Projects
- Academy in Exile
- Crisis and Civil society. Civil society’s self-organisation and reform process in Greece
- Documents – Memories – Historiography. The Second “Theresienstadtfilm”, its Documentation and Reconstruction from the Survivors’ Perspective
- Styles of Life 2.0 — On the Genesis and Structure of Lateral Sociation
Projects (completed)
- Active Ageing – Migration – Biography
- Culture of Mindfulness
- Diversity, Power, and Justice: KWI-Subproject “Ubuntu and the Struggle for Social Justice”
- Fragmentation and Exclusion: Understanding and Overcoming the Multiple Impacts of the European Crisis (FRAGMEX)
- Graduiertenkolleg Interkulturelle Kommunikation – Interkulturelle Kompetenz
- Humanism in the Age of Globalization. An Intercultural Dialogue on Culture, Humanity, and Values
- Identities and Modernities in Europe (IME)
- India and Europe. A Sociological Comparison of Music Cultures
- Indien und Europa. Ein musiksoziologischer Kulturvergleich
- Intercultural Contact Zones. Patterns of social order in handling the consequences of migration. A comparison of Japan, China, Singapore and Germany
- Intercultural Understanding and Transcultural Identity Work in Global Workplaces: Indo-German Flight Attendant Teams
- Intercultural Understanding in Schools in the Ruhr Region
- International Summer Academy 2006
- Islamic Culture - Modern Society
- MERCUR Research Project: Ethics of Immigration
- Migration and Humour. Social Functions and Conversational Potential of Humour and Satire in the Interethnic Relationships in Germany
- New Regional Formations: Rapid Environmental Change and Migration in Coastal Regions of Ghana and Indonesia
- NoVaMigra - Norms and Values in the European Migration and Refugee Crisis
- Religion in International Politics
- Religious Diversity on German Campuses: Institutional Prerequisites and Perspectives
- Social Performances of Cultural Trauma and the Rebuilding of Solid Sovereignties (SPECTRESS)
- The Organisational History of the German Sociological Association
- The Organisational History of the German Sociological Association
- Understanding Pupils. Improvisation about Interculturality
- Was ist der Mensch?
- Was macht eine Lebensform human?
Research_area Interculturality
Coordinators: Prof. Dr. Volker Heins, Prof. em. Dr. Hans-Georg Soeffner
Funded by German Research Foundation (DFG), VolkswagenStiftung
The fact that modern societies combine and fuse heterogeneous cultural elements and influences seems natural to us. Hardly anybody still believes in the feasibility, let alone the justice, of complete assimilation as a method whereby strangers would become citizens and outsiders would become insiders. We know that migrants who came yesterday will not only stay, but will also retain many of their manners and mores. In this respect they are not different from us. We also take it for granted to carry our beliefs and attitudes around with us wherever we go – be it as business travelers, scientists, international students, tourists or perhaps as soldiers or NGO volunteers. And finally, we know from our day-to-day lives as well as from the mass media about the potential for conflict that lies in intercultural contact.
But how can modern society and the members of society organize and manage the reality of interculturality? How will pluralistic societies develop under the conditions of cultural and religious globalization and worldwide migration flows? What are the effects of these processes on the politics, economy and society of different world regions? In light of these questions, the projects in the research area "Interculturality" ultimately focus on the conditions and opportunities for a planetary humanism, which accepts all people in their cultural diversity without relying on the old European notion of cultures as bounded, distinct and unified wholes that imprison and determine the behavior of its members.
"Interculturality" operates at a number of levels and in different organizational forms, including project groups, international research cooperation, research training groups, dialogue and fellowship programs, lectures, conferences and workshops as well as the provision of policy advice. The research is primarily based on the Ruhr area, while also including national and international comparison.