This paper contrasts conceptions of global distributive justice focused on natural resources with a human rights-based approach. To highlight the shortcomings of the former and to emphasize the advantages of the latter, the paper looks first at the methodology of moral theorizing, showing that it misconstrues the claims individuals and groups made to natural resources and offers impracticable solutions. Second, I argue that distributive conceptions assume a narrow view of natural resources as economically beneficial goods. Human rights, I propose, are better suited to make sense of the variety of needs natural resources fulfill for humans. In virtue of their legal institutionalization, human rights enable agents to effectively pursue their legitimate claims to resources. Third, I look at the system of sovereignty over natural resources and argue that rather than dismissing it as unjustifiable, it should be reformed in line with the principles which underlie its structure – human rights.
Katharina Mersch presents a working paper on ‚Urban Communities and religiously motivated violent Crowds‘
The paper represents a shortened version of an article to be published in a volume on religious violence in the Middle Ages; the articles should reflect upon how ‘religious’ violence really was.
The article deals with two examples of violent crowds gathering to pursue religious goals and wandering through the lands, a phenomenon not uncommon from the late 11th century onward: 1. The so called Rintfleisch-pogroms that caused many deaths among the jewish population in the cities of Swabia and Franconia in the year 1298, and 2. the shepherds’ crusade of 1251 whose participants never reached the Holy Land but attacked clerics, monks, and sometimes Jews in several cities in France. If we want to find out to what extend religious ideas and non-religious motives stimulated the violent acts, it is crucial to take a look not only on the crowd itself, but on the cities and their citizens opening their gates to the crowd, too, on their reactions and the subsequent communication with authorities. It is a difficult task to reconstruct their motives as narrative sources give the best account of the events, while their authors were focused on interpreting these events with regard to religious narratives. Nevertheless, within these narratives the cities served as a stage for negotiating the legitimacy of violence. Not everyone agreed to kill Jews, while it seems that quite a lot of citizens did not worry about injuring and killing clerics, monks and scholars when not threatened by officials. All groups have in common that they were distinguished from the urban legal cosmos in one way or another, a fact that needs to be considered to the same degree as religious affiliations or the victims’ special position in the hierarchy of the church.
Simone Wagner presents a working paper on ‚A common History? About the Relation between Collegiate Churches and Cities‘
Superiors of collegiate churches often refered to origin stories in order to gain more authority in conflicts. Aside from arguing with highly symbolical charters of origin they often fashioned themselves as representatives of saints having founded the religious communities. Often such speech acts were embedded in a broader hagiohistorigraphical tradition. While collegiate churches and cities were often constructed as seperate entities their history was depicted as a shared one. A shared history was constructed by creating saints as integrative figures between city and collegiate church as well as linking the foundation of the cities to religious superiors. Historiography of the canons/the canonesses and the citizens could heavily influence each other without necessarily creating a collective identity. It seems that especially imperial cities contested the canon*esses‘ view of the past. However, saints worked less well as integration figures in cities with a more complex infrasctructure of parishes and their relics.
Andreas Pettenkofer presents a working paper on ‚Formal Organizations and the Destruction of political Alternatives. A pragmatistic Reconstruction of Robert Michels’ Sociology of Political Parties‘
This paper discusses how modes of social coordination can destroy the plausibility of egalitarian norms. It focuses on formal organizations – more specifically, on political parties – and on the mechanisms through which these organizations can destroy the plausibility of the ideas that they were meant to institutionalize. Its goal is to save some of the insights that can be found in Robert Michels’ Sociology of Political Parties (1911/1924), a now mostly unread ‘classic’ that, precisely because of its age, has the advantage of not treating party organizations, and the ways in which they typically operate, as a natural fact of social life. Michels’ book remains interesting for its ethnographic descriptions of everyday micro-practices, and for its ideas on how these practices can transform the ways in which party members understand themselves and their worlds. In order to reconstruct the social mechanisms that can be found in Michels’ descriptions, this paper uses the pragmatist concepts of selective attention, situated reflexivity, and social self.
The paper will appear in: Jenny Brichzin, Jasmin Siri (eds.), Soziologie politischer Parteien, VS 2021.
