Englisch für Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftler

Created: 2019-10-15 Updated: 2020-02-02 History Videos

Summary

2019-10-15 - Why humanities?

2019-10-21 - Identity

Resources

Summary
Problems
Track 1
Track 2
Track 3
Track 4
Track 5

Words

Tasks

Concept

Identity is a concept that tries to describe how we see ourselves and also how others see us. It is a connection between the inside and the outside of our life. Our surroundings like the state or our family categorizes us and we incorporate these names as labels for specific characteristics of our personality and our appearance. In most cases we have many different identities in regard to the context in which we find ourselves. If we are in a group of people that look different than us, then maybe we identify with our skin color. Identities aren't fixed, but at the moment there are limits to what we can do to change them. For example it can be difficult for someone to hide his or her age. In my opinion identity isn't an elegant concept because it has a wide range of topics.

Visual summary

2019-10-22 - Sociological Theories

Vocabulary

Beck

Castell

Giddens

2019-10-28 - Imagine there is no countries

Imagine there’s no countries ...... it isn’t hard to do, sang John Lennon. Actually, it is, argues Debora MacKenzie. Is there any alternative? (2014)

  1. Is the nation state an anachronism?
    • I think so, because it emerged at a time, where it was a counter movement to the absolute monarchies in Europe. Nowadays it is more of a baggage for solutions that need a global collaboration. If we think about food supply or climate change or waste disposal, then we have problems that go beyond a nation's border.
  2. What does the author mean by „neo-liberalism“?
    • He doesn't say anything about neo-liberalism, but about neo-medievalism.
    • Zielonka: "replacement of hierarchy by networks of cities, regions and even non-governmental organisations."
    • Neo-medievalism, on the other hand, means overlapping authorities, divided sovereignty, multiple identities and governing institutions, and fuzzy borders
    • It is a concept, where federal governance is more important than a central institution and where regions keep their cultural heritage, because it doesn't matter who rules them.
  3. If Dunbar of University of Oxford claims that „one individual can keep track of social interactions linking no more than 150 people,“ how did earlier civilizations get past this number and function?
    • They valued vertical hierarchies more, so it didn't matter to them, who was to the side of them so much as who rules them.
    • "Several villages allied themselves under a chief; several chiefdoms banded together under a higher chief. To grow, these alliances added more villages, and if necessary more layers of hierarchy."
    • "Larger hierarchies not only won more wars but also fed more people through economies of scale, which enabled technical and social innovations such as irrigation, food storage, record-keeping and a unifying religion. Cities, kingdoms and empires followed."
  4. What was identity before the modern era? Whan did the notion of the nation state „arrive“?
    • "Before the modern era, says Breuilly, people defined themselves "vertically" by who their rulers were."
    • "Such loose control, says Bar-Yam, meant pre-modern political units were only capable of scaling up a few simple actions such as growing food, fighting battles, collecting tribute and keeping order."
    • "Complexity was limited by the energy a society could harness."
    • "In 1776 and 1789, revolutions in the US and France created the first nation states, defined by the national identity of their citizens rather than the bloodlines of their rulers. According to one landmark history of the period, says Breuilly, "in 1800 almost nobody in France thought of themselves as French. By 1900 they all did."
    • "Part of the reason was a pragmatic adaptation of the scale of political control required to run an industrial economy." - "Unlike farming, industry needs steel, coal and other resources which are not uniformly distributed, so many micro-states were no longer viable. Meanwhile, empires became unwieldy as they industrialised and needed more actual governing."
  5. What does Benedict Anderson mean by nations are „imagined communities“?
    • "[Nations] far outnumber our immediate circle and we will never meet them all, yet people will die for their nation as they would for their family."
  6. What does the author mean by „what really matters [for a state to succeed] is a complex bureaucracy?“
    • Dictatorships need less bureaucracy, so if a state hasn't developed a full bureaucracy it is likely that a state chooses dictatorships which don't promote nations.
  7. According to the author, why do dictatorships exacerbate ethnic strife? Do you agree?
    • "Dictatorships exacerbate ethnic strife because their institutions do not promote citizens' identification with the nation."
    • I do not agree with this statement in general because dictatorships could use the national identity to promote their own agenda. Like for example the National-socialism in Germany.
    • But I see the possibility that states could only favor a specific set of the population so that a conflict between the different ethnic groups could develop, whatever ethnic means in such a situation.
  8. What does he mean with the term „post-nation state world“?
    • a world, where the nation do not hold full governance over themselves, where there are larger institutions who rule over the nation states or where no states do not have any connections to the nation anymore
    • the EU is called as an example for such a development
    • Beck's cosmopolitan system could be another way

Vocabulary

Task: Should university education be free?

Task: Post-nation world

2019-11-04 - Political correctness and correct English

Task: commas

The result is that: We, as readers or listeners, have certain expectations as to the order in which the words are going to appear. If this order is not respected, we may be thrown off the trail. Thus, it is essential to give enough care to ordering.

