Volker M Heins
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 699751 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Volker M Heins |
| NOMBRES | Volker M |
| APELLIDO | Heins |
| FIRMA | HEINS V M |
| AFILIACIONES | McGill University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8634-6605 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 43 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 132 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 41 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1989 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Internalisierung von Grenzen und Migrationskontrolle – ein Überblick
Internalization of Borders
Europe and the United States are spending billions on the fortification of borders to stop migrants deemed unwanted by the government. The questionable effectiveness of this policy and its disastrous, often deadly consequences for people on the move have been studied extensively. The political project of closing borders to racially stigmatized migrants has serious consequences not only for outsiders who want to get in, but also for the internal o…
Simple and convoluted trauma stories
The volume edited by Ron Eyerman and Giuseppe Sciortino offers a major contribution to cultural trauma theory. The chapters include much that is highly original and insightful. However, there are also a few gaps and weaknesses that need to be addressed. First, the editors and contributors start from a very narrow definition of colonial power relations, and hence, of decolonization. This leads to a preference for simple trauma stories at the expen…
The Plasticity of Our Fears
In the field of migration politics, a dominant rhetoric argues that liberal immigration and asylum policies must be avoided because they will inevitably lead to anti-immigration backlashes that exacerbate the very conditions they were supposed to remedy. Drawing on the work of German sociologist Heinrich Popitz and empirical data on the aftereffects of the European migration crisis, the article criticizes this “rhetoric of reaction” (Albert Hirsc…
New actors and contested architectures in global migration governance
This article introduces the volume on New Actors and Contested Architectures in Global Migration Governance. It presents the aims and scope of the volume, followed by an overview of international cooperation in global migration governance, migration management and advocacy for migrants. We then discuss ‘new’ actors and how they maintain, contest or even alter established architectures and assemblages, followed by a presentation of the articles in…
Criminalisation of kindness
This article explores the emergence of the crime of migrant smuggling and its legitimising narratives as tools of global migration management. We examine the ways in which the language of ‘migrant smuggling’ was introduced into and then lifted out of the context of international law and recontextualised to serve the purposes of migration management. The main consequence of this fusion of law, narrative and policy is the redefinition of the legali…
Can the refugee speak? Albert Hirschman and the changing meanings of exile
This article presents a critical reading of Albert O. Hirschman's typology of exit, voice and loyalty as a heuristic for understanding the changing meanings of exile in the 20th and early 21st centuries. It is argued that Hirschman's experiences as well as the theory he distilled from them are highly relevant for researchers of forced migration and exile. After first defending the usefulness of Hirschman's analytical framework for exile and diasp…
Großerzählungen des Extremen
Was macht radikale Weltbilder so attraktiv? Und wie lässt sich die Renaissance des Extremismus kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlich erklären? Sprach man bis vor Kurzem noch davon, dass Großerzählungen auf dem Schrottplatz der Geschichte liegen, finden sie neuerdings mit der Wiederkehr des Fundamentalismus den Weg zurück in den Diskurs. Die Beiträge des Bandes stellen verschiedene Großerzählungen des Extremen vor und diskutieren, wie sie sich in Den…
Refugees welcome
Against competing political theories of the integration of immigrants, we propose to reframe the relationship between the populations of host countries and arriving refugees in terms of a neo-Maussian theory of gift exchange. Using the example of the European refugee crisis of 2015 and the welcoming attitude of significant parts of German civil society, we argue that this particular situation should be understood as epitomizing the trend toward i…
Gift-giving and reciprocity in global society
How do multiple obligations to give, to receive, and to reciprocate contribute to the evolution of international society? This question can be derived from the works of the French anthropologist and sociologist Marcel Mauss, in particular from his classic essay The Gift, published in 1925. The aim of this article is to introduce Mauss' theory of the gift to international political theorists, to develop a general theoretical argument from his clai…
Spiegel der Menschheit?
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
In his widely read classic One-Dimensional Man (ODM), Herbert Marcuse offers a political anthropology of twentieth-century liberal democracy which is deeply pessimistic and yet has been read in the 1960s and 1970s as a call to transformative action in the fields of politics and everyday life. The chapter begins by addressing the concepts introduced by Marcuse to explain why transformative political action is unlikely to succeed: manipulation, fal…
Krisenbewältigung durch Kooperation? Die Grenzen des EU-Modells
Habermas on the European crisis
Based on a critical reading of Jürgen Habermas’s journalistic writings on the European Union, the article argues that Europe’s current crisis is also a crisis of its narratives, and hence a crisis of meaning. The German philosopher has revised his political vision of a united Europe but has done so without abandoning his neo-Kantian ‘soft revolutionism’. The EU of the future is not only envisaged as an alternative to the allegedly defunct Europea…
The NGO challenge for international relations theory
Soll der Staat ein gesetzliches Maximaleinkommen festlegen?