Call for Applications – CEU Summer University 2021
CfA – Postgraduate summer course on “Urban governance and civic participation in words and stone. Urbanism in Central Europe 1200-1600” at Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary, July 19 – July 28, 2021
Application deadline: February 14, 2021
This course aims to examine the notion of civic participation through a critical lens and against a longer historical perspective. It will seek its origins in political thought and explore its forms of expression in written and visual media. The geographical focus of study will be Central Europe which provides a rich wellspring of sources and a fascinating field for interdisciplinary research combining art history, social history, pragmatic literacy, and urban planning. This course will place a strong emphasis on the issues of preservation, protection, and the value of conceptual and built heritage for modern societies.
The aims and methods of this course are closely aligned with current scholarly trends. Cities and towns have been the subject of historical, archaeological and architectural investigations, as well as studies on political thought. These studies have generated debates on the creation and growth of towns; on the role of seigniorial power, civic initiatives and external forces in these processes; and on the role of migration, colonization and cultural transfer in the spread of urbanization – just to name a few. The contribution of this course to the ongoing debates will be to link closely the administrative and spatial/architectural aspects, and to place Central Europe centre stage in a broader comparative perspective
Accepted participants will have sight visits in Budapest and go on a 3-day fieldtrip to Prague (4 nights’ accommodation and travel will be covered for them).
Financial aid is available.
Jana Ilnicka edits rediscovered manuscript MS Eisenach 1361
The German Research Foundation (DFG) is supporting a research project by Dr. Jana Ilnicka at the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the University of Erfurt with funding totalling up to around 328,000 euros. It is entitled „The rediscovered manuscript MS Eisenach 1361 of the Wartburg Foundation and its partial parallels: Edition and Situations in Space and Time“ and is to be worked on over the next three years.
The Wartburg manuscript Ms Eisenach 1361-50 is a codex of 108 single-column leaves written on both sides (216 pages), 115×85 mm in size, produced in the XIV century and written in a West Middle High German dialect. It was originally in the Premonstratensian convent of Altenberg, before it first came into private ownership and then into the holdings of the Wartburg Foundation. The manuscript begins with thirteen psalms (2r-24v), all translated into Middle High German. This is followed by an anonymous sermon on the feast of the Assumption (25r-33r). From leaf 34r a series of 70 text pieces begins (34r-108v), some of them very short, the others longer. The last piece of text (n. 70) begins on fol. 108v and is not complete, as one leaf in the manuscript has been torn out. From fol. 34r on, the manuscript has partial parallels with the manuscript Berlin, SBB-PK, Ms. germ. fol. 986, and there are still some similar fragments in a Munich manuscript, Munich Cgm. 5235 (4th v. XIV Cologne?, M60).
Some of the 70 text pieces begin with the author’s name: Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart are the two authorities mentioned by name as authors in this manuscript („Meister Thomas sagt“ or „Meister Eckhart sagt“), the others are anonymous („Ein Meister sagt“, „Einige Meister sagen“, „Es gibt eine Frage“). Some of the texts attributed to Meister Eckhart were edited by the first editor of Meister Eckhart’s German works, Franz Pfeiffer, as „sayings“ in his Eckhart edition of 1857. Some of these sayings were then identified by Heinrich Denifle (about 30 years later) and Josef Koch (about 100 years later) as edited translations of Eckhart’s Latin works translated into German, but the manuscript itself was considered lost since 1909 and Eckhart’s authorship of these pieces was widely disputed. The other texts, which were known at least from the partial parallel manuscript in Berlin, had not been researched since then. But a few years ago, Balázs J. Nemes and Markus Vinzent discovered this manuscript in the library of the Wartburg Foundation. As part of her research project, Jana Ilnicka will prepare a critical edition of this manuscript and make these texts accessible to researchers.
„The sample analysis of the manuscript so far has shown that these texts cannot be understood directly on their own, but must be introduced into the context of the philosophical-theological debate of the time, and that it is only out of this context that their precise contents emerge,“ Ilnicka reports. Such a contextualising analysis would then also make it possible to correct the information on authorship and contribute to research on the state of the debate in the 14th century.