Vocabulary

2019-11-11 - Writing and Listening

Writing: Triangle of essays

Listening: Where is home? Pico Iyer, TED Talk

  1. Why is the question "where are you from" complicated for the speaker to answer?
    • India: blood and ancestry comes from India, expecting because of his appearance; never lived one day of his life there
    • England: born, raised and educated, left England after under-graduate education
    • USA: where he pays taxes and goes to the dentist, 48 years
    • Japan: which place is most important for yourself and where you want to be
  2. "And their whole life will be spent taking pieces of [many different places] and putting them together into a [stained glass whole]."
  3. Home has less to do with a piece of soil than you could say with a piece of soul. Explain what he means by this.
    • When the speaker thinks about home, he thinks about his significant other and his closest friends, he thinks about his emotional belonging.
  4. What was the speaker's "home" after the fires burned down his parents' California home?
    • After the house burned down, he would have answered that his home would be what he carried around inside him.
  5. "And nowadays, at least some of us can [choose] our sense of home, [create] our sense of community, [fashion] our sense of self."
  6. How many people live in countries not their own?
    • 220 million live in countries not their own.
  7. Who represents the fitfth largest nation on the earth?
    • These 220 million people who live in countries not their own would represent the fifth largest nation on the earth.
  8. Why is travel like "being in love" for the speaker?
    • Suddenly all your senses are turned on, alert to secret patterns, looking with new eyes
  9. "And home, we know, is not just the place where you [happen to be born]. It's the place where you become [yourself].
  10. "The whole place was absolutely silent, but the silence wasn't an [absence of noise]. It was really a [presence] of a kind of energy or [quickening].
  11. What does the speaker mean by the following: "And home, in the end, is of course not just the place where you sleep. It's the place where you stand."
    • Not only the building, but the place which you would argue for or the place which you would defend for yourself, in the inside

2019-11-12 - Media education

2019-11-18 - Media and philosophy

Presentation on utility

Is our society leading people to take specific positions?

The government influences the job market

You could define a market as a place where people exchange goods and services for money. A job market, on the other hand, is the concept of a market applied to the supply and demand of workers for specific jobs in our society. So for example if you have a difficult job like being an oil rig engineer, there is a higher demand for such a position, because most people do not want to do it. A job market reacts to such a demand with an increasing price for the job. So if there is a high demand for a specific job and there is nobody who wants to do it, the payment of the job is increased to motivate at least somebody to try it.

In normal circumstances this works great, because there is an equilibrium of people who want to do a job and also a demand for that specific job. As a result you have certain incentives to become a specific worker and mostly everything works out. But what happens if there are not enough workers for critical infrastructure? As a government you have to intervene. If there are not enough police persons, fire fighters, teachers, judges or military personnel, you have to do something to reach the people in need.

First, the government tries to influence the job market with money before and especially after the situation has arisen. It supports specific jobs with premiums, but also with a certainty of getting the money. If you work for the government, in most cases you do not have to worry about receiving your pay check. But there is more. As a veteran, for example, you get benefits in the fees for public institutions. Or as a teacher you get specific licenses for software or other materials.

Second, the governement is supporting educational programs which try to influence the views of children and teens who do not already know where their place in society is. The political education about democracy could be seen as a means to show the importance of collaboration in society and that you should not expect too much more than the good feeling of improving the lifes of other people. Additionally you could see such an education as a way to present the different jobs of the government to the next generation.

Third, the government awards people in difficult positions with medals and other accolades as a way of presenting the value of certain positions to the whole society. If you got a medal of honor, you will be regarded highly. If you did something for the governement, the governement gives something back.

In conclusion, the government tries to influence the job market on a more fundamental level. The government is not only trying to influence it with money, there is a whole system in place for changing peoples' opinions on governmental jobs. But what do we take out from this? For me, this is not a bad thing at all, because it provides us with the things we need to sustain our daily lifes. But I think we should acknowledge, that the government is also sustaining itself with it.

Listening

  1. get a __ of old buildings.
  2. T/F Socrates wrote down his philosophical thoughts in his dialogues with his pupil Plato.
  3. to trott along means…. to ____
  4. How did Socrates decide whether to “follow” prominent people in his day or not? (how did he go about deciding whether they were right or wrong)?

5.What did Socrates find out about the decisions of “famous” and “important” people?

6.The documentarist explains that Socrates was a non-conformist who, when asking people about their beliefs, was not motivated to make trouble but rather to___.

7.What are the 5 tests of our opinions to see if they are worth having (Socrates):

  6. Socrates had the e__ idea that everyone _____ and we all have the capability to do it.

  7. What is understood by the “examined life”?

  8. How did Socrates view democracy?

  9. What were the charges made against Socrates?

  10. Socrates ____the possibility that he would die and yet he ___.

2019-11-18

Vitalized english

university of manchestr phrasebank

2019-11-25

https://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/Zimmerman-Gaming-Literacy.pdf

2019-12-03 Media and philosophy

2019-12-09 Culture

Key concepts - E. T. Hall

2020-01-06 - Education

Education in South Korea

Future of education - Ericsson

The end of school as we know it

2020-01-07 - Education

2020-01-13 - Culture, Art

Geert Hofstede

What is art for?

2020-01-14 - Art

2020-01-20 - Grammart

2020-01-21 - Oral exam

2020-01-27 - Essay writing