Das Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Veranstaltungen

About the conference
Processes of world ordering appear to be ever more fragmented. States and their representatives as the agents of these ordering practices are becoming more and more aware of an increasing political heterogeneity and differences on the one hand and their decreasing political capacity to actually shape global order on the other.
Multiple illustrations could be referred to in order to show that the nation state continues to be an essential if glaringly insufficient agential force for providing sustainable solutions: classical problems associated with the escalatory potential of interstate war based on ever changing technological innovation; the nation state’s persistent boundary-reproducing practices as far as, for instance, refugees and the information revolution is concerned; or grave and comparatively novel challenges linked to a changing biosphere which may already have lethally undermined the very conditions of human survival as humanity has come to take it for granted.
In this context the hitherto unrivaled ordering ambitions of liberal democracies, which experienced a climax in the early 1990s, are increasingly challenged by »rising« powers such as China and their ever more vociferous alternative global designs. Likewise, non-state and civil society actors are expanding their potential for political action – which in the digital age can also no longer adequately be engaged with in traditional ways – and are in turn using it to push for their specific goals. As a result, key concepts traditionally associated with liberal projects of global ordering (e.g., democracy, respect for international law or multilateralism) are not merely »more contested than ever before«. In the face of the presumed success of authoritarian forms of societal organization and management (e.g., the Chinese handling of COVID), they are now subject to unprecedented pressure for justifying adapted global ordering arrangements.
This workshop will explore this problematique: How has the rethinking of global order evolved over the last decades? How might it need to be refocused to address a changing constellation of global problems which – at the intersection of natural, social, technological, and individual structures – has become more complex than ever before?

The organizers
Gunther Hellmann
Gunther Hellmann has been Professor of Political Science with a focus on German and European Foreign Policy at the Institute of Political Science at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main since 1999. For many years he has been primarily concerned with questions of the theory of international politics and transatlantic relations. Since 2021, he has headed the Frankfurt research project »Re-thinking Multilateralism« as well as the project »Democratic Vistas. Reflections on the Atlantic World« together with the Americanist Johannes Völz at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften.

Daniel Jacobi
Daniel Jacobi is Research Associate and Lecturer at the Chair of Political Science and German/European Foreign Policy at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. His research interests are Foreign Policy Analysis, Transatlantic Security Relations and the Theory of International Relations.

Participation and registration
Closed event. Please register in advance.
Contact: Daniel Jacobi jacobi@soz.uni-frankfurt.de