Bücher von Gordon Wagner

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 1,0, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), course: Language and Identity, language: English, abstract: Worldwide, there are almost 6,800 languages in 228 countries and approximately 200 languages that have more than one million native speakers. There are even less official nation states existing, according to various sources between 192 and 195. Obviously, not every single country or nation state exclusively contains citizens speaking only one language and we don¿t need to seek out long, but instead take a look to member states of the European Union (EU) as there are countries like Belgium, Luxembourg and Ireland that are officially tri- and/or bilingual. On one hand, this suggests the existence of a considerately strong movement of native speakers among the respective country¿s citizens that are not willing to accept merely one mother language (as is the case in Ireland, where both Irish and English are officially recognized idioms). On the other hand, it might indicate the existence of a potential language conflict situation ¿ and indeed there are multilingual nation states in which this proves to be the case. There are many such examples throughout the world, e.g. Belgium, Spain and its various autonomous communities) or the Canadian province Québec. In fact, established nation states are threatened to break in part due to their citizens speaking utterly different languages and instead of just one with varying accents and/or dialects. So how do countries deal with these issues? What are the possible consequences of using more than one official language among an established nation state and how might this shape the citizens¿ perception and consciousness on a wider range?

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2010 im Fachbereich Soziologie - Religion, Note: 1,3, Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Veranstaltung: Entwicklung des modernen Atheismus, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: This homework is discussing the morals of religion as demonstrated in two specific cases ¿ i.e. speciesism and vegetarism on one hand, abortion and euthanasia on the other ¿ in which religious attitudes are being compared with atheistic, non-religious ones. It focuses hereby on the argumentation drawn by the Australian philosopher Peter Singer in his works ¿Practical Ethics¿ (1979) and ¿How Are We to Live?¿ (1993). Singer, using a consequent-utilitarian way of reasoning, has a (still) rather uncommon approach to speciesism and euthanasia; he is arguing rational and without any actual religious background (even though he originally has a Jewish heritage) which strongly contradicts the traditional, conservative way of religious think-ing. Here this work is attempting to show that it is not even possible to live an ethic life without being religious, but that religion often even fails to succeed in demonstrating an ethic life. The reason for this is simply that the religious writings known today are not made for a complex and modern generation of human beings as are living on this planet today.

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2009 im Fachbereich Politik - Thema: Europäische Union, Note: A, Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Veranstaltung: Institutionen und Politiken der Europäischen Union, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: This homework, written in German, is pointing out the basic arguments against Turkey¿s accession to the European Union, splitting them into the three Weberian terms ¿ideas¿, ¿institutions¿ and ¿interests¿. I will give examples for every term and discuss them later on while showing that there mostly is also a positive aspect to every drawback, e.g. for the proposed waves of Turkish immigrants in case of a Turkish EU-membership. I will eventually conclude that Turkey¿s membership is actually making sense in the long run but cannot possibly achieved without a) a steadier progression of reforms in Turkey and b) a reformation of the obsolete EU institutions as given in the current Treaty of Lisbon.