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Lectures and Discussions
Besides the regular lectures in the InstitutsMontage series, the Hamburg Institute for Social Research also organizes (often in cooperation with other institutional partners) single lectures, special lecture series, panel discussions, or debates. Information on current and past events of this kind is listed here chronologically. For further information see the German webpages.
2012
2011
October - December 2011
Lecture series: Streit ums Politische. Regimes der Leidenschaft
[A Dispute about Politics: Regimes of Passion]
Hamburg Institute for Social Research in collaboration with the Schaubühne Berlin.
If Angela Merkel says she can be liberal, social, or conservative by turns, then in the end it makes no difference what you are. The notion that political controversies can be reduced in the post-ideological age to factual issues raises the question of what political commitment means today. What is the essence of politics that makes political differences possible?
Common references to today’s widespread disenchantment with politics are tantamount to admitting that these are problems outside our comprehension. When we move beyond Carl Schmitt, the question of what is political must be posed anew. Most stock answers, which emphasize how legitimacy is generated by process or how justice is produced by means of standardization, merely obscure the problem. One is dumbstruck when people simply shrug off the issue of political commitment. What can stimulate interest anymore when it comes to politics? What shape can political commitment take in a post-ideological age when political controversies are reduced to factual issues? What defines political differences? In seeking answers, we observe that young people, when surveyed, do not describe themselves as apolitical although they distance themselves from traditional forms of political participation in parties, labor unions, and so forth. If questions go to a deeper level, it becomes apparent that many young people have no idea what it means to be politically active.
The lecture series takes up a current way of thinking in society that makes a sharp distinction between the political and the social. A rigid view of social symmetry may destroy the incentive to uphold political sovereignty. Ineluctable domination, necessary representation, and infinite democracy will be considered as motives for bringing together issues of political commitment and personal existence. What kind of commitment is called for if individuals consider themselves political beings who do not wish to leave public affairs to run their own course?
Curator of the lecture series is Heinz Bude, who is director of the Research Unit: The Society of the Federal Republic of Germany at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and holds a professorship for macro-sociology at the University of Kassel.
27 October 2011
Christoph Möllers: Wir, Ihr oder Sie? Formen und Identifikationen des Politischen
[Us, You, or They? Forms and Identifications of the Political]
3 November 2011
Oliver Marchart: Was ist das Politische? Wo ist Politik? Antworten jenseits von Mao und Bartleby
[What Is Political? Where Are Politics? Answers Beyond Mao and Bartleby]
17 November 2011
Raymond Geuss: Wer das Sagen hat
[The Ones Who Call the Shots]
8 December 2011
Isabelle Graw: Rohstoff Leben. Andy Warhols Factory als biopolitisches Theater
[Resource Life: Andy Warhol’s Factory as Biopolitical Theater]
8 December 2011, Lecture
Michael Ignatieff: "Ill Fares the Land. Was Tony Judt Right about Politics?"
Berlin Collquia Public Lecture; Venue: Einstein Forum Potsdam; Free admission
7 December 2011–1 February 2012, Lecture series
Hamburger Vorträge zu Gewalt und Genozid
[Hamburg Lectures on Violence and Genocide]
29 October 2011, Lecture
Fourth "Nacht des Wissens" [Night of Knowledge] in Hamburg
During the Fourth Night of Knowledge in Hamburg on 29 October 2011, more than 45 universities and institutions of higher learning, research institutes, and other academic institutions in Hamburg, the metropolitan area, and Northern Germany will open their doors to the public from 5 p.m. to midnight for an evening of discovery in Hamburg, a city of knowledge.
13 October 2011, Lecture
Eric D. Weitz: Für wen gelten die Menschenrechte? Ein kritischer Blick auf das Zeitalter der Selbstbestimmung
[To Whom Does the Concept of Human Rights Apply? A Critical Look at the Era of Self-Determination]
We never possess rights solely as individuals—the idea of universal civil rights remains a beautiful dream, not reality.
28 September 2011, Lecture
Bernd Greiner: 9/11. Der Tag, die Angst, die Folgen
[9/11. The Day, the Fear, the Consequences]
What really happened on 11 September 2001? Official investigators and historians have been researching this question for ten years. Nevertheless, conspiracy theories about 9/11 continue to abound.
26 September 2011, Debate
Politische Bildung heute: Wozu, wohin, für wen?
[Civic Education Today: Why, Where to, for Whom?]
11 April 2011, Lecture
Janosch Schobin: Einsamkeit als soziale Tatsache? Thesen zur gesellschaftlichen Dynamik sozialer Isolation
[Loneliness As a Social Fact? Theories on the Societal Dynamics of Social Isolation]
Some people are almost always alone, some have episodes of being alone, and others are never by themselves. Some experience being by themselves as oppressive loneliness while others seek it out as a restorative period of solitude, and many simply ignore it as long as it is of short duration.
