Culture and Conflict

At the heart of this research focal area is interdisciplinary research into contemporary and historical conflict dynamics, their violent escalations and resolutions, and the associated ideas and practices of security. Research covers various regions of the world, including Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. The focus is on the interplay between conflict and culture, in particular the cultural conditioning of conflicts. Researchers are investigating how societies and various actors interpret, influence, and control conflicts, as well as the question of how the conflict behaviour of democracies is shaped against the backdrop of the possibilities and limitations of developing democratic resilience. An overarching goal is to rethink the interrelationships between conflict, social change, and institutional design, both theoretically and empirically. The starting point is the assumption that social and cultural change both causes conflicts and opens new ways of dealing with them. The research focus examines for example how wars, technological upheavals, ecological disasters, resource scarcity, pandemics, and geo-economic rivalries change political institutions and social structures. It analyses the reactions of state, civil society, and transnational actors, as well as attempts to establish new orders.