CRC 923 "Threatened Orders"

The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 923 "Threatened Orders"

The Arab Spring, the financial crisis, and the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima have all left significant marks on international politics, economies, societies, and cultures. Extreme situations like upheavals, revolutions, and disasters affect everyday life. Such circumstances make us aware of how fragile and full of prerequisites the foundations of our life and actions are. Extreme situations can also lead to rapid change in social perception and behavior patterns.

Working with the above mentioned threat scenarios, as well as others, the researchers of Collaborative Research Centre 923 will try to discover whether and how these social orders (which can structure social groups or entire societies) change, especially when they face threats to their very existence.

The studies focus on Europe from early pre-Christian antiquity to contemporary history. Additional projects research African, North American, Chinese and Australian examples of threatened social orders.

The CRC's main interdisciplinary project areas—Riots, Disasters, Dissolution of social Orders, and Competing social Orders—will try to achieve four long-term research goals:

to change the perception and interpretation of current crisis diagnostics
to investigate the modes of rapid social changes
to renew space and temporal categories in the social sciences and the humanities
to reflect on the fundamentals of the participating disciplines in the era of globalization