Ways of Knowledge. Transregional Studies

«The inter-institutional project “Ways of Knowledge. Transregional Studies” was launched by scholars from a range of different disciplines. Its goal is to use the stock of regionally specific competencies in Berlin’s research landscape for new forms of scholarly exchange in order to try out approaches that focus on processes of transregional and transcultural exchange. The project is funded by the Land (state) of Berlin and receives organizational support from the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

The common research interest of the members is in the circulation of knowledge and cultural transfer processes in the field of tension of mutual relations and interconnection. The emphasis is on non-European societies that have been shaped in respectively specific ways by interaction with Europe and the United States, as well as among each other - and which in turn have also affected the West. In this way, a central dimension of social and cultural globalization comes into view, without reproducing Eurocentric assumptions about the transfer of knowledge.»

Ways of Knowledge. Transregional Studies

Relevant sub projects:
Knowledge Circulation in the Age of Globalization, 18th - 21st Centuries.
Entangled Spaces. Knowledge Movement. Hemispheric Construction

From the project “Knowledge Circulation in the Age of Globalization, 18th - 21st Centuries.”:
«The planned research unit’s main focus will be global knowledge circulation. The growing significance of “knowledge” is not least the result of a diffusion of knowledge and the confrontation of different knowledge orders in the age of globalization. Knowledge migrates, changes, and also changes the societies concerned along the way. Knowledge transfers and structures are of particular significance in constituting dependencies and hierarchies between and within societies. The specific acquirement of knowledge does not occur in a power-free space, but is bound to the inequalities of global order. The ever-tightening cross-linking of different cultural transfer processes shows that it is not possible to assume a specific, central point of reference on the knowledge map; it is also not an unstructured terrain, but is permeated by different asymmetries. This adds unique significance to institutions of knowledge generation and conveyance, as places that balance power claims. One could speak of “entangled knowledge”-of dependencies, of overlaps, and entanglements of modern knowledge orders that cannot be linearly assigned to an origin. Analyzing knowledge circulation is an essential starting point for understanding the dynamic of globalization procedures and the different appropriations of transnational processes.»

From the project “Entangled Spaces. Knowledge Movement. Hemispheric Construction”:
«The construction of spatial and cultural delimitations and entanglement is connected to the establishment of certain knowledge over others and the circulation of knowledge between spaces and cultures. The aim of the research unit presented here is to observe such interrelations between space and knowledge from a specific perspective outside Europe: Latin America. The reason for forming a second research unit within the inter-institutional research group “Ways of Knowledge” lies in the potentials that would come from a better use of the unique Latin America knowledge landscape in Berlin. These would not only effectuate synergy effects between the activities of different academic or non-academic institutions. The planned research unit would also be a requirement, in order to profile the more classical Area Studies by exploring transnational and transcultural relations. Inasmuch, it is not about establishing a new Latin America unit, but about gaining new knowledge on the interwovenness of spatial construction and knowledge processes, and, with that, overcoming the limitations of Eurocentric concepts of knowledge and academic disciplines. By observing Latin America as a multifariously entangled space, as a laboratory of modernity and a generator of knowledge, we will attempt to both “provincialize Europe” (Chakrabarty) and to pluralize the perspectives of knowledge circulation.»