Project management: Prof. Dr. Mamadou Diawara

The project examined the historical development of intellectual property rights in Africa and their implementation by local actors in the context of increasing global mobility. It traced how the legal framework of intellectual property is articulated in the field, how local actors implement these legal norms and how they change when the actors work with them and adapt them to local practices and their interests. The project analyzed the field of tension in which the internationally harmonized legal norms for the protection of intellectual property find themselves when they encounter established local legal forms and the local sense of justice. Specifically, the aim was to find out to what extent the various intellectual property norms (e.g. authors’ rights, copyright, patents, trademark law, folklore, protection of local knowledge) have been able to establish themselves, in which local contexts they begin to play a role, and which complex local networks of relationships are involved that play a role in their more or less successful implementation.

As “products of modernity” or “traveling models”, trademark law and copyright are finding their way into African societies in an ongoing process. In order to understand this process, it is important to examine the conditions of the effectiveness of norms in the reality of social relations. If the rules are perceived as coming from outside, the individual actors follow them only insofar as these rules are of direct benefit to them and demand that the state effectively protect their rights. However, in order to do this, the state would have to rely on their cooperation. At the same time, the representatives of the state do not necessarily follow the rules introduced, as they are also individual actors with their own interests. In this respect, a tension arises that can only develop productively if the actors involved recognize the meaningfulness of the norms. In this respect, the justification narratives associated with the introduction of intellectual property easily come into conflict with the interests and knowledge gap of the actors or appear advantageous to them. By selectively adopting only certain normative components, dynamic, constantly changing normative orders characterized by intrinsic contradictions emerge.

The study was conducted from three perspectives: a diachronic, an actor-centered and a transnational perspective. These three perspectives were developed through literature analysis and, above all, field research on the ground in Africa. Studying the local perspective through “close participation” and interactive interviews enables ethnologists to capture the actors’ point of view, their experience of norms, their motives and the reasons for their actions.

The results of the field research show that the different pre-colonial histories and the colonial and post-colonial governments shaped by certain ideologies have strongly influenced current peculiarities in dealing with cultural assets in the countries studied (Cameroon and Mali). Overall, the results point to a discrepancy between norm and reality (or practice), particularly with regard to different discourses on piracy. They also indicate that the multi-layered experiences of local actors play a significant role. This means that the state can no longer be regarded as a neutral instrument for implementing norms, but that both state and often well-informed local actors act according to their own socially inscribed logics and interests.

The most important events in this project:

Workshop: Mamadou Diawara and Ute Röschenthaler, State regulations and Local Praxis (with young scholars from Africa and Germany), Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, July 14-18 and 27-28, 2014.

Symposium: Who owns the praise? Oral literature, cultural norms and rights in artistic productions in Africa (on the 60th birthday of Mamadou Diawara, organized by Ute Röschenthaler and Matthias Grubera), Lautertal, 9 May 2014.

Conference: How does transnational mobility transform cultural production? Informality and remediation in African popular cultures (organized by Ute Röschenthaler, Alessandro Jedlowski, Patrick Oloko and Ibrahima Wane), Point South in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 4-10 January 2013.

International Conference: Intellectual Property, Normative Orders and Globalization, Part 2, (organized by Mamadou Diawara and Ute Röschenthaler), in cooperation with ZIAF, Forschungskolleg Bad Homburg, 2-4 June 2011.

International Workshop: Intellectual Property, Normative Orders and Globalization (organized by Mamadou Diawara and Ute Röschenthaler), in cooperation with ZIAF, Forschungskolleg Bad Homburg, 2-4 December 2010.

The most important publications in this project:

*Röschenthaler, Ute: “Copying, branding, and the ethical implications of rights in immaterial cultural goods”, in: N. A. Mhiripiri and T. Chari (eds.): Media Law, Ethics, and Policy in the Digital Age, Hershey, Pennsylvania: IGI Global, 2017, pp. 101-121.

*Röschenthaler, Ute and Mamadou Diawara (eds.): Copyright Africa: How Intellectual Property, Media and Markets Transform Immaterial Cultural Goods. Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing, 2016.

Diawara, Mamadou and Ute Röschenthaler (eds.): Competing Norms: State Regulations and Local Practice (Normative Orders vol. 19), Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2016.

*Diawara, Mamadou : “‘La bibliothèque coloniale’, la propriété intellectuelle et la romance du développement en Afrique”, Canadian Journal of African Studies48(3), 2014, pp. 445-461.

Diawara, Mamadou: “Justice in whose name: The domestication of copyright in Sub-Saharan Africa”, in: Gunther Hermann (ed.): Justice and Peace. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Contested Relationship Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus Verlag, 2013, pp. 140-162.

people in this project:

Project management / contact person

Diawara, Mamadou, Prof. Dr.

Project staff

Röschenthaler, Ute, Associate Prof. Dr.

Project management: Prof. Dr. Moritz Epple

The project examines the interplay between formal knowledge and the formulation of normative positions in the European Enlightenment using the French encyclopedist Jean d’Alembert as an example. The aim is to publish an annotated translation of his work “Essai sur les Éléments de Philosophie”, which will include three interpretative essays on the aspects of ‘Natural Science’, ‘Moral Philosophy’ and ‘Epistemology’. The focus of interest is the alliance between the increasingly influential mathematical sciences and the sensualist-materialist epistemological positions of the time on the one hand, and certain political currents of the Enlightenment on the other. For example, in the discussion about which knowledge can claim certainty (certitude), not only is knowledge itself defined, but at the same time any kind of metaphysics is rejected. This not only answers epistemological questions, but also rejects religious and traditional claims to validity. D’Alembert combines this with conclusions about the social order that is based on such knowledge: For him, a radical policy of redistribution follows from the anthropological law of self-preservation of a being dependent on society as long as luxury and poverty coexist in a society.