„The language of the Wartburg manuscript, Middle High German, shows that the highly speculative theological themes were recorded in a vernacular, i.e., in a non-university setting. Therefore, the precise analysis of these texts will allow us to take a completely new look at lay education in the 14th century. Among other things, this concerns women’s education at the time, which, as the Wartburg manuscript suggests, cannot be reduced to „women’s mysticism“ alone.
For her work, Jana Ilnicka, who has already worked intensively on Meister Eckhart as part of her dissertation, will find competent discussion partners for these questions at the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the University of Erfurt, or more precisely, at the Meister Eckhart Research Centre located there. She will begin her work on 1 February 2021 – in the first step with the transcription of the manuscript. At the end of her research, she will present an annotated edition of the manuscript.
Erfurt, the blue City
What else can you do under the conditions of the hard lockdown? A new book provides an answer to this: look at Erfurt! Erfurt, the blue city, invites you to go on excursions, on foot or – thanks to the many pictures – in your head. The authors at the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the University of Erfurt have not presented another tourist or historical guide here in German and English. Rather, an attempt to understand the city and this city. What has created urban atmosphere for more than a thousand years, what holds it together despite all the challenges, despite all the differences? And: how do you see this in today’s cityscape?
The starting point is still today’s „many-towered Erfurt“, as it was called in the Middle Ages. In seven short chapters, it becomes clear how much fun it is to dive into the city’s history as a story of religious and urbanistic change. To put oneself in the living worlds of past epochs on the basis of what one sees today. The common thread for the selection is the colour blue, which stands for the water of the Gera, Mary’s cloak, woad and more: The book also wants to surprise with unusual perspectives.
„Die blaue Stad“t (The Blue City) was created in the research group „Religion and Urbanity: Mutual Formations“, which is based at the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the University of Erfurt and has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 2018. How urbanity and religion influence each other is being investigated here comparatively, especially for Europe and South Asia. The question is also discussed in the context of regular „City Walks“ in Erfurt, in which sociologists, historians, archaeologists, urban researchers and religious scholars participate. Professor Susanne Rau, spokesperson of the collegial research group: „I am pleased that we can now reach a broad public through the book.“
More information here.
International Graduate School (IGS) to be funded for a further four and a half years
In a second funding period, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Austrian Research Fund will provide a total of around 4.1 million euros to support the International Graduate School (IGS) „Resonant Self–World Relations in Ancient and Modern Socio-Religious Practices“, which the University of Erfurt has been running since 2017 in cooperation with the Karl Franzens University of Graz.
The IGS aims at the cooperation of ancient history and biblical studies with sociological research. Its subject matter is the relationships of the individual to the social, material, but also transcendent world, which are established and reflected in different social and especially religious practices. The central question is under which conditions and with which consequences such self-world relations are experienced as resonant, i.e. as dialogic-responsive. The exciting interdisciplinary cooperation across two complementary locations allows for a materially saturated comparison as well as the development of new methods and thus a high-quality education for doctoral students.
Background: Ritual practices have always been a crucial element of cultural research, as they provide the key to understanding the differences in cultural belief systems. Thus, the differences and changes within antiquity have been reconstructed as the differences between polytheistic and monotheistic rituals and beliefs. However, a closer look reveals that many central elements of these practices – both ancient and modern – cannot be explained by reference to belief systems. Questions arise as soon as we realize that there are just as many practices in contemporary society that are in obvious contradiction to the belief systems of the actors. The central assumption of the IGS programme is that these rituals are to be taken much more seriously and must be analysed and understood as socio-religious practices, since they establish highly significant and special relationships between the self and the world. The researchers investigate the extent to which, in all these ritual practices, certain persons, objects or places are endowed with a power that sacralises these relationships and makes them resonate.
In the first funding phase, the researchers have initially drawn up an inventory and typology of the most diverse socio-religious practices and the associated patterns of world relations. In a further step, the focus was on analysing the interactions between resonant and non-resonant (‚mute‘) world relations. In the second funding phase, which will now follow, the researchers intend to concentrate on four topics: Repetition, looking at the temporal sequence and change of rituals and the consequences of repetition; second-order resonance, characterised by references to or personal or cultural memory of such experiences; power, agency and resonance, focusing on the question of action and suffering; and the role of objects in establishing lasting relationships.