Backmatter
Inhalt
Autorinnen und Autoren
Einleitung
Konvivialismus. Eine Debatte
Das »Konvivialistische Manifest« (2014 auf Deutsch erschienen) hat die globale Debatte um die Frage neu formatiert, wie wir das Zusammenleben angesichts von Klimakatastrophe und Finanzkrisen gestalten wollen und müssen. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes eröffnen nun die Diskussion um die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Manifests im deutschsprachigen Raum: Wo liegen seine Stärken, wo die Schwächen? Was hieße es, eine konviviale Gesellschaft anzustreben - i…
Three Meanings of Equality
Saying things that hurt
This article suggests reading Theodor Adorno not as a notoriously pessimistic sociologist but as a committed public educator. Partly drawing on still unpublished transcripts of lectures, public talks and radio broadcasts from the 1950s and '60s, the article offers an account of Adorno's concept and practice of a 'democratic pedagogy'. The key question is how we should understand the difference between Adorno the social philosopher, on the one han…
Of persons and peoples
The West Divided? A Snapshot of Human Rights and Transatlantic Relations at the United Nations
Gift-giving and reciprocity in global society
How do multiple obligations to give, to receive, and to reciprocate contribute to the evolution of international society? This question can be derived from the works of the French anthropologist and sociologist Marcel Mauss, in particular from his classic essay The Gift, published in 1925. The aim of this article is to introduce Mauss' theory of the gift to international political theorists, to develop a general theoretical argument from his clai…
Refugees welcome
Against competing political theories of the integration of immigrants, we propose to reframe the relationship between the populations of host countries and arriving refugees in terms of a neo-Maussian theory of gift exchange. Using the example of the European refugee crisis of 2015 and the welcoming attitude of significant parts of German civil society, we argue that this particular situation should be understood as epitomizing the trend toward i…
Realizing Honneth
The purpose of this article is to explore the potential contribution of Axel Honneth's critical theory of recognition to empirical and normative debates on global justice. I first present, very briefly, an overview of recent theories of global distributive justice. I argue that theorists of distributive justice do not pay enough attention to sources of self-respect and conditions for identity formation, and that they are blind toward the danger o…
New actors and contested architectures in global migration governance
This article introduces the volume on New Actors and Contested Architectures in Global Migration Governance. It presents the aims and scope of the volume, followed by an overview of international cooperation in global migration governance, migration management and advocacy for migrants. We then discuss ‘new’ actors and how they maintain, contest or even alter established architectures and assemblages, followed by a presentation of the articles in…
Criminalisation of kindness
This article explores the emergence of the crime of migrant smuggling and its legitimising narratives as tools of global migration management. We examine the ways in which the language of ‘migrant smuggling’ was introduced into and then lifted out of the context of international law and recontextualised to serve the purposes of migration management. The main consequence of this fusion of law, narrative and policy is the redefinition of the legali…
Critical theory and the traps of conspiracy thinking
Historically, blatantly untrue and defamatory conspiracy theories had disastrous consequences for those who were portrayed in them as evil-doers. At the same time, conspiratorial agreements at the expense of the common good between powerful groups in society do exist and have occasionally been uncovered. Against this background, the article describes different ways in which critical theory has looked at conspiracies. First, an attempt is made to …
Modernity and life politics
Internalization of Borders
Europe and the United States are spending billions on the fortification of borders to stop migrants deemed unwanted by the government. The questionable effectiveness of this policy and its disastrous, often deadly consequences for people on the move have been studied extensively. The political project of closing borders to racially stigmatized migrants has serious consequences not only for outsiders who want to get in, but also for the internal o…
Of persons and peoples
Human Rights, Intellectual Property, and Struggles for Recognition
Reasons of the Heart
In many fields of contemporary thought and scholarship, the classical construct of a clean division between “emotion” and “reason” has been revised. As a result, politics is no longer seen as a sphere in need of protection against the dark forces of emotion that might creep in where they do not belong. Against the backdrop of this conceptual shift the article examines the theme of emotion in the political thought of Max Weber and Hannah Arendt. T…
Orientalising America? Continental Intellectuals and the Search for Europe's Identity
Against the backdrop of the failure of the Constitutional Treaty and rising scepticism about the prospects of the European Union, this article looks at recent attempts by prominent German intellectuals to turn the tide by endowing Europe with a new sense of mission. It is argued that while the crusading writings by Jürgen Habermas, Ulrich Beck and Thomas Meyer on the political identity of Europe effectively criticise cultural essentialism, techno…
