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SFB 1150:  Cultures of Decision-Making

Subject Area Humanities
Social and Behavioural Sciences
Term from 2015 to 2019
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 252080619
 
Final Report Year 2020

Final Report Abstract

The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1150 “Cultures of Decision-Making” has developed a novel approach to study decision-making in the context of historical-cultural studies. In contrast to the existing decision sciences, which conceptualize decision-making as a mental activity and analyze it using formal models, the approach of the CRC conceives decision-making as a form of social action that takes place in a processual manner. It rests on a number of preconditions so that decision-making is not universally available, and its manifestations are variable over time and space. Correspondingly, the first question to be asked relates to framing a particular situation as a situation in which decision-making is performed. Whether a topic is conceived as a problem of decision-making is by no means self-evident, but is subject to variable cultural conditions. The same applies to the form of decision-making processes, their symbolic representation and the way they are reflected particularly in narratives. Accordingly, the focus of research is less on decisions as the outcome of decision-making than on decision-making as a social process in the course of which alternative options for action are generated, evaluated and finally selected. The CRC was based on the fundamental assumption that processes of decision-making and the aspects characterizing them constitute cultural phenomena that vary according to prevailing patterns of social order. Consequently, such an approach aims to reconstruct historically variable 'cultures of decision-making' and to unravel their significance for the respective social order. The research work of the CRC was the outcome of the joint effort of researchers from a number of disciplines. These include history, including the history of law and Byzantine studies, literary studies, ethnology, Jewish studies and philosophy. The subjects of research ranged chronologically from the Byzantine and Latin Middle Ages through the early and late modern periods to contemporary societies. With regard to the cultural spaces studied, the focus was on Western Europe, but several projects related to non-European contexts, especially India and North and Latin America. In this cross-disciplinary research into cultures of decision-making, three aspects were given particular prominence. The first aspect relates to narratives of and reflections on decision-making. This derives from the assumption that narratives constitute the principal means to represent and to reflect on decision- making. Accordingly, cultures of decision-making are essentially based on narratives. They constitute pre- existing cultural patterns that actors can adapt both for their own practices of decision-making and for reflecting on them. Moreover, narratives provide ex post justifications for a decision taken. Second, we examined the conditions that constitute decision-making and that result in a particular situation being framed as one in which decision-making takes place. This served to identify the historical conditions that made topics such as religious affiliation, occupational choice and parenthood amenable to decision-making. Third, we explored the variable modes in which decision-making is taking place or has been carried out in historical societies. In particular, this includes the study of different institutional forms of decision-making (e.g. decision-making by means of formal procedures, decision-making based on authority, externalization of decisions). In total, the CRC has succeeded in further developing and refining its approach to study decision-making based on concepts anchored in historical-cultural studies. At the same time, we successfully applied the novel approach of the CRC to a wide range of empirical research. The resulting studies have demonstrated a great variability of ways in which social action could be framed as decision-making, not only in the modern but already in the pre-modern era. The same holds for patterns related to the performance and the institutional organization of decision-making, as well as for narratives of and ways to reflect on decision- making. The long-term evolution of cultures of decision-making thus appears highly complex and is characterized by a much higher degree of ambivalence and ambiguity than is usually suggested by existing theories of modernization.

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