SFB 640:  Changing Representations of Social Order. Intercultural and Intertemporal Comparisons

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: from 2004 to 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5486075

The Collaborative Research Centre takes advantage of a unique chance offered by the Berlin research scene: to gather experts working on a great variety of countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. The basic aim of this Collaborative Research Centre is to use this potential and to bring these experts together for a scientific exchange and for joint research projects on comparison and interconnections between countries in different regions of the world.
The Collaborative Research Centre deals with the topic of representation of social orders in comparison: political, religious, ethnic, multiethnic, societal, national and international. Representations are understood as ideas and pictures, which are negotiated or carried through in the public sphere and which are consensual or controversial in society. They are meant to represent past, present or future social realities containing the image of the self and the other. From this point of view representations are not only reflections of social orders but help essentially to create and to stabilise them.
The principal aim of the Collaborative Research Centre is to compare and to investigate interaction between Europe and non-European cultures in Asia, Africa and Latin America. To reach this goal professors of African and Asian studies, educational science, ethnology, history and political science work together.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Completed projects

• A01 - Representations of Social Order in Central Political Assemblies: Oratory - Ceremonial - Function (Project Heads Baldauf, Ingeborg ;  Helmrath, Johannes )
• A03 - Religious and Secular Representations in Early Systems of Power (Project Head Schilling, Heinz )
• A04 - Ceremonial Education in phases of radical Modernization of Agrarian Societies: Japan, Russia, and Mexico in the second half of the 19th Century (Project Heads Baberowski, Jörg ;  Schriewer, Jürgen )
• A05 - Representations of Europe in Comparison: Europe, the Arab World and Russia, 1850s-1910s and the 1990s (Project Heads Baberowski, Jörg ;  Freitag, Ulrike ;  Kaelble, Hartmut )
• A06 - Politische Mythen in Deutschland nach 1989 (Project Head Münkler, Herfried )
• A07 - Identity Politics in Changing Societies of Morocco and of Iraq (Project Heads Freitag, Ulrike ;  Hegasy, Ph.D., Sonja )
• A08 - Representations of Statehood and New States in International Organisations Since World War II: OAU, EEC/EU and UNESCO in Comparative Perspective (Project Heads Eckert, Andreas ;  Mergel, Thomas )
• B01 - Trust through Presence. Pre-Modern Modes of Ruling in the Tsarist Multi-Ethnic Empire (Project Head Baberowski, Jörg )
• B02 - Political Representations in Transnational Spaces of African Modernity (Project Head Eckert, Andreas )
• B03 - Representations of Melaya in contexts of crisis (Project Head Houben, Vincent J.H. )
• B04 - Identity Politics in South Caucasus: National Representation, Postsocialist Society and Urban Public Space (Project Head Kaschuba, Wolfgang )
• B05 - Representations of multi-ethnicity in Britain from the 1950s to the 1970s (Project Head Metzler, Gabriele )
• C01 - Sozialistische Kampagnen in Zentralasien. Eine vergleichende akteurszentrierte Untersuchung zu Repräsentationen von Reinheit (Project Head Baldauf, Ingeborg )
• C02 - Constructing Social Meanings from the Vantage Point of National Self-Determination: Occupation and Education in Peronist Argentina and the Indian Independence Movement (Project Head Schriewer, Jürgen )
• C04 - Kinship as Representation of Social Order and Practice: Knowledge, Performativity and Legal-Ethical Regulation (Project Head Beck, Stefan )
• C05 - Topology of Memory: Representation of Sicial Order in the Networks of Neapolitan Tombs and Chapels (Project Head Michalsky, Tanja )
• C06 - Observing Social Order, Social Change and Social Upheaval: West and East German Social Science in Comparative Perspective, 1950-2000 (Project Head Mergel, Thomas )
• C07 - Building Trust through Procedures: Processes of Stabilization in the Post-Stalin Soviet Union, 1953-1964 (Project Head Baberowski, Jörg )
• MGK - Integrated Research Training Group (Project Head Beck, Stefan )
• Z - Zentrale Aufgaben des Sonderforschungsbereichs (Project Head Baberowski, Jörg )

• Applicant Institution: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Jörg Baberowski