Research Agenda on Political and Cultural Change

Background

The department’s research in the field of political and cultural change is concentrating on the analysis of social, cultural, and political aspects of Global Environmental Change and Human Development. The disciplinary research is focusing on the governance of social resources and resource transfer. ZEF’s overall understanding of resources encompasses not only the economic or natural dimension, but includes also the social sphere. In every society the production, access and control of social resources (or of social capital) play a crucial role. As social resources we understand knowledge, institutions (rules, norms) and networks of a society. The production, access and control of social resources – in combination with economic and natural resources – are the driving forces for inclusion and exclusion processes – the guiding principle of every society. They are shaping the emergence of identities, power structures or disparities and vice versa. However, social resources do not only shape the communal life, but also the bio-physical environment that enables people to survive. Thus, our research embraces topics such as ‘social security’, ‘livelihood strategies’ and ‘social resilience’.

Additionally, research in the department is focused on the transfer of social resources, which includes a vertical as well as a horizontal dimension. Horizontal transfer of social resources involves all kinds of population movements. Besides migration, forced by natural catastrophes or wars, there are networks of legal labor migration, networks enabling the flow of goods (trade) or of ideas (knowledge). In this context, ZEF’s research addresses cross-boundary networks and migration, which takes place in ecologically and politically vulnerable border regions. The vertical transfer of social resources deals with social stratification and chances for social mobility, e.g. in which context what kind of social resources enable people to improve their livelihoods.

Following this understanding of social resources, ZEFa concentrates on three core research areas:

Institutions and Strategic Groups;
Social and Cultural Diversity;
Knowledge Governance.

Institutions and Strategic Groups

Apart from patterns of power, authority, and collaboration, which are fundamental to governance, a special focus is on the generation, proliferation, evolution, and decay of institutions. Institutions include laws, rules, regulations, norms and values, as well as organizations in which they are implemented. The making, implementation, supervision and enforcing of rules and norms are social processes constituting societies and organizations. Institutions have the potential to reduce or increase the transaction costs of social interaction and define the distributional outcomes of social interaction and resource exploitation.

Especially in developing nation-states, which are often characterized by a great degree of social, political and cultural diversity as well as a limited degree of state hegemony, institutional regimes are often diversified. Here the lack of power, resources and at times political will leads to a situation in which state laws and regulations are paralleled by (neo-) traditional, religious or customary rules, norms and values, remnants of colonial laws and project regulations, which people may equally refer to. On the one hand, this legal pluralism may lead to competition between institutional representatives and create behavioral uncertainty which has the potential to increase conflicts. On the other hand, it creates flexibility and grants local actors more room for maneuver. Given the institutional complexity in the developing world, it becomes clear that careful institutional mapping and institutional analysis is crucial to understand patterns of societal control regarding resource use and resource transfers.

Institutions as the core of governance, defining socially accepted behavior as well as access to resources are frequently debated and contested. Social actors that create, change or ignore institutions directly affect power structures and the distribution of benefits. The key is to identify and analyze the way in which different actors are involved in these processes. Institutional and strategic group analysis, therefore, unravels the ways in which various actors invest their respective bargaining power to shape or ignore institutions in ways that suit their interests.

The focus on institutions as a boundary concept will foster meaningful trans-disciplinary research cooperation. Actor-oriented approaches that focus on the interests of strategic groups and the underlying power structures would enable ZEF to understand the distributional outcomes and social impact of respective institutional arrangements. This would generate narratives for realistic resource management scenarios and would allow cross-checking the likely social and political impacts of different policy options. Qualitative research is combined with quantitative methods that enable the social scientists at ZEF to deliver parameters for a formalized analysis of resource management options that can be combined with the economic and physical modeling approaches developed by colleagues in other departments, as quantified socio-science results provide crucial inputs for the calibration of rule-based multiple agent and economic optimization models.

