Ringvorlesung "Demokratisierung und Machtstrukturen"

Spätestens seit den 1960er Jahren haben liberale Werte, wie die gleichberechtigte Teilhabe aller in verschiedenen sozialen, politischen, kulturellen Sphären und die Selbstbestimmung und Freiheit der Einzelnen, einen zentralen Stellenwert im gesellschaftlichen Selbstverständnis demokratischer Staaten erlangt. Zu beobachten ist eine zunehmende Abflachung offensichtlicher sozialer Hierarchien sowie die Entmarginalisierung von Randgruppen im öffentlichen Diskurs – Entwicklungen, die mit dem Begriff der „Demokratisierung“ umschrieben werden können. Jedoch erscheinen diese Tendenzen häufig begleitet von neuen, oft verdeckten Machthierarchien.

Im Rahmen des kollaborativen interdiziplinären Forschungsprojekts „Demokratisierung und Machtstrukturen“ untersuchen Wissenschaftler*innen der Universität Bonn gemeinsam mit internationalen Kooperationspartner*innen, wie Gesellschaften im 21. Jahrhundert soziale, politische, kulturelle und ökonomische Machtstrukturen verhandeln und wie sich die Verschiebungen in den sozialen Ökologien dieser Gesellschaften in deren sprachlichen, diskursiven, ästhetischen und sozialen Formen niederschlagen. In der Ringvorlesung präsentieren beteiligte Forscher*innen erste Ergebnisse und laden zur öffentlichen Diskussion der Thematik ein.

Das Projekt "Demokratisierung und Machtstrukturen" wird gefördert vom Transdisziplinären Forschungsbereich 'Individuen, Institutionen und Gesellschaften' (TRA4).

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At least since the 1960s, liberal values, such as the equal participation of everyone in various social, political and cultural spheres and the self-determination and freedom of the individual, have gained a central place in the social self-image of democratic states. We can observe an increasing flattening of obvious social hierarchies as well as the de-marginalisation of various groups in public discourse - developments that can be described with the term "democratisation". However, these tendencies often appear accompanied by new, often hidden, power hierarchies.

Within the framework of the collaborative interdisciplinary research project "Democratisation and Power Structures", researchers from the University of Bonn together with international cooperation partners are investigating how societies in the 21st century negotiate social, political, cultural and economic power structures and how the shifts in the social ecologies of these societies are reflected in their linguistic, discursive, aesthetic and social forms. In the lecture series, participating researchers will present their initial findings and invite public discussion of the topic.

The project "Democratisation and Power Structures" is funded by the Transdisciplinary Research Area 'Individuals, Institutions and Societies' (TRA4).

Programm/Programme:

-- Die Ringvorlesung wird live bei Zoom übertragen. Bei Interesse, wenden Sie sich für den Zoom-Link bitte an: lets[at]uni-bonn.de --

-- The lecture series will be live-streamed over Zoom. If interested, please contact lets[at]uni-bonn.de for the Zoom-Link --

Svenja Kranich & Hanna Bruns (University of Bonn)

English Linguistics

Introduction: Democratization and power structures – outline of a research agenda

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The second part of the lecture will give insights into our own contribution to this complex agenda and present two empirical case studies on changes in language use in the U.S., Great Britain, India and Germany, that provides some evidence for changes in the conceptualization of social hierarchies and power relations between speakers in different roles.

Rudolf Stichweh & Evelyn Moser (Universität Bonn, Forum Internationale Wissenschaft)

Soziologie, Politik, Demokratieforschung

Macht und Demokratie in den Funktionssystemen der Weltgesellschaft: Kunst, Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft

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Der Vortrag verknüpft die Frage nach der gesellschaftsweiten (über die Politik hinausreichenden) Bedeutung von Demokratie und Macht mit der Diagnose der funktionalen Differenzierung der Gesellschaft als der primären Differenzierungsform der Weltgesellschaft. Unter diesen Voraussetzungen ist die zentrale Frage: Welche Rolle spielen diese beiden Leitbegriffe moderner politischer Systeme in den radikal different verfassten Problemwelten der Kunst, der Wissenschaft und der Wirtschaft? Der Vortrag stellt eingangs die beiden Leitbegriffe Demokratie und Macht vor. Im zweiten Schritt skizziert er den strukturellen und semantischen Raum der vier Funktionssysteme, mit denen wir es zu tun haben. Schließlich – und das wird der Hauptteil des Vortrags sein – werden die drei Teilprojekte, auf die das Projekt sich in seiner Arbeit konzentrieren möchte, explorativ diskutiert: „Demokratie und Kapitalismus“; „Demokratie und die epistemischen Communities der Wissenschaft“; „Demokratie und die Positionen der Kunst“. In allen drei Fällen wird es um Analoga und Spielformen von Demokratie gehen, weiterhin wird es in allen drei Fällen um die Formen gehen, in denen in ausdifferenzierten, nichtpolitischen Funktionssystemen Chancen für Machtgebrauch und mit Macht ausgestattete Positionen entstehen. Die Beziehungen zwischen den Funktionssystemen, die dabei sichtbar werden, erlauben ein Bild von der Dichte der Vernetzungen in der modernen Gesellschaft.

Evelyn Moser ist seit 2014 wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Abteilung Demokratieforschung des Forum Internationale Wissenschaft. Buchpublikationen: ‚Postsowjetische Transformationen in der Weltgesellschaft. Politische Dezentralisierung und wirtschaftliche Differenzierung im ländlichen Russland“, Transcript 2015 (OA); zusammen mit A.L. Ahlers, D. Krichewsky, R. Stichweh, Democratic and Authoritarian Political Systems in 21st Century World Society, Vol. 1, Transcript 2021 (OA).

Rudolf Stichweh ist Seniorprofessor am Forum Internationale Wissenschaft und am Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. Buchpublikationen: Inklusion und Exklusion. Studien zur Gesellschaftstheorie, Transcript 2016; Functional Differentiation of Society, Transcript, Herbst 2022.

Britta Hartmann (Universität Bonn)

Medienwissenschaft

Videoaktivismus: Filmtechnologien, ästhetische Strategien, politische Interventionen

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Videos in Sozialen Medien haben sich zu mächtigen Mitteln der politischen Auseinandersetzung etwa um Menschenrechte, Migration, Umweltzerstörung oder Kriegsverbrechen entwickelt. Als eine Form vernetzter Bildpraktiken zielen sie strategisch darauf, Visionen der politischen Teilhabe zu gestalten, Kritik an bestehenden Herrschaftsverhältnissen zu üben, politische Gemeinschaften zu bilden und hegemoniale Öffentlichkeiten zu transformieren.
Aktivistische Medienpraktiken vollziehen sich dabei im Spannungsfeld von (Selbst-)Ermächtigung und der Erfahrung struktureller Ohnmacht. So ermöglichen kommerzielle Apps wie TikTok oder Instagram einerseits die technisch niedrigschwellige Herstellung von Videos, die zur Verbreitung politischer Botschaften und weiterer Vernetzung beitragen. Andererseits konzentriert die gegenwärtige Plattformökonomie Macht in den Händen einiger weniger Konzerne und unterliegt den weiter gefassten Strukturen des Überwachungskapitalismus oder autoritärer Staatlichkeit wie derzeit in Russland, das die westlichen Plattformen kurzerhand gesperrt hat.
Anhand von ausgewählten Beispielen zielt der Vortrag darauf, das Spektrum des Videoaktivismus abzustecken und die technologischen Voraussetzungen, die ästhetischen und kommunikativen Strategien der Gestaltung und Verbreitung von Social Web-Videos darzulegen. Aus aktuellem Anlass soll ein Fokus auf dem Ukraine-Krieg liegen und der Rolle von TikTok als einer in diesem Konflikt zentralen Kommunikationsplattformen, auf der Informationen und Zeugenschaftsberichte, Falschmeldungen, emotionale Appelle an die Weltöffentlichkeit und Propaganda gleichermaßen geteilt werden.

Prof. Dr. Britta Hartmann ist Professorin für Filmwissenschaft und Audiovisuelle Medienkulturen an der Universität Bonn. Sie forscht derzeit in einem von der VolkswagenStiftung geförderten Projekt zu "Aufmerksamkeitsstrategien des Videoaktivismus" sowie im Rahmen eines Collaborative Research Grant mit der Hebrew University of Jerusalem zu "TikTok Activism and Identity Struggles in Entangled Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, and German Contexts".