January - March 2011
Lecture series: Stuttgart 21 – reflexiv. Gesellschaftstheorie eines lokalen Ereignisses
[Reflections on Stuttgart 21: Social Theory about a Local Event. Lecture series at the Hebbel am Ufer Theater in Berlin]
The protest movement against the rail construction project Stuttgart 21 highlights issues about the current transformation of politics. What does civil turmoil that divides citizens in a key location of Germany’s export-oriented, high-productivity economy tell us about the state of the country? What lessons can be learned about the relationship between political planning, political sentiments in society, and civil disobedience? In examining this current protest movement, critical social theory has focused on how it can be perceived as the latest manifestation of the fundamental contradiction between actual social needs and general economic imperatives that are being negotiated in procedures that abstract from reality.
Moreover, the new generational alliances that are being forged are accompanied by a unique potential for agitation. If this is indeed the case, then we are witnessing, in today’s era of post-politics, the emergence of a new kind of politics that in essence follows a biopolitical grammar for which the existing political system, as a representative expression of the people’s will, has no sensory organ.
13 January 2011
Jens Hacke: Die lange Dauer des technischen Staates. Grenzen einer Legitimation durch Verfahren
[The Persistence of the Technological State: The Limits to Legitimacy through Procedures ]
8 February 2011
Wolfgang Kraushaar: Protest der Privilegierten?Oder: Was ist wirklich neu an den Demonstrationen gegen Stuttgart 21?
[Protest Movement of the Privileged? Or: What Is Really New about the Demonstrations against Stuttgart 21?]
8 March 2011
Aaron Sahr, Philipp Staab: Bahnhof der Leidenschaften - Zur politischen Semantik eines unwahrscheinlichen Ereignisses
[Train Station of Passion: The Political Semantics of an Improbable Event]
14 March 2011
Ulrich Bielefeld: Der Auftritt des Volkes auf der leergeräumten Bühne der Macht
[Enter the People on the Empty Stage of Power]
22 February 2011, Lecture
Herfried Münkler: Spaltet sich die Mitte? Über soziale und politische Stabilität in Deutschland
[Is the Center Splitting Apart? About Social and Political Stability in Germany]
2010
25 November 2010, Debate
"Generation Bund." Zeitzeugengespräch über die Aufbaugenerationen der Bundeswehr
["Generation Bund". A Conversation between Contemporaries about the Founder Generations of the German Bundeswehr]
26 October 2010–5 July 2011, Research Colloquium
"Kulturen des Rechts in Russland" und "Geschichten vom Ende der Sowjetunion"
[Legal Cultures in Russia and Stories on the Fall of the Soviet Union]
April - June 2010
Lecture series: Menschen ohne Papiere. Hamburger Beiträge zur Erforschung irregulärer Migration
[People without Papers: Hamburg Lectures on Irregular Immigration]
Being permitted to leave one’s home country is a human right. Entering another country without permission is considered a crime. Nation-states invest a great deal of time and energy in border controls designed to prevent undesired immigration. But according to some estimates, as many as 3.8 million people without legal status currently live in Europe alone. Irregular immigration is a controversial political issue marked by the conflicting goals of state regulatory policies and human rights. In Hamburg, debate on appropriate responses to irregular immigration was fueled by the study “People without Papers”, published in 2009. This lecture series will present the work of social scientists from the city of Hamburg whose research and publications focus on various aspects of irregular immigration. The series will present work currently in progress, create opportunities for discussion and networking, and offer assessments that will stimulate well-founded political and academic discussion.
All Lectures in German
Venue: Hamburg Institute for Social Research, Mittelweg 36, 20148 Hamburg
Time: 8 pm (doors open at 7:30 pm)
Admission: free
21 April 2010
Dita Vogel: Irreguläre Migration - eine globale Herausforderung
[Irregular Immigration – A Global Challenge]
28 April 2010
Marianne Pieper: Politiken illegalisierter Migrantinnen und Migranten
[The Politics of Illegalized Immigrants]
5 May 2010
Ursula Neumann: Kinder und Jugendliche ohne Papiere
[Children and Youths without Identity Documents]
19 May 2010
Kerrin-Sina Arfsten: Illegale Einwanderer: Feindbild an der US-mexikanischen Grenze
[Illegal Immigrants: Images of the Enemy on the U.S.-Mexican Border]
26 May 2010
Dirk Kohnert: Afrikanische Migranten vor der Festung Europa
[African Immigrants outside Fortress Europe]
2 June 2010
Norbert Cyrus: Grenzen und Alternativen der Migrationskontrolle
[Limits and Alternatives in Controlling Migration]
14 April 2010, Lecture
Hans Peter Dreitzel: Über die Qualen der Einsamkeit und die Freuden des Alleinseins
[On the Anguish of Loneliness and the Pleasures of Solitude]
18 January 2010, Debate
Bürgerliche Integration und gesellschaftlicher Ausschluss
[Bourgeois Integration and Social Exclusion]
3 November 2009–6 July 2010, Research Colloquium
Transnationalität in der Geschichte Osteuropas. Fragen an ein Konzept
[Transnationality in the History of Eastern Europe. Probing a Concept]