The study draws a connecting line from epistemological questions and positions to normative, socio-political concepts of order. It thus provides a historical contribution to the understanding of the central justification concepts of equality and justice, which are dealt with in the cluster. The ambivalence contained in these concepts sheds light on normative conflicts that occur in the implementation of concepts of justice.

The essay was translated and annotated in close cooperation with the French editorial team of D’Alembert’s Œuvres and the French research group “Groupe d’Alembert” (Paris Académie des sciences). Knowledge transfers took place at lectures, cooperation and working meetings in Lyon, Paris, Montpellier, Göttingen and in Marseille / Luminy. Christophe Schmit, who spent a month in Frankfurt, was also recruited there. The project work is being carried out by research assistant Dagmar Comtesse, who completed her doctorate in philosophy during the second funding period. Bilingual research assistant Céline Volders is helping with the revision of the translation. The manuscript is currently being finalized and submitted to Meiner-Verlag.

During the second funding period, the working hypothesis that a connection can be developedbetween D’Alembert’s epistemological perspective on formal sciences and his concept of a science moralewas further developed. This connection was developed by Moritz Epple in several lectures and publications on the concept of ‘equality’. In addition, the draft of a larger research project on the political philosophy of the Encyclopédie is emerging from the work on D’Alembert’s practical philosophy. Both interim results draw a connecting line from epistemological questions and positions to normative, socio-political concepts of order.

The results of the project were also presented by Dagmar Comtesse at the congress of the German Society for Philosophy (DGPhil) in Münster in September 2014. The title of the lecture was: “The Political Philosophy of the Encyclopédie.” In October 2017, Dagmar Comtesse will present further results as part of the international conference on the 300th anniversary of D’Alembert at the Université Montpellier. The title of her lecture is: “D’Alembert dans les débats de son temps”.

The most important publications in this project:

Comtesse, Dagmar and Moritz Epple: Jean D’Alembert: Versuch über die Elemente der Philosophie, ed.

Comtesse, Dagmar and Moritz Epple: “Between Appropriation and Rejection: Translating D’Alembert into German”, and “D’Alembert on Translation”, in: A. Guilbaud/C. Schmit (eds.): Tercentenary of Jean Le Rond D’Alembert’s Birth (1717-1783). A Review of the Latest Research, special issue of the Journal Centaurus, ed.

Comtesse, Dagmar: “Religion, Religionskritik, Zivilreligion und Revolution”, in: Franziska Flügel-Martinsen (ed.): Staatsverständnisse in Frankreich, Baden-Baden: Nomos, ed.

*Epple, Moritz: “Ulikhet, grenser og alliansen mellom de lærde og de store: Utidssvarende betraktninger fra en encyclopedist”, in: ARR – Idéhistorisk Tidsskrift 4, 2015, (= Liv, Arr, idéhistorie: Festtidskrift til Espen Schaanning), 2015, pp. 27-49.

Epple, Moritz and Dagmar Comtesse: “Auf dem Weg zu einer Revolution des Geistes? Jean d’Alembert as a test case”, in: A. Fahrmeir and A. Imhausen (eds.): Die Vielfalt normativer Ordnungen: Conflicts and Dynamics in Historical and Ethnological Perspective, Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2013, pp. 21-47.

people in this project:

Project management / contact person

Epple, Moritz, Prof. Dr.

Project staff

Comtesse, Dagmar, Dr.

Project management: Prof. Dr. Andreas Fahrmeir and Prof. Dr. Bernhard Jussen

The project examines how mass-produced media of historical education – schoolbooks, handbooks and textbooks, but also advertising brochures – articulate their narratives through the use of images. The focus of interest is the astonishingly stable continuities of the images used, as well as the strong national differences even in the visualization of shared history. On the one hand, software is being developed to automatically analyze the very extensive historical image database (Paul Warner). On the other hand, the mass image corpus of serial image sources will be qualitatively evaluated (Judith Blume).

Collective identities and their historical narratives of justification and development are shaped to a particular degree by constantly reproduced images or visual themes. Images structure narratives and dominate memory. Thus, the conditions for the emergence and canonization processes of these pictorial narratives are an exposed phenomenon that occurs in almost all societies and allows us to observe the formation and persistence of justification narratives comparatively over the entire period of modernity. A unique feature of this phenomenon, which is as commonplace as it is ubiquitous, is that it still remains largely tied to national frameworks.
The project was mainly supervised by PhD student Judith Blume, who, together with student assistants, processed a stock of around 100,000 illustrations and prepared them for a publicly accessible, web-based database. Her monograph “Knowledge and consumption. Eine Geschichte des Sammelbildalbums 1860-1952” offers the first complete presentation of this material, which is particularly important from a cultural studies perspective. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, she demonstrates methods for researching collective pictorial knowledge. Several state examination theses have been dedicated to the project topic, one of which resulted in another doctoral project (Bramann) dealing with the image programs of textbooks (carried out at the University of Salzburg).

