Wahrnehmungs- und Betätigungsformen des Vertrauens im deutsch-französischen Vergleich:Representations, Forms and practice of Trust in French and German comparison

Thomas Würtenberger, Dieter K. Tscheulin, Jean-Claude Usunier, Dominique Jeannerod, Eric Davoine (Hrsg.):
Wahrnehmungs- und Betätigungsformen des Vertrauens im deutsch-französischen Vergleich
Berlin, Berlin GmbH, 2002

Encadrement discursif et postposition du sujet: l'éclairage des contes oraux

This article re-examines the relationship between framing and postposition of the subject in contemporary French, using oral data from the French Oral Narrative Corpus. The authors argue that the widely-supported binary distinction between 'SV-framing' and 'VS-nonframing' is in fact much more complex, with some clear counterexamples to accepted theory and others that force us to re-consider the definition of framing.

Les techniques du dinandier: formes et fonction des outils lithiques spécifiques à la déformation plastique des métaux

In recent years, the proliferation of discoveries has enabled studies of stone tools used in metal working to develop. The increasing number of tools, made mostly from Neolithic polished axes, reveals a typological and functional diversity that remained largely unsuspected. This diversity is an opportunity to understand the tools and address the technical issues relating to the plastic deformation of metals. The operations that are represented here demonstrate the techniques used by coppersmiths with specialised tools.

Review of Richard Friedli & Mallory Schneuwly Purdie (eds), L’Europe des Religions. Éléments d’analyse des champs religieux européens. Actes du programme 2002-2003 de formation doctorale.

Book Review in Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions und Kulturgeschichte No. 100 (2006) of Richard Friedli & Mallory Schneuwly Purdie (eds), L’Europe des Religions. Éléments d’analyse des champs religieux européens. Actes du programme 2002-2003 de formation doctorale, Berne: Peter Lang, collection « Studia Religiosa Helvetica », vol.8/9, 2004, 257p.

Exotic Endurance: Tourism, Fitness and the Marathon des Sables

This paper critically examines the intersections of global tourism and fitness in the Marathon des Sables, an annual ultramarathon in the Sahara desert in which over a thousand athletes run the equivalent of five marathons in six days. It demonstrates how the globalization of health and fitness resonates with familiar Western productions of exotic cultures for the purposes of tourist consumption. Of particular interest here is how established colonial asymmetries are recast in a neoliberal context as runners test their resilience, endurance and strength against an ‘extreme’ Saharan landscape. While the paper calls attention to these asymmetries, it is more concerned with troubling reductive colonial encounters in order to reveal their instability, heterogeneity and ambivalence. Indeed, the central conceit of the Marathon des Sables – that superior Western fitness regimes and technologies will dominate the race – is inverted by the overwhelming success of Moroccan runners and disaggregated by the biopolitical regulation of elite running bodies. These unexpected intersections of global tourism and fitness demand further attention because they reconfigure our received notions of who (and what) is capable of exerting agency in postcolonial encounters.