The Research Training Group takes as its point of departure the proposition that the last 200 years have brought forth a global connectivity – a “world society”, which constitutes an object of analysis in its own right. A central question of the Research Training Group is how and under which circumstances global structures have emerged and in which fashion they affect regional and local structures. This entails the assumption that all events, however local they may present themselves, must be analytically related to this global connectivity and, ideally, can be explained with recourse to the same. In order to examine the dynamics involved in the construction of the global two orthogonally related forms of societal differentiation are to be distinguished: Firstly, the functional differentiation of various specialized societal realms (economy, science, religion, politics, etc.); secondly, the differentiation of different levels of social organization (interaction, organizational systems, networks, world society).
The question regarding the making and representation of the global has three analytical foci:
- 1. Social microstructures: interaction-theoretical perspectives on the process of globalization;
- 2. Organizational systems and networks as bearers of processes of globalization;
- 3. Global semantics: the representation of globality
A detailed version of the research program you can download here.
For a bibliography (in german language) click here.