Lively interest from students led to regular courses (Blume, Gorzolla, Jussen) and close exchange with the Georg Eckert Institute for Textbook Research. Together with this institute and the Max Planck Institute for Art History (Bibl. Hertziana), we are currently working on the systematic internationalization of the material base. Important results have been published by the DHM Berlin and presented in public at the DHI Washington, the DHI Paris, in Brandeis and at the IFA of NYU. For the qualitative side of the project, cooperation with authors and subject didactics is actively promoted.
The technical implementation of the software was driven forward by Paul Warner in cooperation with IT specialists from GU. The software will be published at the end of the project in its current state.

With regard to the qualitative results on image corpora, research on illustrated “national histories” as well as advertising picture albums and textbooks has shown that even today’s “European” narratives (for example in transnational textbook projects such as those between France and Germany) still carry on national perspectives to a high degree. Visual narratives remain surprisingly stable even across dramatic political ruptures. This can be exemplified by the illustration of the Carolingian period in history and school textbooks, which is very different in Germany and France, for example.

With regard to the development of the software, a number of problems could be solved, e.g. the compression of images without loss of efficiency in the search, the automated separation of images and texts even with unconventional image shapes and heavily foxed originals of moderate quality, the use of OCR with unconventional sentence types, the combination of different algorithms for automated image comparison and the possibility of systematizing different image types. The integration of machine-learning elements into the image comparison routines, the path to automated face comparisons for portraits or – as a long-term goal – the at least selective crossing of the “semantic barrier” are currently only partially solved.

The most important publications of the project:

Blume, Judith: Knowledge and consumption. A history of the collector’s picture album 1860-1952 Inauguraldissertation, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, 2016.

Jussen, Bernhard: “Toward an Iconology of Historical Research. Approaches to Visual Narratives in Modern Scholarship”, in: C. Caraffa/T. Serene (eds.): The Photographic Archive and the Idea of Nation, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015, pp. 141-166.

Jussen, Bernhard: “Plädoyer für eine Ikonologie der Geschichtswissenschaft. On the pictorial formation of historical thought”, in: H. Locher (ed.): Reinhart Koselleck. Political Iconology. Perspectives on interdisciplinary image research (Transformations of the Visual, publication series of the German Documentation Center for Art History – Image Archive Photo Marburg, vol. 1), Munich/Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2013, pp. 260-279.

Fahrmeir, Andreas and Annette Imhausen (eds.): The diversity of normative orders. Conflicts and dynamics from a historical and ethnological perspective (Normative Orders Vol. 8), Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2013.

Fahrmeir, Andreas: “Zwischen Bronzestatue und Aktionskunst: Bildhafte Inszenierungen adeliger Lebenswelten in England im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert”, in: P. Scholz/J. Süßmann (eds.): Adelsbilder von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart(Historische Zeitschrift, Beiheft 58), Munich/Oldenbourg, 2013, pp. 99-115.

people in this project:

Project management / contact person

Fahrmeir, Andreas, Prof. Dr.

Jussen, Bernhard, Prof. Dr.

Project staff

Blume, Judith, M.A.

Plain, Helene

Schmidl, Petra, Dr.

Warner, Paul

Project management: Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Kohl

Although restitution of looted cultural property already took place on a large scale in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, it was almost a century before the Hague Convention of 1907 internationally outlawed the confiscation of art objects in the event of war. However, it was not until after the Second World War that the view of the illegality of such acts and the necessity of restitution of looted cultural property actually became established in international and private law. With the onset of decolonization, the Hague Convention of 1954 expanded the set of norms for the protection of cultural heritage and was also applied to corresponding processes in the former European colonies in Africa, Asia and Oceania. Since then, post-colonial states have asserted claims relating not only to the restitution of material cultural assets looted and taken out of the country during the colonial era, but also to all objects of cultural and historical significance held in European collections. The restitution claims were generally linked to a revalidation of the objects in question. They now became symbolic carriers of ethnic and national identity (just as they had been in the individual European nation states a good century earlier).

The aim of the project is to investigate how ethnological and archaeological museums in German-speaking countries reacted to repatriation demands from non-European states, which objects they actually returned, the reasons they gave for refusing restitution and the change in meaning of the artifacts in the course of their transfer and the debate surrounding them.

Concrete normative political and cultural conflicts between Western and post-colonial societies can be demonstrated on the basis of the restitution discourse and restitution practice. In the codification of restitution claims under international law, the development of a transnational normative set of rules can be observed in statu nascendi, so to speak. A further conflict of normative orders arises in the practice of restitution, in which the legitimacy of restitution and the concern for the preservation of cultural heritage and artifacts are weighed up.

Following a literature survey, 18 interviews were conducted with senior museum staff and officials. A 50-page results report documents the evaluation. The central research questions of the project have been incorporated into university teaching, events at the Frobenius Institute, academic theses and two dissertation projects. Prof. Justin Richland (Chicago) was invited to report on restitution policy in the USA as part of the Jensen Memorial Lectures.

Although the legitimacy of restitution claims for cultural objects is generally recognized by the relevant decision-makers, there have only been a small number of restitutions in Germany to date (with the exception of human remains). There are doubts as to whether the claims are made exclusively by individuals acting as legitimate representatives of their respective groups, especially as artifacts have reappeared on the international art market shortly after their restitution. More important than the restitutions themselves are the public discussions triggered by the claims, as they draw public attention to the injustice inflicted on the indigenous peoples.

The most important publications in this project:

Kohl, Karl-Heinz: “The ‘native’ returns. With the help of European clichés about ‘natives’, indigenous people have fought for special rights”, in: World Views. Magazine for global development and ecumenical cooperation , 3/2017, S. 12-18.

