
This programme area examines how social groups, movements, and networks create, represent, and challenge state and society in their respective regional contexts. In particular, it seeks to explore the factors that contribute to the transformation of social orders. The programme area emphasizes historical analysis, even if it is fundamentally interdisciplinary in nature.
Two research perspectives are at the centre of the discussion: one, a bottom-up perspective which pays attention to local practices and interpretations, and two, the role of memory and memory-culture in the constitution and contestation of social orders.
The first perspective focuses on local ideas of the state, statehood, and other institutional forms of social and political order, some of which differed greatly from the ideas of centralized state or international actors. The focus is less on discourse analysis than on concrete practices that shape relationships between different groups and between these groups and the state. The translocal approach enables the programme area to understand processes of constitution and disruption of states, nations, and other social and political groups and orders.
Memory and the culture of remembrance enables to explore the wider forms of social engagement with the state, both at the time of constitution of and contestation over state practices as well as retrospectively. The memory of successful, or retrospectively idealized or failed communities or states will play just as important a role as the memory of experienced or perceived (in)justice. Researchers explore how memory is activated to achieve political or civil society mobilization, which in turn is linked to questions that are central to local practices of state functioning and legitimation of a particular social order.
The twin approach helps connect larger group projects with individual ones to develop a productive dialogue within the programme area.