Research

The Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics (ReCentGlobe) is a central institution of the University of Leipzig. ReCentGlobe is dedicated to the investigation of globalization projects in the past and present in a broad interdisciplinary cooperation. More than 250 employees from various faculties and disciplines work together at the center. They cooperate in the education and training of young academics in the Graduate School Global and Area Studies.

Founded in January 2020, the ReCentGlobe research center brings together the spectrum of historical, spatial, social and cultural studies represented in Leipzig: Ethnology, geography, social psychology, sociology, history, media studies, political science, law, religious studies and economics, as well as African studies, American studies, Arabic and Islamic studies, Indian studies, Japanese studies, Middle Eastern studies, Latin American studies, Eastern European studies, Sinology, Southeast European history, are all involved. The main research interest is focused on the historical genesis, defining characteristics and possible future scenarios of the current world order.

The aim of the cooperation within the research center is to gain a better understanding of the global dynamics that are constantly breaking out anew and thus to overcome a paradigm that understands globalization as a natural process that expands relatively quickly and effortlessly across the entire planet from an assumed global center with virtually no alternatives. ReCentGlobe contrasts this with the assumption of the existence of a multitude of globalization projects that compete, cooperate and overlap with each other, but also develop in parallel and without major contact or even strive for a decoupling of certain transregional interdependencies. Although they typically claim to globalize the world as a whole according to their interests and values, in practice they often limit themselves to a (more or less far-reaching) transregional section, the "world" relevant to them. Globalization projects are aimed at exploiting the opportunities arising from new technologies to remove boundaries and interweave different regions of the world. Globalization projects, therefore, often trigger processes of re-spatialization at the micro and meso level of individual societies and at the macro level of the international system by crossing traditional borders. However, this is combined with efforts to achieve social cohesion, new market demarcations and the stability of rule, sometimes even with pronounced sovereignty panics that go hand in hand with border demarcations. This is why the effects of global dynamics always include reterritorialization tendencies as well as the removal of borders. In addition to the globalization projects of powerful political, cultural and economic elites, counter-concepts and concepts for the future that express alternative conceptions of the world are also taking effect. 

The special profile of Leipzig University, which can look back on a long tradition of interaction between area studies and historical interpretations and systematic approaches from the social, cultural, and spatial sciences, makes it possible to analyze globalization projects in different regions of the world. The individual studies provide the necessary critical mass for better understanding these globalization projects.

Research program

Globalization "as we know it" seems to have come to an end. Contrary to the expectations raised by an at times omnipotent globalization ideology, the world has not become more unified, peaceful and westernized. Instead it continues to be marked by conflicts and increasing inequalities, confronted with a growing number of "global problems" (such as climate change, migration, resource scarcity, hunger or epidemics), the drama of which is increasingly emphasized by politics, science and the public. This situation calls for a new approach to researching global dynamics. Such an approach has to overcome a whole series of challenges.

• We must understand the global condition as something historically changeable.

• This global condition is not only made in the Global North, but depends on the interactions of all societies on the planet.

• Entanglements, decouplings and realignments of cross-border connections take place at the same time, but unevenly distributed in space, producing new inequalities.

• The new global dynamics can only be adequately grasped by combining approaches from the humanities and social sciences with the natural and life sciences' interest in the changes in the relationship between humans and nature under the conditions of the Anthropocene.

The profile of Leipzig University developed along these lines is based on many years of preliminary work in networks such as the DFG-GRK "Fracture Zones of Globalization" (2006-2017) and the BMBF-funded Centre for Area Studies (2010-2017). The theories developed here have proven to be highly attractive for young researchers from all over the world who enroll in the Graduate School Global and Area Studies for interdisciplinary training.

The SFB 1199 "Spatialization Processes under Conditions of Globalization" and the collaborative research group "Multiple Secularities" (both since 2016), as well as the Research Institute for Social Cohesion (FGZ), founded in 2020 and funded by the BMBF, currently form the most important pillars of the center, around which numerous other projects are grouped.

Key questions of the research program

We understand globalization as a bundle of projects that are pursued by various actors (political, economic, cultural, religious, civil society) and aim to shape the world according to the ideas and interests of these actors. However, none of these projects is capable of ordering the world on its own; instead, they clash in fracture zones of globalization in which their success is negotiated. No actor can therefore fully realize its goals. It is only through the interaction of the most diverse globalization projects that a complexly structured unity of the world emerges, which, however, eludes the intentional grasp of individual actors.

This gives rise to the key questions of the ReCentGlobe research program:

1. the effects of the increasing co-presence of these globalization projects within individual societies, which are faced with the corresponding challenge of developing skills to deal with cultural foreignness that is moving closer both medially and physically;
2. the resulting fragmentation of societies and economic systems and their necessary reintegration, including on a transregional level; and
3. the tension between universalist narratives of the unity of the world, which suggest that the world can be modeled according to one's own ideas through the respective globalization project, and the particularist world views that lie behind these universalist narratives.

Interdisciplinary and Transregional

ReCentGlobe's research is interdisciplinary and transregional. This follows the insight that globalization as a subject is too large to be comprehensively understood by one discipline alone. The global dynamics that are particularly effective today result from specific tensions:

• between the growing integration of the world through digitalization and increasing flows of goods, people, capital, and cultural patterns and the limited willingness to adapt behavior and attitudes to the convergence of various globalization projects,
• between the fragmentation of established social forms and the emergence of new forms of social integration as a result of global processes,
• between the universal claim of particular world experiences and conceptual worlds and the need to find common orientation across cultures in a converging world in order to master global challenges.