Fründt, Sarah: “Return logistics – repatriation business. Managing the return of ancestral remains to New Zealand”, in: L.V. Prott, B. Hauser-Schäublin (eds.): Cultural Property and Contested Ownership: The Trafficking of Artefacts and the Quest for Restitution, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016.

Kohl, Karl-Heinz: “Malanggan: Abbild und doppelter Tod”, in: V. Lepper/P. Deuflhard/C. Markschies (eds.): Räume – Bilder – Kulturen (Forschungsberichte der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 36), Berlin/Boston: Walter De Gruyter, 2015, pp. 169-188.

*Kohl, Karl-Heinz: “The Future of Anthropology Lies in its Past”, in: Social Research. An international Quarterly 81 (3), 2014, S. 555-570.

Kohl, Karl-Heinz: “Should ethnology be ashamed? Demands are being made in Berlin that artifacts from indigenous cultures should be omitted from the design of the Humboldt Forum”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 17, 2014, p. N3.

people in this project:

Project management / contact person

Kohl, Karl-Heinz, Prof. Dr.

Project staff

Fründt, Sarah, M.A.

Bird, Vanessa

Project management: Prof. Dr. Hartmut Leppin

The project represents a contribution to the new research focus “Post/Secularism”. The questions raised by the post-secularism debate also appear to be relevant to ancient history, even though the discussion is based on contemporary societies. This is because it reflects the problem of the relationship between religion and the public sphere and its transformation, which has a significance that transcends epochs.
The project continued research by Principal Investigator Hartmut Leppin on the thesis, inspired by the post-secularism debate, that the spread of Christianity generated a neutralization of certain spaces.

The project asked how religious diversity was dealt with in the Roman Empire after Christianity had become a prominent religion that claimed both universal validity and exclusive truth. The question of the role of justificatory narratives in the formation of a new normative order has proven to be extraordinarily fruitful, especially with regard to the significance of Christian narratives for the establishment of an empire that was not foreseen in Christian discourse. Furthermore, the project has contributed to the comparative perspective, in particular to critically reflecting on certain key concepts of the cluster, namely tolerance, recognition and post-secularism.

The work was carried out on the one hand through overarching activities of the project leader, and on the other hand through a series of special studies, partly by the project leader himself and partly by (associated) collaborators. Sophie Röder’s project was the most important of these: it examined the governmental practices of Roman emperors during the years 253-268. The rulers’ reactions to the spread of Christianity were examined on the basis of legislative decrees, which allowed important insights to be gained into the effect of religious diversity on normative orders. The thesis was submitted in January 2017.

Ms. Röder’s research cast doubt on the widespread thesis that decrees by Valerian (253-260) and Gallienus (253-268) triggered the first systematic persecutions of Christians. She was able to convincingly demonstrate that this perspective stems from the Christian tradition of the sources. Particularly important within Hartmut Leppin’s research is the observation that a temporary calm could be achieved through a policy of religious neutralization of certain areas and that in this context justification narratives emerged that to modern ears have the ring of tolerance.

The most important events in this project:

Panel discussion: In the name of God? Monotheism and violence Prof. Dr. Mouhanad Khorchide in conversation with Prof. Dr. Harmut Leppin (in the series Stadtgespräch of the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”), Historisches Museum, Frankfurt am Main, April 19, 2017.

Lecture series: Modelling Transformation (lecture series of the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”), with lectures by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Knöbl, Prof. Dr. Rudolf Stichweh, Prof. Dr. Eva Geulen, Prof. Dr. Andrew Abbott, Prof. Dr. Lorraine Daston, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, summer semester 2016.

Frankfurt-Birmingham Study Day: Contesting the Sacred – Contexts of Greek and Roman Religion, University of Birmingham, December 4, 2015.

International Junior Researcher Workshop: Religious Differentiations in the Transition from the Imperial Period to Late Antiquity, Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, November 29-30, 2013.

The most important publications in this project:

*Leppin, Hartmut: “Christianity and the Discovery of Religious Freedom”, Rechtsgeschichte / Legal History 22, pp. 62-78. (French translation: “Le christianisme et la découverte de la liberté religieuse”, in: T. Itgenshorst and Ph. Le Doze (eds.): La norme sous la République et le Haut-Empire romains (Scripta antiqua 96), Bordeaux, 2017, pp. 217-237.

*Leppin, Hartmut: “Aspects of the Christianization of Foreign Policy in Late Antiquity: The Impact of Religious Universalism”, in: G. Hellmann/A. Fahrmeir/M. Vec (eds.): The Transformation of Foreign Policy. Drawing and Managing Boundaries from Antiquity to the Present Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 105-124.

Leppin, Hartmut: “Religiöse Vielfalt und öffentlicher Raum in der Spätantike”, in: M. Lutz-Bachmann (ed.): Postsäkularismus (Normative Orders vol. 7), Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2015, pp. 335-360.

*Leppin, Hartmut: “Überlegungen zum Umgang mit Anhängern von Bürgerkriegsgegnern in der Spätantike”, in: K. Harter-Uibopuu and F. Mitthof (eds.): Forgive and forget? Amnesty in Antiquity. Contributions to the first Vienna Colloquium on Ancient Legal History (Wiener Kolloquien zur Antiken Rechtsgeschichte 1), Vienna, 2013, pp. 337-358; extended English version: “Coping with the Tyrant’s Faction: Civil War Amnesties and Christian Discourses in the Fourth Century AD”, in: J. Wienand (ed.): Contested Monarchy. Integrating the Roman Empire in the 4th Century AD Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 198-214.

