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The Meiji Restoration of 1868 marked the start of the modernization of Japan to a unitary nation-state. This included the modernization of the municipal system. In 1889 the Japanese government enacted the shi-sei (City Code) and chōson-sei (Town and Village Code), which were modelled after Prussian counterparts. At the same time and unlike in Prussia, municipal mergers became an integral part of local politics. Three nationwide so-called “great mergers” have occurred to the present day. Implementation of large-scale municipal mergers has been defined as the “northern European model” of local government boundary reform in Western scholarship. This can easily be debunked as a very Eurocentric term when taking Japan into account, especially since Japan began its merger program more than 50 years earlier than Sweden, one of the two typical countries named when discussing the “northern European model”.

Für Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) war Denken keine akademische Trockenübung, sondern die entscheidende Form seiner Weltzuwendung. An Schriften wie Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit und dem Passagen-Werk kristallisieren sich auch gegenwärtige Debatten in den Kulturwissenschaften. Diese Einführung gibt biografische Hinweiseund stellt vier zentrale Arbeitsfelder Benjamins ausführlicher vor: seine Sprachtheorie, seine ästhetischen Reflexionen, seine Medientheorie und seine Geschichtstheorie."Es ist schwierig, Benjamins Gedanken systematisch zu erfassen. Überraschend gut gelingt dies Sven Kramer. Eine empfehlenswerte Einführung." Information Philosophie