FOR 1642:  'Landnahme', Acceleration and Activation

• Subject Area: Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: from 2011 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 189197227

Modern societies are dynamic growth societies. The growth imperative and the logics of expansion are not by-products but structural conditions for the constitution and reproduction of modern social order. Irrespective of their formal shape as capitalistic or socialistic, modern societies have proven to be relatively stable, even as they underwent various periods of crisis. This relative stability was, and continues to be, based on rising economic-technical efficiency and growing material wealth. There are, however, strong indicators for a break in continuity - at least since the current economic-ecological double-crisis has taken shape.
There is a growing disparity between economic growth and prosperity; material growth has become a problematic factor. Hence, sociology has to confront anew the reciprocal relationship between the system's self-stabilising dynamics and its legitimising principles. The scientists are holding the view, that the expansionist logic, which is integral to processes of 'Landnahme', acceleration and activation, has transgressed a threshold. Dynamics, the very imperative of capitalist modernity, is up for discussion.
Processes of crisis and change, induced by the dominant expansionist logic, currently seem converge and create a situation in which societal growth regimes are coming under scrutiny. For this reason, the problem of growth shall figure as the central point of the Research Unit. Confronted with an object of study in the process of change, our group of researchers intends to develop methods and modes of practice that transcend the established ways of empirically grounded theory building, which are either highly individualised or restrained by the limits of the project format.
We think that a sociological approach towards ongoing and indeterminate processes of social change needs to make systematic use of thought experiments and discursive methods. The format of the Research Unit offers ideal conditions for establishing a social scientific experimental field. The scientists intend to establish the Research Unit as an internationally prominent laboratory, which analyses and critically assists the transformation of capitalist growth-regimes.

• DFG Programme: Advanced Studies Centres in SSH

Projects

• Landnahme, Acceleration, Activation. Dynamics and (de-)stabilisation of modern growth societies (Applicant Dörre, Klaus )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Klaus Dörre
• Deputy: Professor Dr. Hartmut Rosa