Cooperation Project "Ordering Dynamics"

The research programme of the research centre understands "order" and "dynamics" as basic categories of socio-cultural reality. Order and dynamics are not simply thought of as polar opposites. Rather, the starting point is the premise that social and cultural orders in particular are forced to develop themselves 'dynamically' ("dynamic stabilisation"). 

Since the 18^th century scholars have observed a new type of order, which exclusively reproduces itself through dynamic activities in the form of growth, innovation, acceleration, expansion and universalization. This particular kind of order was first noted in the context of so-called modern Western society. The unique mode of dynamic stabilisation detectable in this setting is neither simply characterised by occasional moments of adaptation to contingent and/or exogenous developments, nor through a linear progression that results in the improvement of the (stable) status quo. Instead it is defined through a necessity for a process of endogenous dynamicisation for the preservation and reproduction of the status quo. 

The observation that social and cultural orders stabilize due to a logic of increase leads to the following four sets of questions for the work of the research group: 

a) questions regarding the spheres and environments in which scholars are able to observe the aforementioned processes if dynamic stabilization

b) questions concerning the types of norms (and/or normative orders) that enable to encumber processes of dynamic stabilization

c) questions about alternative mechanisms of stabilization

d) questions concerning the consequences and interplay of dynamic stabilization.

The researchers involved in the research group bring together the scientific expertise of different disciplines and draw on methodological, empirical and theoretical expertise from the fields of social-theoretical research, religious research and knowledge-based research.