-- Please note that this talk takes place online, via Zoom. If you are interested in joining, please send an email to lets[at]uni-bonn.de and we will send you the link to join! --

Stephen Bates (University of Birmingham)

Political Science

What roles do MPs play and why do they play them? A latent class analysis of parliamentary activity in the UK House of Commons, 2001-2019

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The roles that politicians play and what factors hinder or facilitate role incumbency have consequences for how well parliaments and individual parliamentarians are able to undertake their representation, oversight and policy-making functions. Work on parliamentary roles, especially in the UK case, has tended to start by interviewing MPs. We take here a different approach by using latent class analysis to analyse parliamentary activity of all backbench MPs (n=2,133) in the UK House of Commons between 2001 and 2019. We seek to identify the backbench parliamentary roles present within the chamber and to explain MPs’ incumbencies within particular roles through recourse to a series of variables concerning MPs’ backgrounds and experience, constituency information, and broader political contextual data. In this way, we wish to shed light on how and why Westminster’s World has changed and, perhaps, whether it was ever thus.

Stephen Bates is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Birmingham and is co-convenor of the Parliaments Specialist Group of the UK Political Studies Association. His work is mainly concerned with parliamentary roles and parliamentary committees. He is currently a Parliamentary Academic Fellow in the UK Parliament.

Imke Lichterfeld (University of Bonn)

English Literature and Theatre

The glass ceiling and marginalisation – Marginalisation in performance

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“If we want to reflect the society in which we live we need to allow other voices to be heard, other stories to be told.“ This profession on casting of formerly marginalised groups in the theatre was announced by Gregory Doran, the Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He assembled a diverse, inclusive ensemble that presented “a massive crack in the glass ceiling”, the imagined threshold of traditionally white male castings.
Professed colour-conscious and gender-conscious casting can highlight this. What about people with different health issues recognised as disabilities? The representation of the population on stage expands opportunities for contemporary actors and directors. Changes from conservative casting concepts demonstrate different facets of social, cultural, and gender issues. Of course, these are political and raise questions of agency and empowerment. This talk will dissect some opportunities given through these choices.

Dr. Imke Lichterfeld is a lecturer of English Literature at Bonn University. Her research predominantly focuses on early modern English drama, and she has published various articles on Shakespeare and a monograph on revenge tragedy.
Currently, she holds a position as Studies Coordinator at the Department of English, American and Celtic Studies at the University of Bonn.

Daniela Pirrazzini, Karolina Küsters & Silvia Sommella (Unversity of Bonn, Università degli Studi di Firenze)

Romanistik, Sprachwissenschaft

PRIMA INTER PARES - Eine neue Form der Demokratisierung?

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Der Vortrag hebt die gesellschaftliche Relevanz von mentalen Modellen der Macht und ihren sprachlichen Realisierungen innerhalb einer Sprachgemeinschaft aus linguistischer Perspektive hervor. Dies soll zunächst anhand des Paritätsdiskurses – genauer betrachtet anhand des Motivs prima inter pares (dt. Erste unter Gleichen) – veranschaulicht werden. Die zentrale Fragestellung lautet, inwiefern mentale Modelle der Macht, die unsere abendländische Soziokultur prägen, dazu beitragen, das Konzept der Parität als konstitutives Element der Demokratie zu betrachten. Auch die konstruktive Wechselwirkung zwischen mentalen Modellen und ihren analogen Begriffsfeldern in einer Einzelsprache (hier v.a. dem Italienischen, Französischen und Deutschen) werden betrachtet.

Darauffolgend wird der Vortrag auch ausblickhaft auf ein weiteres Teilprojekt eingehen, das sich mit einem stark von mentalen Modellen der Macht geprägten Diskurs beschäftigt: dem Sicherheitsdiskurs. Hierbei wird eine erste exemplarische Vergleichsstudie vorgestellt. Diese widmet sich vor allem folgenden Fragen: Werden Sicherheit und Freiheit innerhalb eines mentalen Machtmodells als gegensätzliche oder zusammengehörige Begriffe wahrgenommen? Wie werden sie konzeptualisiert und welche Akteur:innen werden ihnen zugesprochen? Wie verhält sich der Sicherheitsdiskurs in Bezug zu anderen Diskursen wie dem der Parität, der Migration und innerhalb weiterer relevanter Diskursüberschneidungen?

