A8: Internationale Organisationen

This project investigates the representations of an increasingly networked world and the associated social orders. In the OAU and UNESCO it examines two communities of states which arose after the Second World War. The project addresses the specific characteristics of representations of states and societies in an intertemporal and intercultural comparison as well as the momentum behind the establishment of institutions and the process by which detachment from the representations of the sending states and societies became visibly more viable.

The sub-project starts with the assumption that in the second half of the 20th century international organisations became new forums for political action, a stage permitting the individual nation-states to test out new forms of external presentation. At an initial analytical level, the representations of the individual-state actors will be examined, with a particular focus on the nation-states’ requirements and strategies for representation. A second level will be concerned with the organisations themselves and their institutional culture. Both the language and symbolism of the representations of statehood negotiated here and the organisation-specific representations of a community of states or imagined world community will be analysed.

We therefore understand these organisations to be neither the totality of their member states nor lone, isolated structures. The project explicitly includes in its analysis the various transfer relationships between the various organisations. Accordingly, a third analytical level focuses on the transfer and circulation of the various representational elements, with more detailed assessment in particular of the dynamics of interaction capable of giving rise to new representations of social and political orders.

The project’s sources are printed materials (speeches, declarations, printed reports from the major conferences) as well as image and film materials. Most of the relevant documents are held in the organisations’ archives in Paris and Addis Ababa.

The planned sub-project combines two areas of research: recent and older research on states and statehood and new research into international organisations and associated research methods from the field of "International History". Through its interest in the history of statehood and supra-statehood, the project undertakes an exemplary analysis of a research topic of European history and global history in terms of its narrowly construed European and also non-European relationships and interconnections. In methodological terms, this project thus represents an explicit attempt at an empirically founded global history.

Publications by members of this sub-project

• Iris Schröder: Welt-Räume. Annäherungen an eine Geschichte der Globalität im 20. Jahrhundert. In: Iris Schröder, Sabine Höhler (Hg): Welt-Räume. 2005. S. 9-47  (mehr)
• Thomas Mergel (Hg): Krisen verstehen. Historische und kulturwissenschaftliche Annäherungen. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2012.  (mehr)
• Michael Pesek: Das Ende eines Kolonialreiches. Ostafrika im Ersten Weltkrieg. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2010.  (mehr)
• Michael Pesek: Praxis und Repräsentation kolonialer Herrschaft: Die Ankunft des Staatssekretärs Dernburg am Hofe Kahigis von Kianja, 1907. In: Susann Baller, Michael Pesek, Ruth Schilling, Ines Stolpe (Hg): Die Ankunft des Anderen. Campus, 2008. S. 199-224  (mehr)
• Michael Pesek: Koloniale Herrschaft in Deutsch-Ostafrika. Expeditionen, Militär und Verwaltung seit 1880. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2008.  (mehr)
• Susann Baller, Michael Pesek, Ruth Schilling, Ines Stolpe (Hg): Die Ankunft des Anderen. Repräsentationen sozialer und politischer Ordnungen in Empfangszeremonien. Campus, 2008.  (mehr)
• Susann Baller, Michael Pesek, Ruth Schilling, Ines Stolpe: Einleitung. In: Susann Baller, Michael Pesek, Ruth Schilling, Ines Stolpe (Hg): Die Ankunft des Anderen. Campus, 2008. S. 11-34  (mehr)
• Michael Pesek: Kleiner Mann auf Reisen. Erich Honecker auf Staatsbesuch in Afrika. In: Susann Baller, Michael Pesek, Ruth Schilling, Ines Stolpe (Hg): Die Ankunft des Anderen. Campus, 2008. S. 106-134  (mehr)
• Michael Pesek: Der Koloniale Körper in der Krise. Koloniale Repräsentationen, Ordnung und gewalt während des Ersten Weltkriegs in Ostafrika, 1914-19. In: Jörg Baberowski, David Feest, Maike Lehmann (Hg): Dem Anderen begegnen. Campus, 2009. (im Druck). S. 59-82  (mehr)
• Michael Pesek: Performing the Metropolitan habitus. Images of European modernity in cross-cultural encounters in 19th century Eastern Africa. In: Vincent Houben, Mona Schrempf (Hg): Figurations of Modernity. Campus, 2008. S. 41-66  (mehr)
• Iris Schröder: Der Beton, die Stadt, die Kunst und die Welt. Der Streit um die Pariser UNESCO-Gebäude.  (mehr)