GRK 844:  World Concepts and Global Structural Patterns: Differentiation and Functional Diversification of World Society

• Subject Area: Social Sciences ; History
• Term: from 2003 to 2012
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 273563

The Research Training Group explores processes of differentiation of world society in three directions. First, it is interested in the role of self-descriptions in the genesis of world society and here in particular in historical und comparative analyses about concepts and images of world as a central aspect of the description of this system. Second, it pursues the hypothesis that from a social-structural point of view the genesis of world society can be described by its ""eigen-structures"", i.e. by specific emerging structural patterns of social systems (e.g. ""functional systems"", organisations, networks, epistemic communities) which become more prominent as characteristics in the emerging world society. Third, the Research Training Group follows the idea that among diverse ""eigen-structures"" of world society the form ""functional system"" holds the prominent position as the description of world within these functional systems and the structural autonomy of each system converges in different ways and functional differentiation therefore proves to be the decisive factor to guaranty diversity within world society.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Universität Bielefeld
• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Bettina Heintz
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr. Werner Abelshauser; Professor Dr. Mathias Albert; Professor Dr. Jörg R. Bergmann; Professor Thomas Faist, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Klaus Peter Japp; Professor Lutz Leisering, Ph.D.; Professorin Dr. Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka; Professor Dr. Gunnar Stollberg (†); Professorin Dr. Veronika Tacke; Professor Dr. Thomas Welskopp (†)
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Klaus Cachay; Professorin Dr. Ulrike Davy; Professor Dr. Hartmann Tyrell