Programme

DFG Humanities Centre of Advanced Studies

"Futures of Sustainability"

Synopsis of the second phase

(Beginning: December 2023)

The starting point for the second funding phase of the DFG Humanities Centre "Futures of Sustainability" is the intensification of conflicts around sustainability in the context of ongoing ecological destruction. In the face of entangled and mutually reinforcing crises – the climate crisis and weather extremes, Covid-19 and lockdown protests, the war in Ukraine and inflation – the future rather appears as broken and dystopian than as an open horizon that can be positively shaped.

At the same time, situations of crisis also create new spaces for action. In light of increasing pressure by diverse social actors and protest movements, new thinking evolves about societal relations to nature and the role of the state in the economy; new infrastructural investments are planned for and legal innovations introduced. In the second funding phase, we will thus reflect on these societal struggles and examine their theoretical implications by pursuing new thematic foci.

On the one hand, we will focus on interconnections and overlaps between the pathways of modernization, transformation, and control, which were studied in the first phase of the Humanities Centre. We expect that disruptions and crises bring about new forms of control-based imaginaries and practices, which reach into and consequently form projects of modernization and transformation.

On the other hand, we examine how futures of sustainability are negotiated as issues in a series of social arenas in which different groups of actors fight to impose their visions or interpretations and where the political of the ecological crisis is articulated in different ways. These arenas take shape around processes of participation, collective decision-making and cooperation (arena of participation), the renegotiation of fundamental rights and collective obligations (arena of law), emerging public and private systems of classification, valuation and evaluation (arena of taxonomies) and questions of cultural and religious interpretations of the world (arena of meaning-making).

Finally, three overarching perspectives – nature, power, future – will guide our theory building over the entire four years. The first perspective is dedicated to the plurality of social relations to nature and their conflictual negotiations as multiple sustainabilities (nature). The second examines the extent to which ecological emergencies and exceptional political situations exacerbate existing inequalities and establish new powerful hierarchies (power). The third focuses on the conceptions and prefigurations of the future against the backdrop of increasing catastrophes (future).

Beyond the academic debates with international fellows The Humanities Centre is also committed to a public sociology and seeks the exchange with various political and societal actors in Hamburg and beyond. This will be facilitated by partnerships with cultural institutions and through our “Writers in Residence” programme, which offers a space to engage in fruitful collaboration with journalists, writers and artists who explore matters of sustainability in their work.

The second phase of the Humanities Centre will begin in December 2023 and will be led by Prof. Dr. Frank Adloff, Prof. Dr. Christine Hentschel and Prof. Dr. Stefan Aykut.

Also see, in German:
Frank Adloff, Stefan C. Aykut, Christine Hentschel: "Zukünfte der Nachhaltigkeit: Zur Aktualisierung eines Forschungsprogramms“, p. 210-233 (PDF)