In the last episode of our stylistic flower show in dissertations, the focus was on simplicity.

Let's start this time with surfing and the title question ("Happy and Healthy?") of a German-language "international view" of, after all, two surfing beaches.

The Dutch beach is known to the author “from her own vacations and weekend stays”, the American beach “was also chosen for pragmatic research reasons”.

(Spoiler: The author knows him from a stay in Hawaii.) The work contains observations such as: “A surfer with a colorfully taped shortboard comes onto the beach.

He lays his board on the sand and walks about 50 meters in the shallow water, then back again.

He does that six times.”

Towards the end of the work it is said that the author's methodology should be viewed critically, because as a surfer she is "in a certain way subjectively predisposed".

Another point of criticism is that "all observations are only carried out by a single observer (the author)".

The author came, saw and surfed?

Nevertheless, the method is not unsuitable, "because there are no analytical studies on the health behavior of surfers".

With this extremely logical conclusion, it was enough for a doctorate at the University of Tübingen;

Possibly also thanks to this insight: "The behavior after surfing represents the social capital in a different dimension than before or during surfing." We also want to ride this wave, then we are happy and healthy.

Also on a coast is the Mexican region of Tijuana.

In “Indigenousness in Tijuana: Global Discourses and Local Adaptations, 1989 to 2012” things get complicated on page 10: “Looking at conflicts between the actors involved in shaping meanings of indigenousness, as well as the search for actors who Involving indigeneity in their political demands without actively participating in the national debates makes it clear that the circulations go hand in hand with transformations of the concept.” The FU Berlin awarded a doctorate to this work, which was funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, with the conclusion: "The question of the meaning and function of indigeneity is consequently answered by the fact that indigeneity cannot be grasped as an analytical category."

Incomprehensible gender

When it comes to the topic of "genders", a swing back to the traditional way of naming can be observed, with the obligatory note at the beginning of the work that all genders are always meant.

This is different in a Salzburg dissertation on “The interaction between conductor and musicians in orchestra rehearsals”, in which we read: “For example, the raising of a hand by a participant in meetings indicates that the person has identified himself/herself as the (possible) next selects a spokesperson and would like to be perceived as such by the chair.”

Later, the author writes about the alternation between the conductor as speaker (or as gesticulator, singer) and the musicians as listeners in discussion parts, and the musicians as musicians and the conductor as conductor in performance parts.

But let's leave this polysexual world of music and turn to John Stuart Mill's theory of the good life.

The author is astonished that Mill happened to be in the world at the same time (!) as other great minds: “Kant had just died when Mill was born (1806);

Mill shared a few decades on earth with Wilhelm von Humboldt (born 1767) and Friedrich Nietzsche (born 1844). In the meantime, they share eternal life elsewhere.

However, the Lüneburg doctoral thesis thinks secularly.

The explanations make “a contribution to thinking about moral theory in a more hybrid and substantial way, without leaving the secular ground.” The author had already left the ground of German commas.