From new political organizations to changing moral geographies
Habermas on the European crisis
Based on a critical reading of Jürgen Habermas’s journalistic writings on the European Union, the article argues that Europe’s current crisis is also a crisis of its narratives, and hence a crisis of meaning. The German philosopher has revised his political vision of a united Europe but has done so without abandoning his neo-Kantian ‘soft revolutionism’. The EU of the future is not only envisaged as an alternative to the allegedly defunct Europea…
Saying things that hurt
This article suggests reading Theodor Adorno not as a notoriously pessimistic sociologist but as a committed public educator. Partly drawing on still unpublished transcripts of lectures, public talks and radio broadcasts from the 1950s and '60s, the article offers an account of Adorno's concept and practice of a 'democratic pedagogy'. The key question is how we should understand the difference between Adorno the social philosopher, on the one han…
Can the refugee speak? Albert Hirschman and the changing meanings of exile
This article presents a critical reading of Albert O. Hirschman's typology of exit, voice and loyalty as a heuristic for understanding the changing meanings of exile in the 20th and early 21st centuries. It is argued that Hirschman's experiences as well as the theory he distilled from them are highly relevant for researchers of forced migration and exile. After first defending the usefulness of Hirschman's analytical framework for exile and diasp…
Weber's Ethic and the Spirit of Anti-Capitalism
This article explores Max Weber's critique of socialism in relation to his own diagnosis of modern capitalism and its pathologies. Weber does not defend the capitalist ‘system’ directly against its left-wing critics. Rather, he identifies and denounces those social forces which threaten to undermine the liberal ‘spirit’ of capitalism. One of these forces turns out to be capitalism itself, insofar as it favours the bureaucratization and cartelizat…
The Plasticity of Our Fears
In the field of migration politics, a dominant rhetoric argues that liberal immigration and asylum policies must be avoided because they will inevitably lead to anti-immigration backlashes that exacerbate the very conditions they were supposed to remedy. Drawing on the work of German sociologist Heinrich Popitz and empirical data on the aftereffects of the European migration crisis, the article criticizes this “rhetoric of reaction” (Albert Hirsc…
Seduction, Alienation, Racketeering
The purpose of this article is to explicate concepts of politics that were introduced—if somewhat implicitly—by different Frankfurt School theorists. Authors writing within this influential tradition have identified a number of structural threats to the very possibility of genuine, transformative political action in modern capitalist society. The article discusses these threats under three headings: seduction by media and consumerism, the drainin…
Democratic states, aid agencies and world society
This article discusses some aspects of the changing structure and dynamics of the global humanitarian system with particular reference to non-governmental agencies and their increasingly diverse organisational philosophies and modes of intervention. The article has two goals. First, an analytical framework is proposed, based on game-theoretical concepts, which allows us broadly to classify different forms of non-governmental humanitarian action a…
Civil Society's Barbarisms
Instead of arguing about elements and boundaries of civil society, recent discussions in social theory have focused on the concept of civil society itself as embedded in different currents of social and political thought. Following up on these discussions, this article reconstructs the concept of civil society by identifying a number of implicit oppositional terms and the respective semantic fields, which in different historical contexts have len…
Germany's New War
Following a narrative-based approach for studying political culture, this article examines the active role of German newspapers at both ends of the political spectrum in creating and contesting meaning around the suicide hijackings of 11 September 2001 in the USA and the subsequent military campaign. It is argued that the German decision to contribute troops to the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom indicates a sea-change in Germany's political se…
The Place of Property in the Politics of Recognition
Das Andere der Zivilgesellschaft
Das Vokabular der »Zivilgesellschaft«, das in den 80er und 90er Jahren für starke Impulse zur Erneuerung einer kritischen Theorie der Politik sorgte, hat sich in ein ideologisches schwarzes Loch, ein Passepartout für nahezu beliebige Anliegen verwandelt. Um das Profil dieses gewiss auch in Zukunft brisanten Vokabulars zu schärfen, versucht Heins, den Gehalt des alten Begriffs zu bergen, indem er die Kontrastphänomene entziffert, gegen die einst »…
The greening of rational choice Marxism, or bio-wine from sour grapes? Interview with Helmut Wiesenthal
The greening of rational choice Marxism, or bio-wine from sour grapes? Interview with Helmut Wiesenthal
Frankenstein unbound
Weber's Ethic and the Spirit of Anti-Capitalism
This article explores Max Weber's critique of socialism in relation to his own diagnosis of modern capitalism and its pathologies. Weber does not defend the capitalist ‘system’ directly against its left-wing critics. Rather, he identifies and denounces those social forces which threaten to undermine the liberal ‘spirit’ of capitalism. One of these forces turns out to be capitalism itself, insofar as it favours the bureaucratization and cartelizat…
