Glocal Junctions

Research department V studies conflict and peace processes in glocal situations. Research focuses on the complex entangle­ments in which intert­wined local, regional, and global life-­worlds and action constellations recreate each other – and often with the effect of friction. Grounded in practice-­theoretical approaches, the research department examines the political rationalities that arise in glocal situations and theaters of action: How do frag­mented and yet glocally inter­woven spheres of action influence political strife or violent conflicts? What impact do normative concepts such as legitimacy, modernity, or appropriate crisis inter­ventions render on real disputes in specific settings? How is access to globality or locality produced or prevented through concrete everyday actions? Methodo­logically the department’s focus on “large issues, explored in small places” prioritises inductive research to reconstruct social experiences and everyday rationality in observable theatres of action.
In line with PRIF’s research program Coercion and Peace (2018), depart­ment V first asks how actors generate, respond to, and transform coercion in glocal situations, and then how, as a global-­local mechanism, coercion shapes political conflicts, especially the possibility of transforming conflict peacefully. Coercion is not to be understood as just a regulatory means used by actors since coercion requires social legitimacy: Subjects and societies are hence not just audiences but are also actors who validate the (re-)­production of social and political ways of regulation. The department places particular attention to this meaning of social arenas as places where coercive practices are constituted, safe­­guarded, and legitimized.