Social and Cultural Diversity

In governing social resources, one is directly confronted with the complexity of diverse social and cultural patterns. Any attempts to regulate or even control communal or societal entities have to cope with diverging social and cultural norms, values, and identities. Over the last two centuries, efforts to establish governance structures while maintaining a balance between diversity and homogenization are based on two meta-narratives: the establishment and spread of the nation state and globalization.

Many nation states endeavor to diminish the cultural and social diversity on their own territory by political and economic integration and homogenization. The definition of ‘national’ cultural and social categories has become an effective means to simplify governance and to exercise power. Additionally, by imposing certain cultural and social norms governments have not only created effective instruments for resource allocation, but established certain cultural icons or even fetish for the nation-building process. However, the forced imposition of cultural norms and values caused some of the most protracted and violent wars during the last hundred years from the Second World War up to recent wars in the Balkans, Caucasus, or Darfur.

The current move towards globalization seems to be a governance strategy which also leads to the homogenization of cultural and social norms and values. While globalization opens – in competition with the nation-state – a new avenue for cultural and social diversity on the one hand, cultural and social patterns, which hamper the integration of global markets are homogenized on the other hand. Thus the global development of the metropolitan city and its uniform cultural and social codes has led to a retreat of diversity that stands in the way of global markets, worldwide conglomerates and the need of effective governance. Furthermore, industrialization and the extension of global markets may have led to a loss of diversity with regard to locally available livelihood strategies.

Cultural and social homogenization attempts may ease governmental control but could lead to the suppression of various parts of the population, which do not meet national or global standards. However, the great potential of cultural and social diversity is rarely taken into consideration. Especially sustainable livelihood and resilience strategies are often depending on cultural and socio-economic structures, which are threatened by globalization. The imposition of national or global standards and policies often leads to a loss of highly adapted socio-economic strategies and therefore increases the vulnerability of the respective population.

ZEFa research focuses on the impacts, which development policies and globalization have on cultural and social diversity and the livelihood strategies, social resilience, and vulnerability of local populations. It also aims to assess the importance of diversity, and to develop ideas of how governance of diversity can work and under which conditions it is possible to maintain cultural and social diversity in today’s world.

Knowledge Governance

Knowledge is a major factor of development. Many governments have embarked on a development strategy that hopes to create a knowledge-based economy and a knowledge society. Though there is increasing attention given to this topic the contours of a knowledge-based strategy for development are still hazy. In particular, we still need to investigate which policies are most suitable for developing regions with divergent endowment of natural and human resources. The creation of a knowledge system requires not only a backbone of ICT (information and communication technology) but also an appropriate institutional framework and a vibrant epistemic culture of knowledge creation.

The increased value of knowledge for development may also induce the appropriation, monopolization, and control of knowledge production through strategic groups. Knowledge is increasingly becoming a strategic resource for development, but also for the accumulation of private wealth. Development knowledge is becoming a valuable source of power, which raises the necessity to examine its impact on social mobility and social stratification. A polycentric competitive system of knowledge creation, utilization, and dissemination requires coordination between public administration, private companies, and civil society organizations.

The field of knowledge governance increasingly requires the attention of ZEF researchers. Knowledge on natural and human resources is created through research, including the trans-disciplinary projects of ZEF itself. The transfer of this knowledge has to be embedded in social structural, cultural, and institutional environment in order to achieve effective dissemination and adoption of research results (“Bridging research and practice”). The typical adopters are government agencies, private firms, civil society organizations, and the population at large. Channels of knowledge dissemination have to be researched, demand for specific pieces of information has to be ascertained and the local adaptation of global expert knowledge has to be studied. Decision support systems aiming to use knowledge for development, including poverty reduction, health care and improved livelihood strategies will have to take local knowledge into account.

Our research is geographically focused on:
Central Asia (mainly Uzbekistan and Afghanistan),
South- and Southeast Asia (mainly India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam),
West-Africa (Ghana and Burkina-Faso),
East Africa (Ethiopia).

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