Interdisciplinary and transregional research

ReCentGlobe continues a long Leipzig tradition of interaction between history, human geography, religious and regional studies and expands it to include contributions from law, social sciences and economics. ReCentGlobe understands regions as historically contingent constructs and, therefore, pursues a transregional approach that takes the construction of relevant spaces of action under conditions of globalization itself as its subject and places the resulting re-spatialization of the world at the center of a global-historical narrative.

Thinking globalization in the plural

Globalization does not automatically make the world more homogeneous, nor do global processes follow the same pattern everywhere. It is, therefore, important to think of globalization in the plural and as the result of the actions of specific actors. Their projects vary in scope and are intertwined in different ways through cooperation or competition. They form alliances in order to find answers to global dynamics or to take on new challenges that tend to be global in scale.

Many dimensions - common perspectives

Globalization projects cover virtually all social dimensions, from the economy to culture, from politics to religion, from social movements to environmental issues. ReCentGlobe's work is characterized by the knowledge-enhancing arrangement of case studies on various dimensions in as many different regions of the world as possible under a common question. These various research networks are guided by the overarching question of how the dialectic of dissolution of boundaries and re-spatialization manifests itself in ever-new constellations under conditions of globalization.

Researching with, instead of researching about

Those who think of globalization in plural terms are faced with the challenge of reflecting on the limits of their own ability to decenter historically handed-down assumptions and experiential conceptions of the world. ReCentGlobe's research, therefore, requires close cooperation and fruitful engagement with perspectives from other intellectual contexts and world-regional horizons of experience. Projects are therefore carried out in cooperation with domestic and foreign partners wherever possible.

Digitization

Digitization is shaping the world more and more, and the amount of digital material for its research is growing accordingly. As a result, digitalization itself is becoming the subject of globalization research in many different ways, and at the same time, it offers the opportunity to use and further develop tools in order to counter the swelling flood of data and avoid a relapse into crude data positivism.

RESEARCH PROJECTS & ALLIANCES

At the Research Center Global Dynamics, various research networks and projects work together on overarching key issues. They use a shared infrastructure, overarching discussion forums and an international research network. At the same time, they pursue specialized research goals as independent research units.

 

Research Area 1 – Globalization projects and new world orders

• COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH CENTRE 1199 "PROCESSES OF SPATIALIZATION UNDER THE GLOBAL CONDITION" (DFG)

• ANCIP | COMPETENCE NETWORK „AFRICAN NON-MILITARY CONFLICT INTERVENTION PRACTICES” (BMBF)

• PRIME | RAPPROCHEMENT IN THE HORN OF AFRICA: NARRATIVES OF CONFLICT AND RECONCILIATION IN ETHIOPIAN-ERITREAN RELATIONS (DFG)

• EEGA | LEIBNIZ SCIENCECAMPUS »EASTERN EUROPE – GLOBAL AREA« (LEIBNIZ ASSOCIATION) 

• HUMBOLDT FELLOWSHIP DR. GAVIN MURRAY-MILLER (HUMBOLDT FOUNDATION) 

 

Research Area 2 – Social cohesion, populism & the changing global condition

• RESEARCH INSTITUTE SOCIAL COHESION (BMBF)

• INRA-STUDY "INSTITUTIONS AND RACISM" (BMI)

• ELSE FRENKEL BRUNSWIK INSTITUTE FOR DEMOCRACY RESEARCH IN SAXONY (State of Saxony)

• JEAN MONNET CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE "THE EU AND ITS RURAL PERIPHERY IN EAST CENTRAL EUROPE" (EU)

• PREVEX: PREVENTING VIOLENT EXTREMISM IN THE BALKANS, THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA (EU) 

• BERLIN MONITOR (SENATE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE, STATE OF BERLIN) 

• RE-ACT | RULE OF LAW IN EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE (BMBF)

 

Research Area 3 – Religion, knowledge and values: epistemes in global competition

• THE CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES "MULTIPLE SECULARITIES – BEYOND THE WEST, BEYOND MODERNITIES" (DFG)

• PIETY AND SECULARITY CONTESTED: FAMILY AND YOUTH POLITICS IN POST-KEMALIST "NEW TURKEY" (DFG) 

• RADICAL ISLAM VERSUS RADICAL ANTI-ISLAM (BMBF)

 

Research Area 4 – Resources, environment and health in a global and planetary perspective

• PANDEMIC SPACE: UNDERSTANDING QUARANTINE AND RESPONSIBILIZATION IN TIMES OF CORONA (DFG) 

• FLUCTUATION IN INDUSTRIALIZING DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IN WEST AFRICA (GHANA). NEW DYNAMICS OF EMPLOYMENT BIOGRAPHIES (BMZ)

• THE RISE OF DIGITAL FARMING: INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF SOCIAL INTERACTION AND VALUES IN THE NEW AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION (INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES) 

• PHILIPP SCHWARTZ FELLOWSHIP DR. ATAKAN BÜKE (HUMBOLDT FOUNDATION) 

 

Theory Forum

• THE PRODUCTION OF WORLD KNOWLEDGE TRANSFORMED (BMBF) 

• RESEARCH GROUP NEW GLOBAL DYNAMICS (State of Saxony)

• GLOBALIZING SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AND THEORY BUILDING FROM THE SOUTH (DFG) 

 

Further projects can also be found on the Leipzig University research portal "leuris". 

^{Note: The overview is currently under construction and is constantly being expanded.}