Nachhaltige Alltagsmobilit?t �� soziale Ungleichheiten und Milieus

Modern societies aremobile societies in a threefold aspect: socialmobility, international migrations and physical mobility (traffic). The article concentrates on the third, within sociological discourses more or less neglected aspect of mobility as physical mobility. From the perspective of sustainability and environment protection the production of greenhouse gases by individual motor car traffic is mostly debated resulting in reflections about alternative drive systems. In these debates social aspects of sustainable mobility are more or less neglected, partly as traditional mobility (system) research does not attach great importance to reflexive leeway. Based on recent studies the authors pick out two social aspects: unequal access to mobility systems as hardly any discussed aspect of social inequalities and the socio-cultural diversification alongside social milieus and lifestyles, which both are expressions and catalysts of (non-)sustainable forms of mobility.     

Symbolische Gewalt und ihr potenzielles Scheitern. Eine Ann?herung zwischen Butler und Bourdieu

The article discusses the similarities and differences between the contributions of Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler regarding symbolic power. While both share core arguments such as the discursive constitution of symbolic power, its disguised effectiveness due to naturalization processes, and the notion that symbolic power is part of domination (as it is interwoven with the social logic of personal recognition), there are also important differences between Butler and Bourdieu. Latter insists on discerning the social dimension of discourse??asking who speaks from which position???from the immanent linguistic realm of discourse. Butler instead highlights the impossibility of separating the social from the discursive and stresses the imponderability of discursive acts due to their performativity and iterative logic. Thus, Butler argues, ??social imperatives?? (Bourdieu) can and actually do ??fail??. This becomes especially evident within processes of subjectivation (Butler). Considering the systematic possibility of ??failure?? in Butlers work, I argue that Butler and Bourdieu offer distinct notions of critique: While Butler??s notion is framed as heterotopy (Foucault), Bourdieu??s is utopic.     

Die symbolische Macht der Individualisierung und der Kampf um die Kritik

In the article we highlight an aspect of the crisis of criticism which we call ??speechlessness of criticism??. The heterogeneous criticism cannot be bundled up to a critical story any more. A common language with explicatory pictures and grammars is missing. Two explanations are offered for the ??speechlessness?? of criticism: the changes of the normative power of justification orders and the individualisation process. Both developments are a symbolic power which can explain the speechlessness of the criticism of capitalism at least partially. After the sketch of the symbolic power of the legitimation order of project and individualisation, starting points for a renaissance of criticism are analysed. Finally we explore the relevance of a reflexive combination of critical sociology and sociology of criticism for the concept of a critical sociology of criticism.     

Welfarist evaluations of decision rules under interstate utility dependencies

We provide welfarist evaluations of decision rules for federations of states and consider models, under which the interests of people from different states are stochastically dependent. We concentrate on two welfarist standards, viz. that the expected average utility for a person in the federation be maximized or that the expected utilities for the different people be equal. We discuss an analytical result that characterizes the decision rule with maximum expected average utility, set up a class of models that display interstate dependencies and run simulations for different dependency scenarios in the European Union. We find that the results that Beisbart and Bovens (Soc Choice Welf 29:581–608, 2007) established for two types of models without interstate dependencies are fairly stable if interstate dependencies are switched on. There are exceptions, though: sometimes the way in which alternative decision rules shape the welfare distribution is significantly affected by such dependencies. These exceptions particularly include cases in which the interests of people from different states are partly anti-correlated.     

Kooperation bei Großschadensereignissen

In cases of major emergencies a whole range of organizations has to cooperate quickly and efficiently. This situation poses a challenge to cooperation and communication. The article sketches some problem areas typical for the cooperation in disaster situations which have been identified in interviews with representatives of the organizations involved, by participatory observation and in a survey of the relevant literature. These problem areas are analyzed against the background of systems-theoretical considerations on cooperation in organizational networks. On this basis the authors develop a multi-level counselling model for improving the cooperation in major emergencies.     

Goodness-of-fit tests based on the distance between the Dirichlet process and its base measure

The Dirichlet process is a fundamental tool in studying Bayesian nonparametric inference. The Dirichlet process has several sum representations, where each one of these representations highlights some aspects of this important process. In this paper, we use the sum representations of the Dirichlet process to derive explicit expressions that are used to calculate Kolmogorov, Lévy, and Cramér–von Mises distances between the Dirichlet process and its base measure. The derived expressions of the distance are used to select a proper value for the concentration parameter of the Dirichlet process. These tools are also used in a goodness-of-fit test. Illustrative examples and simulation results are included.     

Standardisierungspotentiale lebenszyklusbasierter Modelle des strategischen Kostenmanagements

Tremendous increases in indirect costs can be found in many industries. Consequently, life cycle cost analysis models are getting more important in strategic cost management. However, existing models differ significantly from each other as they have been developed mainly for specific applications. In order to enable a common use of those models, a standardization of these models is required. We examine the potentials of standardizing models for life cycle cost analysis. In a first step, requirements regarding a standard model are derived from literature. As a second step, existing approaches found in literature are compared to the afore derived demands and it is analyzed to what extent they match the standardization requirements. Based on this comparison, we identify and discuss avenues for further research.     

Abschlussprüferhaftung bei unpräzisen Sorgfaltsstandards und Ambiguitätsaversion

The Ellsberg-paradox suggests that individuals are subject to ambiguity aversion. When the standard of due care is not precisely defined, the context of auditor’s liability can be considered as an ambiguity situation. The paper shows that compared to an Expected Utility framework an ambiguity-averse auditor will exert less care with low damage payments but higher care with high damage payments. Hence, it might be advisable to put a liability cap. With strict liability there is no ambiguity situation and thus, there are no distortions from ambiguity aversion.