Leppin, Hartmut: “Kaisertum und Christentum in der Spätantike: Überlegungen zu einer unwahrscheinlichen Synthese”, in: A. Fahrmeir and A. Imhausen (eds.): The diversity of normative orders. Conflicts and dynamics from a historical and ethnological perspective (Normative Orders Vol. 8), Frankfurt am Main, Campus, 2013, pp. 197-223.

people in this project:

Project management / contact person

Leppin, Hartmut, Prof. Dr.

Project staff

Röder, Sophie

Project management: Prof. Dr. Dr. Matthias Lutz-Bachmann and Prof. Dr. Thomas Schmidt

In their self-descriptions, secular society and religion are necessarily and constitutively related to each other in such a way that they constitute their counterpart as the Other, to which they simultaneously refer as an indispensable semantic resource and threat to their identity. Every abstract and one-sided attempt to proclaim either the unstoppability of secularization or the indispensability of religion therefore evokes the counter-reaction of the abandonment of this abandonment.

The view that modernization is to be equated with the necessary disappearance of religiosity has been strongly criticized in recent years. However, the denial and relativization of this thesis and the loudly proclaimed “return of religions” (Martin Riesebrodt) has itself been disputed. As early as the 1960s, sociologists of religion criticized the overly narrow theoretical framework of classical secularization theory. Since the nineties of the 20th century, a differently accentuated criticism of the classical secularization thesis has emerged. It is formulated from the perspective of positions that define the “secularization-resistant” significance of religion more in terms of its politically active role and less in terms of its social integration function.

The question of religion therefore not only occupies the philosophy of religion, religious studies or theologies in the present day, but also increasingly political philosophy. This is not only related to political, social or cultural developments in Western societies, which give religion a greater significance in the public sphere than was to be expected in the light of classical secularization theories following Max Weber, but also to changed premises within the debates of philosophy itself.
The first focus of one sub-project was the investigation of the post-secularity thesis. Post-secularism, according to Habermas, is dedicated to the analysis and explanation of the growing awareness in secularized societies today that religion is not disappearing from a society that is continuing to modernize, as the widely held secularization thesis states.
A second focus of this sub-project aimed to examine post-secularism in the context of post-colonial theory. The question here was: How should the theoretical study of religion under conditions of secularization be understood from a postcolonial perspective?
The third sub-project dealt with the challenges that the talk of post-secularity, as understood by Habermas and Taylor, poses for the justification of political orders, i.e. secular, liberal democracies, from the perspective of normative political philosophy.
After reconstructing Habermas’ and Taylor’s conception of post-secularism in the first sub-project, it was then problematized by contrasting these conceptions with Talal Asad’s programmatically different design. In particular, the epistemological dichotomy of secularity/religiousness was reconstructed and critically scrutinized.

In addition, in the second sub-project, the discussion of the question of universalism and particularism with regard to the concept of postsecularism showed that the inter-contextual expansion and application of the concept of postsecularism should be sought at the global level, and not against the background of normative secularization shaped by universalism. The results of the second sub-project were discussed at a highly regarded international workshop entitled “Postsecularism in a Global Context: New Perspectives on the Place of Religion in Postsecular Societies” (Goethe University, September 4-5, 2015), which was attended by representatives from Africa, Central and North America, Asia and Europe. The forthcoming publication of these results will summarize which context-specific experiences contribute to a theoretical engagement with religion in a postcolonial context and what significance they have for politics in a postcolonial context.

In the third sub-project, a position was developed that integrates the question of religiosity and secularity of political interpretations and contributions to the debate into a theory of pluralism that does not select “appropriate” and “inappropriate” interpretations along liberal democratic lines. Without attempting to understand religious patterns of interpretation as “reasonable” or “rational”, the question was posed as to the space that cannot be reduced to reason in the justification of political orders. It was suggested that the question of reason and what cannot be reduced to reason should be formulated in such a way that the question is not about the reasonableness and rationality of beliefs, aesthetic experiences etc., but about whether it can be reasonable to refer to what cannot be reduced to reason when justifying political decisions.

The most important publications in this project:

Lutz-Bachmann, Matthias (ed.): Post-secularism. A discussion of a controversial term (Normative Orders Vol. 12), Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2015.

Lutz-Bachmann, Matthias and Michael Kühnlein (eds.): Missing virtue? On the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre , Berlin: Berlin University Press, 2015.

Schmidt, Thomas and Annette Pitschmann (eds.): Religion and Secularization. An interdisciplinary handbook Stuttgart: Metzler, 2014.

Okeja, Uchenna B.: Normative Justification of a Global Ethic: A Perspective from African Philosophy, Lanham/Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013.

Winandy, Julien: Normativity in conflict. On the relationship between religious convictions and political decisions , Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2013.

people in this project:

Project management / contact person

Lutz-Bachmann, Matthias, Prof. Dr. Dr.

Schmidt, Thomas, Prof. Dr.

Project staff

Okeja, Uchenna, Dr.

Winandy, Julien, Dr. des.