Stefano Boni (Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia)

Anthropology

Horizontal and vertical politics: A visual and anthropological approach

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The presentation focuses on two spatial dichotomies to illustrate recurrent forms of political arrangements. The first dichotomy is visible in horizontal and vertical organizations: a horizontal and circular disposition of bodies is associated to equality of value and power dispersion among participants; on the contrary, the choreographic vertical elevation of leaders expresses inequality and power concentration. The second dichotomy, characteristic of vertical organizations, distinguishes those who stand above from those below. A visual and cross-cultural approach is used to illustrate the nuances that the organizational models present throughout human history (the visual material is available at Le figure del potere (eleuthera.it) ). The anthropological analysis raises crucial questions on current forms of political organizations: What are the assumptions behind different spatial arrangements? Can horizontal and vertical forms co-exist? What happens when those who stand above are brought down? The subversion of verticality consists in its elimination or in turning the order upside-down?

Stefano Boni is professore associato at the University of Modena e Reggio Emilia (Italy) where he teaches political anthropology. He conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana, Italy and Venezuela on political institutions and rituals; power dynamics within assemblies; grass-root mobilizations and social movements.

Elisabeth Reber (University of Bonn)

English Linguistics

On democratization and change in institutional power discourse

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Democratization has been described as the “reduction of overt markers of power asymmetry” (Fairclough 1992: 98). Reber (2021) has studied how practices of quoting serve to (de)construct power at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), a parliamentary session with the Prime Minister at the British House of Commons, and how these practices have changed between 1978-2013. The aims of this paper are twofold: 1) I show how changing practices of quoting at PMQs can be related to democratization and argue that democratization may be linked to personalization. 2) Looking at another type of institutional discourse, I present first steps into a new project on United States Supreme Court Opinions, which explores how power asymmetries are created from the early 20th century to today through linguistic and discursive practices.

References
Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity.
Reber, Elisabeth. 2021. Quoting in Parliamentary Question Time. Exploring recent change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Elisabeth Reber is a Replacement Professor for Applied English Linguistics, University of Bonn and a Senior Lecturer, University of Würzburg (on leave). Her current research interests include Institutional Discourse, Diachronic Interactional Sociolinguistics, and Historical Linguistics. With Cornelia Gerhardt, she was the director of the scientific network “Multimodality and Embodied Interaction” (DFG, 2012-2019).

Simone Knewitz (University of Bonn)

North American Studies

Who’s afraid of “Critical Race Theory”? (White) identity politics and the contemporary US culture wars

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On September 2, 2020, journalist and activist Christopher Rufo appeared on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight to warn conservative America about an “existential threat to the United States” that had “infiltrated the Federal Government” and other crucial institutions: “critical race theory.” Progressive activists, Rufo claimed, were trying to “indoctrinate” and “re-educate” Americans by instilling in them the belief that they lived in a white supremacist society. Critical Race Theory originally emerged as an academic concept within critical legal studies in the 1990s; recently, the political right has seized the term as a buzzword that only bears scant relation to that academic framework. Yet, the discourse around “critical race theory” not only allows conservative political actors to rhetorically position the white nation as marginalized and threatened; Rufo’s activism also sparked an immediate executive order by the Trump administration that prohibited federal contractors to conduct antibias trainings (reversed by Biden) and has found its way into bills introduced in state legislatures across the country. School boards in red states have begun to ban books from curricula, including Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus.
This talk will trace the “career” of the term “critical race theory” and the discourse it has generated to shed light on how the power of language is deployed within the culture wars around identity politics in the United States. It highlights “critical race theory” as a paradigmatic example of a larger conservative strategy to appropriate and reframe concepts of the political left in order to secure power. Situating the debate on “critical race theory” within the contemporary discourse on racism in the US, the presentation seeks to raise the question of why this strategy is successful and whether it exposes flaws in progressive ideas about race and (anti-)racism.

Simone Knewitz is Senior Lecturer in the North American Studies Program at the University of Bonn and one of the initiators of the project “Democratization and Power Structures.” She is the author of The Politics of Private Property: Contested Claims to Ownership in US Cultural Discourse (Lexington Books, 2021). Her current research focuses on discourses and representations of whiteness in 21st century culture.

