Cluster 3 deals with and problematizes RISC’s questions with regard to the historical, global, and regional variance of cohesion.
Although historical and international comparative methods are represented in all clusters, Cluster 3 systematically uses the comparative perspective to critically contextualize and complement the assumptions and questions of Cluster 1 and Cluster 2. To this end, Cluster 3 draws on a broad spectrum of historical, social, and cultural science methods and approaches. Such a perspective makes it possible to question a simplistic universalization of concepts of cohesion in present-day liberal-democratic societies and thus to avoid the pitfalls of Eurocentrism. Rather, this inclusive perspective can show how notions of cohesion are always context-dependent and historically embedded, which become visible through global, transnational, and historical comparisons.
In a world in which the competition between social models becomes more intense due to growing transnational and transregional interdependence, the comparative (and historicizing) consideration of the prevailing concepts and mechanisms regarding social cohesion is of considerable importance. This is especially due to the fact that these concepts of cohesion are related, increasingly permeate each other, and become explicitly intertwined in moments of cohesion crises. A look at the history of social cohesion – both in German society and beyond – shows that this is by no means the first time that we are living at a time in which social cohesion has become the subject of heated debates and in which there have been various proposals for its consolidation.
Research Areas in Cluster 3: Politics and Cultures of Remembrance; Social Cohesion in Diachronic Comparison; Inclusion, Exclusion, and Populism; and Populist Movements and Regimes in Global Comparison
Profound change, complex challenges, and controversial debates – all of which put social cohesion to the test – are constant companions of modern societies, even market societies founded on democratic principles. A more distanced historical and international comparative view makes it clear that such crises of cohesion are not always an expression of objective threats. That being said, addressing the issue of cohesion and referencing supposed cohesion crises can certainly be linked to interests of individuals and/or groups that wish to order and enforce certain concepts of society and discredit others. Such policies of cohesion come into focus more clearly through a comparative perspective.
The subject of research in Cluster 3 are transregional inequalities that developed throughout history as a result of imperial structures and colonial oppression as well as the consequences for cohesion and concepts of cohesion. With regard to the significance of international contextual conditions, the debate on social cohesion is linked to changes that have been discussed since the 1990s under the heading globalization. Instead of a discourse on the lack of alternatives to a single globalization that appears to be quasi-natural, the debate has recently focused more on variants of globalization by various actors and their globalization projects.
Alliances based on competing ideas of ideal social cohesion are extending in new ways beyond the boundaries of societies, thus shaking up beliefs in familiar notions – for example, of a homogenous “West”. In addition, a question that is increasingly being asked is whether there are also alternative concepts of society in a multipolar world order that promise to answer global challenges more efficiently. To this extent, for a comprehensive study of social cohesion, it is necessary to include transnational and transregional contextual conditions and vectors of influence in the analysis, which is the focus of the research projects in Cluster 3. The cluster provides important internal reflection within RISC, as it illustrates the plurality, contingency, and political malleability of concepts of cohesion in historical and spatial comparison. The cluster contains four research areas on social cohesion: diachronic comparison; politics and cultures of remembrance; inclusion, exclusion and populism; and comparison of global populisms.
Cluster 3 is coordinated by the Leipzig office.