On the elasticity of centres and the possibility of multiple roofs: revisiting some of Ulrich Ammon’s views on language variation and pluricentricity

Against the background of a concise overview of Ulrich Ammon’s oeuvre this article first of all provides a constructive-critical account of some of the key concepts and questions that guided his macrosociolinguistic work on pluricentric languages and variation in German. In what follows, an attempt is made to further develop some of Ammon’s thoughts through emphasising the elasticity of the concept of pluricentricity and arguing for a creative use of the concept of “roofing” when describing the intricate interplay of standard and nonstandard varieties especially in language contact zones.

Technologies of (in)security: Masculinity and the complexity of neoliberalism

Although there is much feminist work that has examined the intersection of gender and neoliberalism, critical work on men and masculinities remains underdeveloped in this area. This article suggests that complexity theory is a crucial resource for a critical analysis of the ways in which masculinities contribute to the ongoing maintenance of neoliberal socio-economic systems. Critical work on neoliberalism and capitalist economics has recently been drawn to complex systems theory, as evidenced by the work of scholars such as Sylvia Walby, William Connolly and Brian Massumi. Their work produces important insights into neoliberalism, but does not develop a sustained reflection on the place of men and masculinities in this domain. In order to develop a critical account of the relation of masculinity to complexity, the article draws on the work of Judith Butler and Bonnie Mann. It suggests that Butler’s theorising on precariousness contains important resources for understanding how hegemonic masculinities are positioned in relation to the complexity of neoliberal systems, as illustrated in Mann’s concept of ‘sovereign masculinity’. Finally, drawing on two different examples of the enactment of masculinities in neoliberal contexts, the article argues that hegemonic forms of masculinity can be understood as technologies for the amelioration of the complexities and insecurities generated by neoliberal markets.

Between Hoffmann and Goethe: The Young Brahms as Reader

This article provides a critical account of Brahms’s early collection of quotations, aphorisms and poems commonly known as Des jungen Kreislers Schatzkästlein in the context of the composer’s youthful engagement with German literature. Drawing on archival materials housed in Vienna, it evaluates the 1909 publication of the Schatzkästlein by the Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft and traces Brahms’s path in assembling his quotations to reveal borrowings from sources he encountered in the Schumann house in Düsseldorf in 1854. The second section of the article considers the different modes of reading implied by Brahms’s collection, while the third reflects on the artistic worldview articulated by the assembled entries. While scholars have viewed the Schatzkästlein largely as evidence of Brahms’s adolescent infatuation with the writings of the German Romantics, this investigation emphasizes the competing conceptions of artistry present in these fascinatingly messy notebooks and argues that this youthful collection points to the important role played by literature in the development of Brahms’s distinctive musical sensibility.

A critical account of Ius Constitutionale Commune in Latin America: An intellectual map of contemporary Latin American constitutionalism

Ius Constitutionale Commune in Latin America (ICCAL) is an academic endeavour that attempts to provide an account of the original Latin American path of transformative constitutionalism, comprising elements from national, transnational and international legal orders, and where the law is placed at the service of the normative trinity of constitutionalism, namely the rule of law, democracy and human rights. In this regard, ICCAL speaks of an Inter-American law that represents a new legal phenomenon, in a region where constitutionalist ideas have allegedly claimed new traction. In this article, I develop two main critiques that can be deemed challenges for an academic project that is still ‘under construction’, and provide an intellectual map of Latin American constitutionalism that could address these critiques and serve as a roadmap for studying potential Latin American contributions to debates around global constitutionalism.

‘I am not particularly despondent yet’: The Political Tone of Jill Craigie's Equal Pay Film To Be a Woman

To Be a Woman is a short campaigning film made in 1950–1 by documentary film-maker Jill Craigie. This article offers an account of the film which aims to recover the affective life of both the film text and the archival correspondence between Craigie and the General Secretary of the National Union of Women Teachers, which refers to its production history. The article analyses the ‘feeling tones’ of the letters that describe both Craigie's attempts to get the film made and her difficulties in distributing it. It is argued that paying attention to these affective aspects of the archive and the film together enables a recalibration of (in a variant of Raymond Williams's formulation) the structure of feminist feeling in both the film and, to an extent, the wider public realm in the immediate post-war period. Paying attention to the film's affective dynamics in this way is also revealing, it is suggested, of its class and race positionality, enabling a more nuanced critical account of its politics.

The Discipline as a Field of Struggle

This chapter is an inquiry into the discipline of international law as a social form. What is that content which is contained within this form? What sort of social structure does it presume and enable? Taking as its point of departure the concept of knowledge production, this chapter develops a critical account of international law as a field of theoretical labour and ideological contestation. How is the process of knowledge-production in international law today actually set up? What are those basic products which it produces? What kind of added value does it add to them and how is this value extracted and appropriated in practice? This chapter seeks to explain the disciplinary politic that surrounds these and other related issues as a reflection of discursively sublimated inter-group conflicts, the ultimate object of which is the internal distribution of resources and the power to decide the intra-disciplinary division of labour.

Economic and Monetary Union: Evolution and Conflict

‘Economic and Monetary Union: Evolution and Conflict’ provides a critical account of the evolution of the European Union’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), with a special focus on changes and reforms adopted since the euro area crisis. The chapter provides an overview and analysis of, first, the history and principles underlying the original EMU; second, the most important reforms adopted in order to address the euro area sovereign debt crisis; and third, the ongoing questions in the debate. The chapter will conclude by discussing the ways in which the basic principles and assumptions underlying the original EMU have had to evolve, and the fundamental disagreements that underpin the current debate on the future of EMU.

Decolonizing the criminal question

In the last years there has been a growing effort from different theoretical perspectives to interrogate critically the impact of colonialism in the past and present of institutions and practices of crime control, both at the central and peripheral contexts, as well as in the production of knowledge in the criminological field. In this feature piece we examine this debate. We offer a critical account of key themes and problems that emerge from the intimate relationship between colonialism and punishment that directly challenge the persistent neglect of these dimensions in mainstream criminological scholarship. We aim to foreground the relevance of this relationship to contemporary enquiries. We highlight that decolonization did not dismantle the colonial roots of the cultural, social and political mechanisms informing contemporary punishment. They are still very much part of criminal justice practice and are thus also central to criminological knowledge productions.