Project Area B

TP B01 || Antje Flüchter / Christina Brauner
Order in diversity: Practices of comparison in intercultural jurisdiction (17th – 19th century)

Focusing on jurisdiction in early modern contact zones, this project is studying how practices of comparison functioned in cultural contact situations, how they changed, and how they were appropriated by different actors. The field of jurisdiction can provide particularly strong insights into the interdependencies between practices of comparison and social dynamics in, for example the formation of new groups through religious conversion and mixed marriages. Two case studies will be carried out: one in Pondichéry in India and the other in Elmina in today’s Ghana.

TP B02 || Olaf Kaltmeier / Wilfried Raussert
Modernity between ‘indigeneity’ and ‘blackness’: Inter-American practices of comparison in the fields of cultural production, social sciences, and politics

The subproject is exploring newly emerging practices of comparison related to identity politics in the fields of cultural production, social sciences, and politics in the Americas during the early decades of the twentieth century. The project is primarily concerned with second-order comparisons. The following questions are central: Which comparative regards are being used to compare individuals and communities? Which different ways of comparison lead to the emergence of incommensurabilties or to the merging together of the similarities and differences that surface within the comparative practices into a coherent overall picture, namely into a complex tertium comparationis based on either ‘indigeneity’ or ‘blackness’?

TP B03 || Kirsten Kramer / Walter Erhart
Comparing and knowing the world: European world travel narratives from the eighteenth to the twentieth century

The project is addressing practices of comparison in non-fictional and fictional European world travel narratives from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. World travel can be seen as a medium in which practices of comparing – ranging from comparative sciences around 1800 to fictitious accounts of world travel in avant-garde literature – produce and negotiate extensive knowledge about the world as a whole. Their documentary, narrative, and aesthetic representations aim to provide frames of cultural orientation while simultaneously exposing the disturbing dynamics of an ever-changing modern world.

TP B04 || Raimund Schulz
Comparisons in the ethnographic thinking of the ancient world: The Greeks (seventh century BC – first century AD)

This project aims to explore the role of comparison within the ethnographic perceptions of the ancient world. It is assumed that strategies of comparison generally emerge from an interplay of specific dispositions in the observers, a shift in foreign affairs, and changing public expectations. Accordingly, the main problem is to reveal how strategies of comparison responded to such configurations along with how they influenced ethnographic as well as other academic fields and made a major contribution to understanding a changing world.

TP B05 || Ralf Schneider / Markus Hartner
Literary comparisons: Social dynamics and the eighteenth-century British novel

The British novel was an important factor in the public negotiation of cultural change during the eighteenth century. In particular, explicit and implicit literary comparisons between characters on the levels of both content and narrative form played an important role by evoking, commenting on, and evaluating contemporary social practices of comparison. Thus, the novel did not merely document social change, but creatively explored aspects and criteria of comparison within British society – an exploration that fed back into social discourse. The project is investigating this intersection of literary and social practices of comparison against the backdrop of historical processes of modernization in the 18th century.

TP B06 || Ulrike Davy
Eliminating racial discrimination: The legal response of the community of states to exclusionary practices of comparison

The project is investigating the emergence of the international norms to combat racial discrimination (International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination 1965) and how they are interpreted by the committee monitoring their implementation. The project argues that the main goal of these norms is to delegitimize certain practices of comparison. The project also argues that the committee employs comparison-based tests when tracing racial discrimination. Finally, the project is developing a theoretical framework for comparison-based tests for identifying racial discrimination.