Project management: Prof. Dr. Susanne Schröter

The newly negotiated gender order in post-revolutionary Tunisia was addressed in the research, which was embedded in the focus area “Post/secularism”. Ms. Zayed worked with female parliamentarians from the Islamist Ennahdha party in the National Constituent Assembly and observed decision-making processes. After a long political struggle and dispute, the transformation phase ends with the adoption of the “new” Tunisian constitution of the “second” republic on 26.01.2014.
The Tunisian gender order is defined by traditional customs, religion and seemingly unshakeable hierarchies. In this respect, patriarchal elites are resisting the social change that young people are seeking and demanding. This was the credo of the Tunisian revolution. However, it is an issue that is closely interwoven with questions of law, economics and social policy.
The interviews depicted the current state of affairs with regard to the gender order in Tunisian society. The positioning of the researcher played a central role in this. As a woman wearing a headscarf, Ms. Zayed gained the spontaneous trust of her female counterparts in the Islamist Ennahdha party, who would by no means have given a male researcher comparable open information. As a self-confessed Muslim woman, she also earned the respect of men who did not refuse to answer her questions. However, this access also showed her the limits of her work. The secular-oriented women’s rights activists of the “Association des Femmes Démocrates” refused to answer her scientific questions because they saw the headscarf as a “political symbol”. For this reason, she changed her initially very broad research question and concentrated on the women’s wing of Tunisia’s most prominent Islamist party.
The research shows a rigid understanding of Islam on the part of the women involved and the persistence of traditional role models. It is women who justify the mechanisms of oppression and enforce them on young people. The patriarchal family is regarded as the nucleus of Tunisian society, and the father’s word of power is considered unquestionable by Islamists. Premarital sex among women is a punishable offense, while for men it is seen solely as a peccadillo. The cult of virginity is becoming increasingly grotesque and promotes nothing other than the equally frowned upon anal intercourse of unmarried women as well as medical businesses in Tunisia that produce and insert artificial hymens. Homosexuals have to hide and are prosecuted. Divorced women are stigmatized and branded as difficult to place. In addition, sexual violence is on the rise and is rarely reported because the police almost always blame the victim.
In summary, it can be said that the double standards outlined above pose a serious problem for women. Individual rights that protect women must continue to be enforced in the future, especially against orthodox Muslims and the powerful Salafists.

The project is currently in the phase of writing up the results. The aim is to submit the dissertation at the end of 2017.

Early interim results were published as:

Schröter, Susanne and Sonia Zayed: “Tunisia: From State Feminism to Revolutionary Islamism”, in: S. Schröter (ed.): Gender justice through democratization? Transformations and restorations of gender relations in the Islamic world Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013, pp. 17-44.

people in this project:

Project management / contact person

Schröter, Susanne, Prof. Dr.

Project staff

Hensler, Jonas

Khatib, Hakim

Lang, Sabine, Dr.

Zayed, Sonja

Project management: Prof. Dr. Annette Warner (Imhausen)

The project “Normativity of formal orders and procedures in antiquity – a comparison of mathematical and legal rule systems” is part of a project that aims to cover the period from antiquity (including Egypt and Mesopotamia) to the modern era. Systems of legal norms (constitutions, collections of laws, legal doctrinal texts) and mathematical systems of theorems or rules both represent formal orders whose value in certain perspectives of legal and scientific theory lies precisely in the fact that they possess a high degree of internal coherence, which can enable deductive derivations and, in their application to concrete problems, strive for unambiguous decisions (problem solutions). On both sides, the existence of a formal order is characterized by certain superordinate norms that guide the structure and application of the system of norms or rules (hereinafter: meta-norms).

At first glance, the orientation towards such meta-norms, which underlie a formal understanding of legal and mathematical orders and procedures, is a characteristic feature of a specifically modern understanding of law and mathematics, formulated and founded above all in the first decades of the 20th century in the context of scientific and cultural modernity, on the legal-theoretical side by Hans Kelsen, for example, and on the mathematical side by representatives of ‘modern’ mathematics, among whom David Hilbert achieved an iconic position.

However – and this is the starting point of the present project – a look at very early stages of written legal and mathematical systems and procedures shows that the development of formal orders in these two (and indeed other) areas was a historically early achievement of at least some (if not all) written cultures. The development, but also the historical and cultural variation of those meta-norms that relate to the construction and application of formal orders and procedures in law and mathematics can (and must) therefore be understood as a historical process of the longue durée. The aim of the project presented here is to better understand this process in important phases.

The project examines the normativity of formal orders and procedures using Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hittite, Greek and Roman legal collections and mathematical texts. The rule systems that emerged in the early written cultures provide important insights into the conditions for the normativity and characteristics of the formal, for example on a linguistic level. They force us to reflect on the concepts of coherence and abstraction and allow us to draw conclusions about the validity, recognition and procedural enforcement of norms in pre-modern cultures.

Research into the rules and regulations of early written cultures provides important insights into the conditions for the emergence and acceptance of formally structured systems of norms. The importance of casuistic procedures, regional and temporal influences and the need for consistency and coherence in their logical structure allow important conclusions to be drawn about the nature of regulatory systems, which can also be used in research on more recent and newest developments. Close collaboration with Prof. Moritz Epple and Prof. Guido Pfeifer promoted the discussion of the results across the project.

An initial workshop was held in April 2013 to ensure that researchers could exchange information on the research topic and suitable source material. This prepared the ground for an international conference, which took place in March 2015. The results were discussed at a further workshop in February 2016 and are currently being prepared for publication. The workshop served to further network the individual contributions.

