A new approach for defining causality and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degrees of blame, and causal explanation. Causality plays a central role in the way people structure the world; we constantly seek causal explanations for our observations. But what does it even mean that an event C “actually caused” event E? The problem of defining actual causation goes beyond mere philosophical speculation. For example, in many legal arguments, it is precisely what needs to be established in order to determine responsibility. The philosophy literature has been struggling with the problem of defining causality since Hume. In this book, Joseph Halpern explores actual causality, and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. The goal is to arrive at a definition of causality that matches our natural language usage and is helpful, for example, to a jury deciding a legal case, a programmer looking for the line of code that cause some software to fail, or an economist trying to determine whether austerity caused a subsequent depression. Halpern applies and expands an approach to causality that he and Judea Pearl developed, based on structural equations. He carefully formulates a definition of causality, and building on this, defines degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. He concludes by discussing how these ideas can be applied to such practical problems as accountability and program verification. Technical details are generally confined to the final section of each chapter and can be skipped by non-mathematical readers.

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Postmigrantische Gesellschaften zeichnen sich durch die in ihnen stattfindenden Aushandlungen von Differenz und Normalität aus. Als Seismografen hegemonialen Wissens sind Schulbücher dabei ein besonders instruktives Beispiel, um sich gesellschaftlichen Selbstverständigungsprozessen über Migration und Diversität zu nähern. Daniel Schumann rekonstruiert, wie Politikschulbücher der letzten zwanzig Jahre Integration zum Gegenstand machen. Dabei stellt sich heraus: Vorstellungen von Differenz und Normalität werden nicht allein durch stereotype Darstellungen aktualisiert, sondern auch dadurch, wie der Rahmen des kontrovers Diskutierbaren und des normativ Wünschenswerten gestaltet ist.

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Barely known in public is the life of long-distance commute workers who extract the „blue and black gold” for the export to Europe. They are travelling people who work and live rotationally for a few weeks at the extraction sites before they go back again to their families in the southern regions. This ethnography takes the reader from the Volga Region to the Arcitc “Russian Gas Capital” Novy Urengoy and provides critically insights into the Russian petroleum industry.

Nahezu unbekannt sind der Öffentlichkeit die Lebensweisen jener ArbeiterInnen, die das „schwarze und blaue Gold“ für den Export nach Europa fördern. Sie sind fahrende und fliegende Menschen, die zyklisch für Wochen oder Monate in den Fördergebieten leben und arbeiten, um wieder für eine Weile zu ihren Familien heimzukehren. Die Ethnographie führt von der Wolgaregion in die subarktische „russische Gashauptstadt“ Novy Urengoy und gibt einen kritischen Einblick in die russische Petroleumindustrie.

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Whether it is a question of the age below which a child cannot be held liable for their actions, or the attribution of responsibility to defendants with mental illnesses, mental incapacity is a central concern for legal actors, policy makers, and legislators when it comes to crime and justice. Understanding the terrain of mental incapacity in criminal law is notoriously difficult; it involves tracing overlapping and interlocking legal doctrines, current and past practices including those of evidence and proof, and also medical and social understanding of mental order and incapacity. Bringing together previously disparate discussions on criminal responsibility from law, psychology, and philosophy, this book provides a close study of mental incapacity defences, analysing their development through historical cases to the modern era. It maps the shifting boundaries between normality and abnormality as constructed in law, arguing that ‘manifest madness’ — the distinct character of mental incapacity revealed by this interdisciplinary approach — has a broad significance for understanding the criminal law as a whole.

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Welche Bedeutungen haben Normalitätskonstruktionen von Care Leaver*innen aus biographischer Perspektive? Wie wird in der stationären Jugendhilfe Biographie konstruiert? Welches widerständige Potenzial entwickeln die jungen Erwachsenen und welche Rolle spielen hierbei Differenz- und Machtverhältnisse? Auf der Basis von biographischen Erzählungen gibt Angela Rein Einsichten in Subjektivierungsprozesse in der stationären Jugendhilfe. Ihre adressat*innenbezogene und subjektivierungstheoretisch inspirierte Studie leistet damit einen zentralen Beitrag zu bislang wenig beachteten Aspekten der Care-Leaver*innen-Forschung.

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