The Cultural Dynamics of Political Globalisation

The Leibniz junior research group "The Cultural Dynamics of Political Globalisation" was organized within the former re­search department Non-Program-Bound-Research from 2012 to 2016. With this research group led by Dr Sabine Mannitz, PRIF aimed to test whether the methodological and theoretical concepts of social anthro­pological studies can be included in PRIF’s research agenda, which has always been dominated by political science perspectives and research designs. The social anthro­pological approach aims to study the world “from below and from within” in order to reconstruct perspectives in local settings. As a comple­mentary perspective, this broadens the analytical scope of PRIF’s research: Ideas, political discourses, norms and so-called best practices circulate globally, become translated and (re)contextualized historically, culturally and socially – even as “travelling concepts”. ‘Other’ life-worlds and political orders, different from or contrary to Western claims on global governance and presumably universal standards, raise alike questions in regard to their meaning and mobilization potential as well as to resources that might provide stable peace orders. Additionally and due to con­densed global exchange relations, there is an increasing need to under­stand the specific rationale within local structures of meanings and their possible impli­cations of cultural resilience – especially from the angle of enclosing potential for conflict resolution.

The rich stimuli generated by this inter­disciplinary junior research group contributed to PRIF’s decision to establish a further research department as of 2017 to focus on the impact of social experiences and locally defined meanings, that emerge from daily life practices, on conflicts and their resolution. Running research projects were transferred to the new research department ‘Glocal’ Junctions.