Pre-modern collections of mathematical and legal texts already exhibit specific formal structures. The normativity of these formal structures is already pronounced in the earliest texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia and allows conclusions to be drawn about content-related incisions (cf. e.g. the analysis of the Codex Hammurapi by Jim Ritter and the analysis of the Codex Urnamma by Hans Neumann). Significant differences can be observed between Egypt and Mesopotamia with regard to the inscription of legal texts (Annette Imhausen). On the basis of Hittite (Daliah Bawanypeck), Greek and Roman legal texts (Markus Asper, Peter Gröschler) and texts from Ptolemaic Egypt (Katelijn Vandorpe, Mark Depauw), various ways of generating lasting validity and authority through normativity (linguistic formulation, formulaicity, special design of the written medium) can be demonstrated. Guido Pfeifer demonstrates the use of mathematically specified values in Mesopotamian legal texts as a further link between the two subject areas.

The results of the project will be published in the form of a project volume (publication in preparation). This will be published in the series KEF (Kārum – Emporion – Forum. Beiträge zur Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialgeschichte des östlichen Mittelmeerraums und Altvorderasiens) published by Ugarit-Verlag.

The most important events of the project:

Lectures: Hans Neumann (Münster) and Jim Ritter (Paris), Wissensordnungen im Codex Ur-Namma und im Codex Hammurapi (Wissenschaftshistorisches Kolloquium), Cluster of Excellence “Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, May 10, 2016.

Workshop: The Normativity of formal structures, Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, February 4-5, 2016.

Lecture: Markus Asper (Berlin), On the Authority of Normative Texts. Inscriptional Law and Mathematical Literature in Ancient Greece (Colloquium on the History of Science), Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, December 15, 2015.

International Workshop: Die Normativität formaler Ordnungen und Procededuren in der Antike und im Mittelalter: Mathematische und rechtliche Regelsysteme im Vergleich, Cluster of Excellence “Die Herausbildung Normativer Ordnungen”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, March 17-19, 2015.

Workshop: Normativity of formal structures and procedures in the ancient world. A comparison of mathematical and juridical systems Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, April 11-13, 2013.

people in this project:

Project management / contact person

Warner (Imhausen), Annette, Prof. Dr.

Project staff

Schmidl, Petra, Dr.

Prof. Dr. Susanne Schröter

The research focus of the Cluster Professorship “Anthropology of Colonial and Postcolonial Orders” is on transformations of normative orders in the Islamic world and in countries with numerically strong Muslim minorities. Current developments in the areas of religion, culture and politics are examined from both a diachronic (colonial) and a synchronic (postcolonial) perspective, with theory and empiricism closely interlinked.

Methodologically, ethnographic methods, in particular participant observation, are of particular importance. The regional focus was on Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand), China, Central and South Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iran), the Mediterranean region (Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco) and Western Europe (Germany, England, France and Belgium).

The research was carried out by the holder of the professorship, research assistants and doctoral students, most of whom came from the countries in which the studies were conducted. Through an ongoing series of lectures as well as international workshops and conferences, the framework was also expanded to include case studies from Africa and other Asian countries where no data was collected.

This made it possible to capture changes in normative orders in a global dimension, in which local, national, regional and transnational aspects correspond with each other. Together with colleagues from other EXNO disciplines, the focus on post/secularism was established. The results show that religion is becoming increasingly important as a normative force and that this “return of religion” (Riesebrodt) is strengthening predominantly fundamentalist or even extremist forces.

The Cluster’s research was presented at national and international conferences in cooperation with Hessian ministries (Social Affairs and Integration; Science and Art), the Hessian State Criminal Police Office, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the French and US Consulates General. They led to numerous publications, including two anthologies in the Cluster’s own series published by Campus Verlag. In the area of internationalization, eight dissertations by foreign doctoral students were supervised. In 2014, the “Frankfurt Research Center for Global Islam” (FFGI) was founded at EXNO, which significantly increased the visibility of the research focus and facilitated the transfer of scientific results to politics and society (third mission). Since then, members of the FFGI at EXNO have been asked to give lectures and consultations at schools and youth welfare offices, by judicial, administrative and police institutions and by political parties. Prof. Schröter has been entrusted with honorary tasks in several civil society institutions, including the board of the German Orient Institute, the Hessian Information and Competence Center against Extremism (HKE) and the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ).

The most important publications of this professorship of the Cluster of Excellence:

Schröter, Susanne: “Islamic feminism. National and transnational dimensions”, in: J. Cesari, (ed.), Islam, gender and democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 115-138.

Schröter, Susanne: Being closer to God than your own jugular vein. Pious Muslims in Germany, Frankfurt: Campus, 2016.

Schröter, Susanne/Christoph Günther/Mariella Ourghi/Nina Wiedl: “Dschihadistische Rechtfertigungsnarrative und mögliche Gegennarrative”, in: HSFK-Report 4/2016, Frankfurt am Main.

Schröter, Susanne: “The young savages of the Ummah. Heroic gender constructions in jihadism”, in: Friedensgutachten 2015, Berlin: Lit, 2015, pp. 175-186.

Schröter, Susanne (ed.): Gender justice through democratization? Transformations and restorations of gender relations in the Islamic world, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013.

Schröter, Susanne (ed.): Gender and Islam in Southeast Asia. Women’s rights movements, religious resurgence and local traditions, Leiden: Brill, 2013.

The most important events of this professorship of the Cluster of Excellence:

“Emergence of Islamist Terrorism: The Role of Lawless Spaces and Parallel Societies”, February 3, 2017, Berlin.

“Muslim Youth – Between Integration, Isolation and New Paths”, October 28, 2016, Frankfurt am Main.

“Which Islam belongs to Germany?”, April 29, Frankfurt am Main.

“Islamischer Extremismus: Prävention und Deradikalisierung zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit”, July 3, 2015, Frankfurt am Main.

