Field of Focus III – Thematic Research Network Rethinking Environmental Change
Project leaders: PD Dr. Friederike Reents, Prof. Dr. André Butz, Prof. Dr. Robert Folger, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Gerhard, Prof. Dr. Frank Keppler, Prof. Dr. Barbara Mittler, Dr. Jacqueline Lorenzen
Contact: PD Dr. Friederike Reents
Under the impression of an omnipresent global environmental crisis as a major social and ecological change, the TRN is concerned with the transdisciplinary understanding of temporally and regionally different descriptions of this catastrophic situation as well as the identification and use of possible action resulting from rethinking. The network thus makes it its task to analyze the global environmental crisis and its impact on individuals and society in the transdisciplinary dialogue between humanities, social and natural sciences.
The already triggered or to be expected regional and global changes require a new perspective on the relationship between humans and the environment – in other words, a comprehensive and interdisciplinary view. How can radical changes in past and present environmental conditions bring about rethinking and encourage action? How are natural and social sciences studies of the environmental crisis related to each other? By means of a complementary historical-cultural science dimension, diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities of the environmental crisis can be grasped in order to make new perspectives on possible courses of action visible.
The work of the network on the environmental change will be carried out in two closely interlinked macro-areas that arise from existing research foci and projects:
In Area A, “Change: Crisis/Catastrophe/Apocalypse,” the aim is to investigate, in a transdisciplinary discussion, how historical and current (environmental) critical situations are received, processed, and contextualized in different regional and cultural contexts and in different scientific disciplines. To be analysed are the criteria of an environmental crisis or change which lead to its perception as an upheaval.
The area B “Rethinking: (Great) Transformation and Responsibility” examines currently emerging global environmental movements striving for sustainability and cultural change as well as their historical precursors. Fields of research in the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences are brought together in a transdisciplinary dialogue and in consideration of how to deal with historical environmental changes in order to make the need for joint action apparent. Through this transdisciplinary dialogue, a better understanding of the conditions of acceptance (or rejection) of change and transformation can be created.