Beiträge

Klaus Naumann: Machtasymmetrie und Sicherheitsdilemma. Ein Rückblick auf die Bundeswehr des Kalten Kriegs

(Summary: From a methodological standpoint, the institutional history of the fifty-year-old Bundeswehr can be appropriately described as the development of an »organization of ambivalences« (Bauman); from the perspective of content, this history can be conceived as the evolution of asymmetries of power and security dilemmas. Four case studies are presented as evidence to support the assertion that the constellations of the Cold War were no less (albeit, differently) asymmetric than those of the recently discovered »new wars«. The lack of comprehensive state sovereignty, the imbalance between the nuclear-weapons »haves« and »have-nots«, wholly inadequate »civil defense« strategies, and clandestine preparations for dealing with possible attacks (Gladio) characterize a complex web of preventive security measures that was highly ambivalent on both the normative and the institutional level. It is only from the perspective of highly idealized hindsight that this situation can be perceived as clear, unequivocal, and well-structured.)

Bernd Greiner: Nicht aufhören können. Die Vietnampolitik Richard Nixons als Paradigma des Kalten Kriegs

(Summary: Why do states risk waging war, even though the actors know from the outset that the expected costs will exceed the benefits? Why do heads of state insist on seeking to decide conflicts with the use of force, against the counsel of their military and foreign policy advisors? What lies behind the inability or unwillingness to use exit options? These questions appear especially relevant with respect to the »hot wars« that took place within the Cold War; they are addressed in this essay, which explores the conduct of the Vietnam War under Richard M. Nixon’s administration. Nixon himself later conceded that the better course of action would have been to withdraw US troops from Vietnam at the beginning of his presidency. Instead, he continued to wage war for five more years, sacrificing twenty-five thousand more US soldiers and tens of thousand of Vietnamese lives. The terms of the peace agreement ultimately signed differed only marginally from proposals made in 1968. This analysis of Nixon’s administration yields insights and arguments that promise to be of value beyond the Vietnam War case study and that mark an interface between historiography and the diagnosis of contemporary developments.)

Valentin Groebner: Körper auf dem Markt. Söldner, Organhandel und die Geschichte der Körpergeschichte

(Summary: Since the 1980s, the history of the body has been a fascinating and often flashy topic of scholarly debate and one closely connected to the immediate present of those engaged in such research. »The body«, as it has been historicized and theorized, offered a powerful descriptive tool for a vast array of themes, from gender hierarchies and sexuality to AIDS, political metaphors, and the media. This paper recommends a closer look at bodies as commodities on the market, rather than abstract concepts and metaphors: as bodies and body parts that have a monetary value and are bought and sold. Focusing on material from the fourteenth and sixteenth century, the author argues in favor of historical analysis of the different forms in which bodies were commodities, from medieval ransoms to fixing the price of Renaissance slaves and mercenaries. Bodies – or body parts – were sharply differentiated according to whether they were or were not »saleable«, whether they were given a name or denied individual identity; these differentiations were based on broader concepts of the collective corporealities into which bodies were, quite literally, incorporated. In the beginning of the twenty-first century, with the return of private military enterprise, the phenomenon of »failing states«, and the rise of an international illegal market for human organs, Renaissance categories of the commodification of bodies may offer an intriguing and disturbing framework for doing body history as an undertaking that not only relates to but also actively engages issues of our contemporary world.)

Wolfgang Knöbl: Zygmunt Bauman, die britische Soziologie – und Maggie Thatcher

(Summary: This account and interpretation of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s long academic career in both Poland and the U.K. argues that Bauman’s interest in diagnoses our time(s) was related to the rise of neo-conservative politics at the end of the 1970s. For Bauman and others in British sociology, the defeat of the Labour Party led to a re-evaluation and abandonment of class analysis and to a strong focus on rather abstract topics such as modernity and post-modernity. Strengths and weaknesses of Bauman’s work should be interpreted within this intellectual and political context. )

In der Literaturbeilage

Raymond Geuss: Die wirkliche und eine andere Moderne. Ordnungsstiftende Phantasie im Don Quijote

Wolfgang Kraushaar: Aus der Protest-Chronik