Coordination Funds

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jürgen Martschukat
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; Ancient History ; Empirical Social Research ; Medieval History ; Practical Philosophy ; Sociological Theory
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 413222647

The research group explores voluntarism as a driving force of human practices and as modus operandi of social and political order in the past and present. A leading assumption of our research group is that voluntariness has an antinomic structure: exercised as an act of freedom, it also depends on multiple conditions that endorse, expect, and even demand certain types of behavior. Against this backdrop, nine subprojects examine (a) voluntariness as norm, (b) voluntariness as resource of both political participation and economic exploitation, and (c) voluntariness as discursive strategy for a liberal-democratic legitimation of patterns and politics, which, after all, leave only little room to manoeuver to the individuals. Empirical explorations of voluntariness sharpen our understanding of the historical and political significance of human actors and the conditions of their political and social participation.Our research interest is inspired by the current significance of voluntariness in neoliberal societies. With philosophical and sociological subprojects explore the power of voluntariness as resource for political participation and economic yield in contemporary flexible capitalism, others develop historical genealogies of voluntariness. Here, the shaping of the liberal democratic citizen and subject since the age of revolution in the late 18th century is of crucial significance. This liberal and democratic self was meant to lead an autonomous life based on voluntary engagement and foresighted investment in themselves and their future. We follow the traces of this form of life beyond the history of modern societies as far back in time as to the history of ancient Athens. Yet we also “provincialize” (D. Chakrabarty) this nexus of democracy, liberalism and voluntariness in several respects, by asking for religiously driven voluntariness in medieval martyrdom, for voluntary participation in modern dictatorships, as well as for the relation of voluntariness, decolonization, and the global politics of migration and repatriation. Accordingly, our interdisciplinary research group consists of mostly historians, with central subprojects also in the fields of political sociology and practical philosophy.Our analytical perspective is inspired by the cultural history of the political and by governmentality studies. We seek to understand voluntariness and voluntary practices as embedded in a network of discourses, of political paradigms and concepts, and of modes of subject formation, all contributing to an amalgamation of different types of external conduct and self-conduct. Based on our interdisciplinary and empirical work, we will also contribute to the conceptual debate on governmentality and the cultural history of the political and sharpen the understanding of how subjects and societies are governed through voluntariness.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2983: Freiwilligkeit