“Salafism and Jihadism. The dream of the theocracy in the 21st century”, November 28, 2014, Frankfurt am Main.

“Islamism versus Post-Islamism? Mapping topographies of Islamic political and cultural practices and discourses”, December 13 – 15, 2013, Frankfurt am Main.

Prof. Dr. Annette Warner (Imhausen)

The academic focus of the cluster professorship is on two topics: 1) the study of pre-modern science, especially ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian scientific practices and their manifestations; and 2) the historiography of pre-modern, especially early ancient scientific sources.

Normative orders (and their changes) in the field of early science are captured through the analysis of scientific sources, as scientific texts form formally structured systems of norms. The importance of casuistic procedures, regional and temporal influences as well as the necessity of consistency and coherence in their logical structure allow statements to be made about the nature of systems of order, which can also be relevant for research into more recent and newest developments.

The professorship’s research can be roughly divided into three areas:

1) The development of Egyptian mathematics from the invention of the number system to the Greco-Roman period
The development of Egyptian mathematics can be traced over a total period of 3000 years against the background of various social and cultural constellations (publication: Ancient Egyptian Mathematics. A contextual history). This is possible in the greatest detail for the periods from which so-called mathematical texts are available (Middle Kingdom and Greco-Roman period). These can be analyzed as algorithms according to their procedural character (ongoing project).

2) The normativity of formal orders and procedures in antiquity. A comparison of mathematical and legal rule systems
Central cluster project, see report: http://www.normativeorders.net/de/forschung/forschungsprojekte-2012-2017/66-forschung/forschungsprojekte-2012-2017/1316-die-normativitaet-formaler-ordnungen-und-prozeduren-in-der-antike-mathematische-und-rechtliche-regelsysteme-im-vergleich

3.) (Daliah Bawanypeck’s book project) “Mesopotamian Scholars and their Texts – Normative Orders and Cuneiform Knowledge Concepts” (original working title: On the Function of Normative Orders in the Transmission of Knowledge in Mesopotamia)
Daliah Bawanypeck’s book project “Mesopotamian Scholars and their Texts – Normative Orders and Cuneiform Knowledge Concepts” (original working title: On the Function of Normative Orders in the Transmission of Knowledge in Mesopotamia) was continued. The study, which deals with cuneiform knowledge texts, literate experts and the places of knowledge accumulation, aims to illustrate the conditions under which Mesopotamian knowledge cultures were formed, who the knowledge carriers were and which cognitive processes and instruments played a role in the formation, establishment, transmission and development of written knowledge.

The central results can be outlined as follows: In a publication on two workshops from the first term of the cluster, a total of eight case studies from the fields of medicine, magic and ritual, astronomy, mathematics and law were examined to analyze scientific sources in the field of early science. As written knowledge was preserved and passed on in a planned manner in both cultures, the paradigms of institutional knowledge preservation can be reflected in the texts. The case studies offer both overviews of the textual traditions of some fields of knowledge and considerations of particular aspects of certain text corpora.
The monograph on Egyptian mathematics is the first to present a history of Egyptian mathematics, beginning with the invention of the number system and ending with the last indigenous demotic sources. For the description of the individual epochs, Egyptian mathematics was embedded in its social and cultural context in order to better understand the developments.

Following the conference and publication “Writing of Early Scholars in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Rome and Greece”, which dealt with translations of ancient scientific texts, a handbook on translating early scientific texts was compiled and has since been published. Experts from the individual cultures used case studies from the fields of ancient medicine, astronomy, astrology and mathematics to provide concrete examples of how to proceed when translating pre-modern scientific texts. The individual contributions also provide subject-specific references to translation and annotation methods as well as subject-specific overviews of resources to facilitate the translation, understanding and evaluation of existing translations of ancient scientific texts.

The study “Mesopotamian Scholars and their Texts – Normative Orders and Cuneiform Knowledge Concepts” showed that Mesopotamian scholarship was based on procedures and conditions (e.g. systematization of knowledge in the form of lists; hermeneutics based on the functioning of cuneiform writing; bilingual scribal training) that had been in place since the beginning of the invention of writing and had developed further over the course of three millennia.

The most important publications of this professorship of the Cluster of Excellence:

Imhausen, Annette: Ancient Egyptian Mathematics. A Contextual History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Imhausen, Annette & Tanja Pommerening (eds.): Translating Writings of Early Scholars in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece and Rome. Methodological Aspects with Examples (Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 344) , Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016.

Bawanypeck, Daliah & Annette Imhausen (eds.): Traditions of Written Knowledge in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 403),Münster: Ugarit, 2014.

Imhausen, Annette & Tanja Pommerening (eds.): Writings of Early Scholars in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Rome and Greece (Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 286),Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010.

Bawanypeck, Daliah & Annette Imhausen: “Mesopotamia and Egypt”, in: M. Sommer/ S. Müller-Wille/C. Reinhardt (eds.), Handbuch Wissenschaftsgeschichte,Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2017, pp. 108-117.

The most important events and presentations of this professorship of the Cluster of Excellence:

International Conference: Joint Maths Meeting in San Antonio, USA, January 2015.

International Conference: “History of ancient Astronomy and Mathematics” in Xi’an, China, August 23-29, 2015.

Public Lecture: “Schriftentstehung in Ägypten und Mesopotamien”, Goethe Lectures, Offenbach, Germany, October 12, 2015.

2nd annual Huxley Lecture on the History of Mathematics, Maynooth University, Ireland, April 24, 2017.