Francesca Santulli & Dora Renna (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)

International Studies, Linguistics

Audiovisual representations of the Chinese minority in the US: A diachronical approach

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The ability of cinema to shape individual and public imagery has long been discussed across disciplines (Fluck 2003; Gallese & Guerra 2020), and it is especially complex when power relations among different ethno-linguistic groups are at stake. On the one hand, when a majority group represents a minority, it is common to have representations that can be defined as ethnotypes, a fictional rationalisation of difference (van Doorslaer et al. 2016). On the other hand, when the members of a minority reclaim representativity and become involved in the creative process of filmmaking, their challenge would be to cater to both majority and minority expectations (Morrison 1992). In both cases, films are cultural representations where characters are diegetic devices functional to reinforcing or subverting the existing social hierarchies (Ramos Pinto & Mubaraki 2020).
With such premises, this lecture sets out to explore, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the linguistic and multimodal dimensions of the cinematic representation of the Chinese American diaspora in the United States. More specifically, we will use a discursive and linguistic approach (Wodak & Meyer 2001; Wodak & Chilton 2005; Antelmi 2012; Maingueneau 2014) to investigate diachronically the figure of the male hero from the Chinese diaspora through examples taken from films distant in time. This may suggest ways in which cinematic discourse practices reflect and shape power relations in society (Bateman 2017; Feng 2002).

References
Antelmi, D. (2012). Comunicazione e analisi del discorso. Torino: UTET.
Bateman, J. (2017). Critical Discourse Analysis and Film. In J. Flowerdew, & J. Richardson, The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (p. 41). London: Routledge.
Feng, P. X. (2002). Identities in Motion: Asian American Film and Video. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Fluck, W. (2003). Film and Memory. In U. J. Hebel, Sites of Memory in American Literatures and Cultures (pp. 213-229). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter.
Gallese, V., & Guerra, M. (2020). The Empathic Screen. Cinema and Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Maingueneau, D. (2014). Discours et analyse du discours. Une introduction. Paris: Armand Colin.
Morrison, T. (1992). Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Ramos Pinto, S., & Mubaraki, A. (2020). Multimodal Corpus Analysis of Subtitling: The Case of Non-standard Varieties. Target: International Journal of Translation Studies 32 (3), 389-419.
van Doorslaer, L., Flynn, P., & Leersen, J. (2016). Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Wodak, R., & Chilton, P. (2005). A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2001). Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage.

Francesca Santulli is Full Professor of Linguistics at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. Her research has focused on various aspects of language and linguistics. She has published books and numerous papers on language change, translation, interlinguistics, pragmatics, rhetoric and discourse analysis.

Dora Renna is a postdoctoral researcher at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her main research interests are: English language and linguistics, corpus linguistics, multimodality, language variation, discourse analysis, audiovisual translation, ESP and pragmatics.

Anita Fetzer (Augsburg University)

English Linguistics

‘Hi folks, Boris Johnson here, taking a moment to wish you all a merry little Christmas’: The discursive construction of ordinariness in political discourse

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This paper examines the discursive construction of ordinariness in the context of British political discourse. The analysis focuses on politicians assigning ordinary-life experience the status of an object of discourse, and on their ‘doing ordinariness’ in the mediated political arena. To bring ordinary-life experience into discourse, politicians may use quotations, sometimes embedded in small stories, and to ‘do ordinariness’ they may use colloquial language. The paper shows that the discursive construction of moments of ordinary-life experience in a non-ordinary-life context is done strategically to align with the audience as a whole or with particular sub-groups. ‘Doing ordinariness’ in a non-ordinary context is done with the use of ordinary-life anchored concepts, such as ‘people’, not talking about ‘government’ any longer but rather of ‘the people’s government’.

Anita Fetzer is a professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Augsburg, Germany. Her research interests focus on pragmatics, discourse analysis and functional grammar. She has had a series of articles published on context, political discourse, discourse relations, and the communicative act of rejection.
Anita is editor of the book series Pragmatics & Beyond: New Series (John Benjamins). She is a member of several editorial boards, including Functions of Language and Journal of Pragmatics.

Poster/Flyer (klicken um Vollversionen zu sehen/click to view full versions):

Bei Rückfragen zur Ringvorlesung, wenden Sie sich bitte an: lets[at]uni-bonn.de