From new political organizations to changing moral geographies
Weltbürger und Lokalpatrioten
Das Andere der Zivilgesellschaft
Das Vokabular der »Zivilgesellschaft«, das in den 80er und 90er Jahren für starke Impulse zur Erneuerung einer kritischen Theorie der Politik sorgte, hat sich in ein ideologisches schwarzes Loch, ein Passepartout für nahezu beliebige Anliegen verwandelt. Um das Profil dieses gewiss auch in Zukunft brisanten Vokabulars zu schärfen, versucht Heins, den Gehalt des alten Begriffs zu bergen, indem er die Kontrastphänomene entziffert, gegen die einst »…
Germany's New War
Following a narrative-based approach for studying political culture, this article examines the active role of German newspapers at both ends of the political spectrum in creating and contesting meaning around the suicide hijackings of 11 September 2001 in the USA and the subsequent military campaign. It is argued that the German decision to contribute troops to the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom indicates a sea-change in Germany's political se…
Modernity and life politics
Civil Society's Barbarisms
Instead of arguing about elements and boundaries of civil society, recent discussions in social theory have focused on the concept of civil society itself as embedded in different currents of social and political thought. Following up on these discussions, this article reconstructs the concept of civil society by identifying a number of implicit oppositional terms and the respective semantic fields, which in different historical contexts have len…
Mächtige Zwerge, umstrittene Riesen
Democratic states, aid agencies and world society
This article discusses some aspects of the changing structure and dynamics of the global humanitarian system with particular reference to non-governmental agencies and their increasingly diverse organisational philosophies and modes of intervention. The article has two goals. First, an analytical framework is proposed, based on game-theoretical concepts, which allows us broadly to classify different forms of non-governmental humanitarian action a…
Orientalising America? Continental Intellectuals and the Search for Europe's Identity
Against the backdrop of the failure of the Constitutional Treaty and rising scepticism about the prospects of the European Union, this article looks at recent attempts by prominent German intellectuals to turn the tide by endowing Europe with a new sense of mission. It is argued that while the crusading writings by Jürgen Habermas, Ulrich Beck and Thomas Meyer on the political identity of Europe effectively criticise cultural essentialism, techno…
Seduction, Alienation, Racketeering
The purpose of this article is to explicate concepts of politics that were introduced—if somewhat implicitly—by different Frankfurt School theorists. Authors writing within this influential tradition have identified a number of structural threats to the very possibility of genuine, transformative political action in modern capitalist society. The article discusses these threats under three headings: seduction by media and consumerism, the drainin…
Critical theory and the traps of conspiracy thinking
Historically, blatantly untrue and defamatory conspiracy theories had disastrous consequences for those who were portrayed in them as evil-doers. At the same time, conspiratorial agreements at the expense of the common good between powerful groups in society do exist and have occasionally been uncovered. Against this background, the article describes different ways in which critical theory has looked at conspiracies. First, an attempt is made to …
Human Rights, Intellectual Property, and Struggles for Recognition
Reasons of the Heart
In many fields of contemporary thought and scholarship, the classical construct of a clean division between “emotion” and “reason” has been revised. As a result, politics is no longer seen as a sphere in need of protection against the dark forces of emotion that might creep in where they do not belong. Against the backdrop of this conceptual shift the article examines the theme of emotion in the political thought of Max Weber and Hannah Arendt. T…
Realizing Honneth
The purpose of this article is to explore the potential contribution of Axel Honneth's critical theory of recognition to empirical and normative debates on global justice. I first present, very briefly, an overview of recent theories of global distributive justice. I argue that theorists of distributive justice do not pay enough attention to sources of self-respect and conditions for identity formation, and that they are blind toward the danger o…
The West Divided? A Snapshot of Human Rights and Transatlantic Relations at the United Nations
The Place of Property in the Politics of Recognition
Of persons and peoples
Three Meanings of Equality
Saying things that hurt
This article suggests reading Theodor Adorno not as a notoriously pessimistic sociologist but as a committed public educator. Partly drawing on still unpublished transcripts of lectures, public talks and radio broadcasts from the 1950s and '60s, the article offers an account of Adorno's concept and practice of a 'democratic pedagogy'. The key question is how we should understand the difference between Adorno the social philosopher, on the one han…
Soll der Staat ein gesetzliches Maximaleinkommen festlegen?
Backmatter
Inhalt
Political science (33 obras) · Sociology (26 obras) · Politics (25 obras) · Law (23 obras) · Philosophy (21 obras) · Law (19 obras) · Epistemology (16 obras) · Political economy (11 obras) · Philosophy (10 obras) · Critical Theory and Philosophy (8 obras)