming these negatives so predominant in current lay theology. The author explores positions and perspectives put forward in Roman Catholic theology from Vatican II up to the present. These are compared and contrasted with concepts and suggestions of present-day Anglican Theology as well as with those of liberative theologies in Latin America and Asia. Rethinking the content, language, and metaphors of lay theology, in the final part of this volume the author proposes a new image for discussing the Church, a model focusing on the interdependence and collaboration of all the people in the Church. This is then used to sketch out the framework for a new type of lay theology. Imbedded in ecclesiology, in the concept of all believers together being the Church, the author endeavours to suggest a lay theology that is indeed positive, ecumenical and universal.

This volume summarises the academic work accomplished at the 6 International Security Forum (ISF), convened by the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces from 4 to 6 October 2004 at the Montreux Convention Centre, Switzerland. It presents a thematic overview of 150 presentations given at the 6 ISF, either as full-length keynote speeches in the two plenary sessions or in the form of summaries of all speeches given in the six topic sessions and the 24 workshops. The topics discussed respond to the complex new challenges of the post Cold War world with an integrated, multilateral and interdisciplinary approach. The experts contributing to the success of the ISF covered, among other issues, the need for UN Reform, EU and NATO enlargement, Human Security and International Humanitarian Law, the global War on Terror, the role of Private Military Companies, Combating Violence against Women and Children and Security Sector Governance.

This book explores the gap that has developed between two sides in linguistics: the formal tradition and the functional tradition. It discusses fundamental issues such as tense, aspect and action by examining and comparing insights from the two traditions with a view to determining whether there are any possibilities of future bridge-building between the two approaches. This study focuses on comparing the actual output of different linguistic approaches and examines their ¿usefulness¿. A major aim is, therefore, to evaluate and identify the most useful approach.

As one of the most widely read German authors of the nineteenth century, Gustav Freytag (1816-1895) continues to be associated with the middle class and the progress it enjoyed. Yet while his best-selling novel Soll und Haben (1855) and its lesser-known successor Die verlorene Handschrift (1864) owed their vast commercial success largely to their buoyant message of bourgeois advancement, they simultaneously devote significant attention to elements of traditional German society. In exploring Freytag¿s dual roles as both a novelist of contemporary middle-class life and a cultural historian, this book uncovers the author¿s divergent ¿ and ostensibly conflicting ¿ desire both to embrace progress and commemorate the past. Investigating his literary engagement with three central elements of Germany¿s historical identity ¿ the pervasiveness of folk beliefs, a strong identification with rural life, and the continued presence of the aristocracy ¿ this study shows how Freytag attempts to locate these constituents of pre-industrial Germany in a modern, industrial nation, and in doing so contributes to a historically anchored national identity in which material and political progress coexist with a rich heritage and ancient traditions.

The Greek Bible and the services of the Orthodox Church have proved a rich source of language for many poets of modern Greece, and perhaps for none more than for Kostis Palamas, Angelos Sikelianos and Odysseas Elytis, whose overlapping careers span the period 1876-1996. A blurring of the boundaries between Orthodoxy and ¿Greekness¿ (hellênikotêta, which all three poets celebrate) has often led critics to assume from the Christian borrowings in the poetry the Christian allegiance of the poets. Through detailed analyses of selected poems, focusing on their relation to Biblical and liturgical source texts, this book questions whether the work of these poets is compatible with Christianity at all. It asks whether a Christ who is assimilated, along with the Virgin Mary, into the ancient Greek pantheon, or presented as a symbol of Beauty, or as object of the erotic desire of the women of the Gospels is still within the realm of Orthodoxy. Above all it asks whether, when the poetic ego appropriates to itself words which in their original context belong to Christ or Jehovah, there is any room left for the divine, or whether the poet has not in fact elbowed God off the stage altogether.

This first book-length biography with discussions of select writings by Luise Büchner (1821-1877) draws on her commentary of events available in letters and writings. A close reading of Büchner¿s fictional writings reveals that she both entertained and educated her readers. Her pedagogical messages correspond to ideas she promoted in her work on the «woman question». This in-depth study properly situates her in the changing cultural climate and socio-political developments that led to unification of the German states in 1871. Büchner tested and revised her thoughts on the «woman question» in the course of her practical work as a co-founder of local women¿s associations and as a member of two competing «national» bourgeois women¿s organizations. Her «voice» and temperament, as reflected in letters and articles not consulted by previous biographers, lead to surprising discoveries about a single woman whose life had more to offer than the narrowly prescribed roles assigned to middle-class women of her day.

In this book the author explores the representational strategies of the modern period and their relation to political life through the story of Stanislas Leszczynski, architect king and roi bienfaisant, ¿a king that does good¿. The ingredients of his story are compelling. They include: an exiled king (who makes a cameo appearance in Voltaire¿s Candide and corresponds with Rousseau); a collection of writings that include aphorisms, political treatises, and a utopian novel; gardens that include a grotto of eighty-six life-size automata and an experimental village of courtiers; and architecture and landscapes that traverse the contested boundaries of central Europe, imaginary constructions of the orient, and the borderlines between fact and fiction. These come together to make a distinctive account of the transitional period in eighteenth-century culture. Stanislas¿ architectural and literary works were rooted in an acceptance of the uncertainty of the world more characteristic of the story. His ¿hope of a better age¿ emerges as an endeavour ¿ through the writing and the architecture ¿ to find one¿s own meaning in history as well as a model for the good life. His story suggests a way of exploring what this struggle still entails today.

Walter Vogt, the Swiss psychiatrist and author (1927-1988), can be considered a gadfly in the Swiss medical profession and a paradox in the Swiss literary arena. This ¿writing doctor¿ shocked the Swiss medical establishment with a scathing exposé in his 1965 novel, Wüthrich, and then continued to write prolifically until his death. He was noted for his use of the grotesque, as well as for his literary sarcasm and use of parody. Vogt¿s use of the diary as his main genre enhanced his popularity. He was one of the first Swiss writers with a strong commitment to preventing environmental degradation. Vogt suffered from many physical illnesses, in addition to a multitude of psychological conflicts throughout his life. He was focused on death and illness from his early adult years. This book not only looks at Vogt from a psychiatric point of view, but also at his contribution to contemporary Swiss-German literature.