This contribution revisits the dictum "history is the teacher of life" (historia magistra vitae) and shows that modern knowledge-societies are beginning to use their growing information about natural and human history to address present-day problems. Starting with Leopold von Ranke's refusal to investigate history for the benefit of learning from it, the essay cites two contemporary attempts at extracting useful knowledge from history: "real-world experiments" and "natural experiments." Wolfgang Krohn developed the former with collaborators in Bielefeld and Jared Diamond features the latter.
Sezin Topçu
This article adduces evidence of the central role played by scientists in the 1970s and “lay persons” in the post-Chernobyl period in the production and legitimation of alternative types of knowledge and expertise on the environmental and health risks of nuclear energy in France. From a constructivist perspective, it argues that this shift in the relationship of “lay persons” to knowledge production is linked not only to the rise of mistrust vis-à-vis scientific institutions but also, and especially, to a change in the way they have reacted to “dependency” on institutions and to “state secrecy”. Counter-expertise is constructed as a politics of surveillance where alternative interpretations of risk are buttressed by a permanent critique of the epistemic assumptions of institutional expertise. The identity of “counter-expert” is socially elaborated within this process.
Fall-Out and the German People
The Political Climate in Pausewang's Novel Die Wolke (1987) and Anike Hage's Manga Adaptation (2013)
Sean A. McPhail
When Gudrun Pausewang's Die Wolke [ Fall-Out ] first appeared in West Germany in 1987, the consequences of the previous year's nuclear disaster at Chernobyl were still largely unknown. The novel's epigraph – Inge Aicher-Scholl's prose poem ‘Sie
Editorial
Comics and Transnational Exchanges
Lawrence Grove, Anne Magnussen, and Ann Miller
the Chernobyl accident, whose subject matter is a (fictional) nuclear disaster on German soil and its consequences. McPhail notes the change in the political and ideological climate that has taken place since Pausewang's book was written: where her
Mobile Disasters
Catastrophes in the Age of Manufactured Uncertainty
Steve Matthewman
happenings of our time—the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the implosion of the Soviet Union, anthropogenic climate change, the global financial crisis, and the crisis in the eurozone (to which we can now add Brexit and US President Donald Trump’s election
Belarusian Professional Protesters in the Structure of Democracy Promotion
Enacting Politics, Reinforcing Divisions
Alena Minchenia
declaration of independence by the Belarusian People's Republic (BPR) on 25 March 1918; 10 and the Chernobyl March (commemoration of the Chernobyl disaster on 26 April). For these actions, professional protesters decide on details such as the schedule
Jan Ifversen
accidents that simply happen. 17 Crisis was more in vogue in the late 1970s, when Koselleck was writing his entry. It was the time of the deep economic crisis that began with the so-called oil crisis in 1973. With the 1980s—specifically after the Chernobyl
Kylie Message, Masaaki Morishita, Conal McCarthy, and Lee Davidson
(USAID) tin can door addressed by John Giblin (103) is one case in point, and the mechanical claw from Chernobyl discussed by Robert Maxwell is another (148). Yet contributors also make clear that this love affair can only ever be one-way. As Tracey
Meike J. de Goede
.” 25 ANOM 5D127, 26 September 1933, report from the governor of Moyen-Congo, 3. References Alexievich , Svetlana . 1997 . Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. Victoria, TX : Dalkey Archive Press . Andersson , Effraim
Investing in Early Crisis Relief or Reelection?
Comparing German Party Responses to the Euro Crisis
Alexandra Hennessy
the euro crisis. A member of the European Parliament proclaimed in 2008: “This financial crisis is for capitalist neoliberals what Chernobyl was for the nuclear lobby.” 10 According to issue ownership theories, 11 leftist parties are considered to be