GRK 150:  Social History of Groups, Classes and Elites

• Subject Area: History
• Term: from 1998 to 2003
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270207

The research interest of the research training group centers on the formation and the development of social groups in past societies from antiquity to the late 20th century. In writing the "social history of groups, classes and elites" a variety of approaches and a wide range of historical methods are applied. Thus the concrete historical circumstances and preconditions of the processes leading to group formation are reconstructed by analysing e.g. socio-economic structures, power relations, contemporary mentalities and material conditions of communication. Furthermore, the aims and strategies of historical agents are analysed. Common interests which could be based on political or religious beliefs and which led to group formation processes are taken into account as well as the social practices and rituals surrounding the actual formation of formal organisations which are present in informal mechanisms of exclusion. Finally, discursive processes of inclusion and exclusion in which social, ethnic and gender difference and respective group identities are constructed are analysed. Hence, social history as it is understood by the research training group includes hermeneutic methods as well as discourse analysis.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Universität Bielefeld
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Heinz Gerhard Haupt
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr. Werner Abelshauser; Professor Dr. Neithard Bulst; Professorin Dr. Ute Frevert; Professorin Dr. Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey; Professorin Dr. Martina Kessel; Professor Dr. Peter Lundgreen (†); Professor Dr. Stephan Merl; Professorin Dr. Barbara Potthast-Jutkeit; Professor Dr. Joachim Radkau; Professor Dr. Frank Rexroth; Dr. Heinrich Rüthing (†); Professor Dr. Winfried Schmitz; Professor Dr. Andreas Suter; Professor Dr. Aloys Winterling