Matthias Kuhnert geht der Frage nach, wie zivilgesellschaftliche Gruppen bei der Bevölkerung um Unterstützung für ihre Tätigkeit warben. Am Beispiel zweier britischer NGOs, War on Want und Christian Aid, wird deutlich, welche Emotionen humanitäre Organisationen einsetzten, um ihre Botschaften zu vermitteln und Hilfsbereitschaft zu generieren. Durch den Vergleich christlicher und linker Organisationen kann der Autor zeigen, dass sich mit dem Wandel des Humanitarismus in der Nachkriegszeit nicht nur die Art und Weise humanitären und entwicklungspolitischen Engagements, sondern auch die emotionale Dimension humanitären Handelns veränderte. Zum ersten Mal liegt nun eine Untersuchung über die Transformation humanitären Engagements von der Nachkriegszeit bis Anfang der 1990er Jahre vor, die emotions- und wissensgeschichtliche Ansätze verbindet.

China contributes the largest share of cropland's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally. Processed-based biogeochemical models are useful tools to simulate GHG emissions from cropping systems. However, model comparisons are necessary to provide information for the application of models under different climate, soil, and crop conditions. In this study, two widely-used models (DayCent and DNDC) were evaluated and compared under four main cropping systems in China. The field observations from nine experiments were used for model calibration and validation. The DayCent and DNDC models simulated daily and seasonal CH4 emissions from early rice-late rice and rice-wheat cropping systems reasonably well (r2≥0.49 for daily simulation and nRMSE≤52.9% for seasonal simulation). Both models were able to satisfactorily predict seasonal N2O emissions from maize-wheat fields (0.6≤d≤0.8), but overestimated most daily N2O fluxes at fertilisation and irrigation events. Significantly positive relationships were found between simulated and observed cumulative N2O fluxes in spring maize growing season (0.61≤ r2≤0.85). The DNDC showed smaller differences in simulated and observed cumulative GHG emissions for spring maize and double rice, while DayCent showed better performance on estimating N2O and CH4 for maize-wheat and rice-wheat. This study shows that both models have strengths and weaknesses under a variety of cropping systems and growing regions, which are important to consider when choosing a model for a crop/region-specific simulation.

This thesis investigates Margaret Atwood's 'The Robber Bride' by focusing on the novel's construction of postmodern centres. Informed by the postmodern theories of Linda Hutcheon and Jean-Franois Lyotard, the thesis defines "centre" as the combined value-systems of a particular society or individual. Postmodernism and modernism can be described as different reactions to the same cultural crisis: "the loss of the centre," the break-down of these established systems of belief. While modernist artists try to resolve the crisis by searching for the centre elsewhere, postmodernism gives up the belief in a single centre and recognizes that the world is multicentric. If modernism reacted with angst towards the lost centre, postmodernism celebrates the new multicentricity. 'The Robber Bride ' is a postmodern novel embracing this new polyphony. Chapter 1 constructs a definition of postmodernism from a general, philosophical point of view. Using Lyotard's work on postmodernism and Hutcheon's theories and criticism as guides, it shows how these general definitions of postmodernism can be applied to the study of literature. This introduction serves as theoretical groundwork for a narratological analysis of the novel's discourse and its structure in chapter 2. This narratological analysis prepares for the character study of chapter 3, a close reading of the novel's three protagonists, each of whom, through her own narrative, learns to develop a postmodern ' Weltanschauung'. Chapter 4 concludes the thesis by showing how the novel validates each protagonist as an independent centre and how this validation, in turn, confirms the reading of 'The Robber Bride' as a postmodernist fiction. The appendix of the thesis is an interview with Atwood.