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Being victimized can lead one to discover heretofore neglected elements of the social life‐world. Discovery in vivid form of one's vulnerability to death reveals the pervasive importance of hopefulness.

The article is designed to demonstrate that the Western modern life world is constituted by the reconstruction of the natural environment in accordance with formal logical rules that are not derivable from contingent facts. Logical rules are selected as techniques in terms of their value to fulfill "needs" and hence to shape the environment into a "technical life world" that becomes globalized as "scientific" demanding that the life worlds of the others develop to become modern and technical. This means that the globalized technical life world is not a set of facts but signitive systems of logical, non‐temporal and non‐spacial vectors of "communication" taking precedence over the material‐productive levels of any society.

The fall of the Soviet Union and the political, cultural and economic shift of Lithuania toward western European world requires complex analyses of the philosophical context in which such a shift could take place. The context is modern western civilization, consisting of two life worlds, established under the names of Political and Scientific Enlightenments. One major task of the text consists of a disclosure of the founding principles of these two life worlds to note both, their common ground and their seemingly irreconcilable divergence. In the text it is argued that the Soviet grand experiment is founded on a specific interpretation of Scientific Enlightenment that led to the invention of a theory called "Dialectical Materialism" and its consequent reduction of all events to "material explanation". The text also contains strict analyses of the Marxian, Soviet paradigm, called "Dialectical Materialism" and shows the impossibility to maintain such a paradigm without contradictions. If the contradictions are to be avoided, then this paradigm must allow Political Enlightenment as the ground without which the Soviet experiment is doomed to failure. Finally the text shows that Lithuanian proclamation of independence from Soviet Union opens the principles of Political Enlightenment and "joins" Western Europe as a site where autonomous and equal citizens become the basis of any government. Indeed, the text points to an issue which is unresolved: the materialism of the "free market" that demands "freedom" but abolishes equality and thus creates a fundamental tension in current Lithuania between the fundamental and inseparable aspects: freedom and equality.

Study conducted in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India

Der Erfahrungs- und Handlungsraum des Archivs hat mit den ihm eigenen Zwecken im menschlichen Alltag seinen Ursprung: Es gibt eine "Sphäre des Archivischen", welche die institutionellen Archive umgibt und über sie hinausweist. In diesem Beitrag wird auf zwei Situationen individuellen Lebens eingegangen, in denen ein Umgang mit der Vergangenheit anhand materieller Überreste stattfindet, ganz gleich, ob es sich jeweils um Schriftstücke, Bilder oder Gegenstände handelt: beim Wohnen mit "Dingen von früher" und bei der Suche nach Wahrheit aufgrund eines Schicksalsschlags, von dem man nicht loskommt. Die Lebensnähe des Archivs, die hier exemplarisch sichtbar wird, steht in einem gewissen Kontrast zu charakteristischen Eigenschaften der institutionellen Archive: Archivalien werden im Interesse des Erhalts in sicheren Depots gelagert, und sie besitzen in ihrer Absonderung die Aura des Originalen.

The human and ecological disasters of Minamata and Fukushima highlight Japan's need to plan for a sustainable future. Ogata Masato, a Minamata fisherman, through his philosophy of "life-world" suggests that this quest for a sustainable future requires a change in the epistemology of social science. His philosophy offers a postmodern version of Japan's heritage of animism, where humans are connected with all living beings, including the souls of the living and the dead, as well as animate and inanimate entities in nature. His philosophy thus presents an alternative framework for a new modernity. (Asian Perspec/GIGA)

Urban agglomerations host the most vital and creative societies. This applies particularly to Africa, where cities have the highest growth rates world-wide and where the urban population is younger than anywhere else. Urban life-worlds are the basis for the development of new lifestyles and new cultural phenomena. Based on empirical ethnographic research, this book presents case studies that enhance our understanding of the dynamics of urbanity in Africa and beyond - by envisioning cities as crossroads where cultures, biographies and networks meet. Rezension Reviewed in: UniReport, 4 (2012)