The Return of Institutions. On the Latest Change in the Research on Social and Economic Development

The paper describes the latest change in the research on social and economic development of states. This change is characterized mainly by a strong emphasis put on the role of institutions as key instruments of reducing the development gap between countries. It is argued that in the years after 1989 institutions have disappeared from mainstream academia and major intellectual debates because of: (1) the widespread belief in global convergence of capitalism and (2) the modernization theory which prevailed in the social science in the 1990s. The article indicates that institutions were once again brought into focus as a result of (1) a wider debate about the institutional sources of growth and development sparked by Acemoglu and Robinson’s Why Nations Fail, (2) the beginning of the global economic crisis of 2008 triggered by the fall of American investment bank Lehman Brothers (3) diversified consequences of the economic crisis seen all over Europe and the USA which illustrate (4) the institutional varieties of capitalism.

Angewandte Kulturwissenschaften – Überlegungen zum Studienprogramm einer akademischen Disziplin nach dem cultural turn im Hinblick auf berufliche Perspektiven

The author tries to attract attention for the careers ant the education of that what we call applied Cultural Studies after the cultural turn in the Humanities. He refers to some empirical studies and tries to put it out how differs the several institutes especially in the German spoken academic world. After all the conclusion of the author could be that there is an big demand for specialists in the area of applied cultural studies. The formation or education has to refer widely to a conception or the terminus of every-day-culture, so that it could be a big help in economic, social and education professions.