„Our research approach is intended to enable the analysis of world relations beyond the level of mere worldviews, in order to take appropriate account of the physicality of experience and objects beyond cognitive interpretation,“ explains Prof. Dr. Jörg Rüpke, the project leader on the German side. „Our complex questioning enables a cross-fertilisation based on the understanding of the dependence of culture and religion, the basis for self-understanding and tolerance in contemporary and ancient societies. The combination of micro-studies and large-scale intercultural comparisons promises new insights into historical and contemporary practices and cultural change.“
New Collaborative Research Centre of the Universities of Erfurt and Jena explored the structural change of property
The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding a new major scientific project at the University of Erfurt and the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena: As the DFG announced today, the Collaborative Research Centre/Transregio „Structural Change in Property“ at the two Thuringian universities will be supported with up to ten million euros over the next four years. The consortium brings together researchers from the social sciences, law, economics and history and will begin its work in January 2021.
The report on social inequality, which the international aid organisation Oxfam presents every year, shows a clear trend: while the wealth of some people is growing faster and faster, the vast majority of the world’s population has to get by with less. Currently, 26 billionaires own as much property as the poorer half of all humanity put together. „In view of the immense economic, ecological and technological challenges of our time, however, the concentration of wealth and the resulting property system is proving to be crisis-prone and highly controversial,“ is the assessment of Prof. Dr. Hartmut Rosa. The sociologist, who researches and teaches at the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the University of Erfurt and the University of Jena, is the spokesperson for the new Collaborative Research Centre.
In addition to this redistribution of wealth, completely new questions of ownership arise today, Rosa continues: Who actually owns the sunlight or wind from which energy is generated and sold? Who owns the genetic information of active substance-producing microorganisms or medicinal plants marketed by the pharmaceutical industry? Who can claim intellectual property rights in Wikipedia articles?
The approach of the new Collaborative Research Centre is to systematically analyse these questions and investigate the change in ownership structures. More than 30 experts and their teams from both universities as well as associated partners from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, the Free University of Berlin, the Technical University of Darmstadt and the University of Oldenburg are investigating the structural change of property on two levels: the change in the concept of property itself and the changes in social, political and economic structures caused by property. In addition to Prof. Rosa, the Jena sociologist Prof. Dr. Silke van Dyk and her colleague Prof. Dr. Tilman Reitz are the deputy spokespersons of the consortium.
With the new Collaborative Research Centre, the Universities of Jena and Erfurt are setting further strong accents in their respective research profiles. Under the title „Light, Life, Liberty – Connecting Visions“, the University of Jena is bundling its top-level research, with „Liberty“ bringing together the focal points of the humanities and social sciences, especially topics such as social change, contemporary history and Eastern Europe. The new Collaborative Research Centre strengthens this area with its discussion of the relationship between freedom and property and contributes to the interdisciplinary networking and further development of this profile area. Processes of social change through value and meaning concepts as well as different media and institutions are the subject of the University of Erfurt’s focus areas „Religion – Society – World Relations“ and „Knowledge – Spaces – Media“. Here the Collaborative Research Centre brings a new thematic focus to the field of property.
Ramón Soneira Martínez presents a working paper on „‚Unbelievers‘ in Classical Athens“
This paper summarises some of the main ideas that shape the theoretical terminology of my project. It focuses on the application of the term “unbelief” in Classical Athens reflecting on the establishment of “self-world relations” at that time. This draft belongs to the final chapter of my dissertation (see the table of contents) in which I analyse some of the most relevant sources to study “atheism” in Athens during the second half of the 5th and the first decades of the 4th centuries BCE. The paper is structured in four main sections. The first one deals with Protagoras and his “agnosticism”. The second section reflects on Prodicus’ theory of religion and his connections with the so-called Sisyphus fragment. Thirdly, the paper follows some ideas developed in this fragment that resonates with Democritus’ theology. Finally, the last section focuses on Diagoras of Melos and the relationship between being “atheist” (atheos) and the crime of “impiety” (asebeia). The text concludes with some reflections on unbelief as part of the “religious individuation”.