The research area Synergies aims at establishing a joint terminology that can guide interdisciplinary work as well as building a common theoretical, methodological and normative background.
Against this backdrop, the causes and effects of the conceptual change of political violence will be examined, the affectivity and materiality of violence will be investigated and, lastly, the research will be compiled in a handbook.
Taking a semantic approach to political violence, the work package traces the history of concepts, differentiates central terms to better capture new forms of violence, and takes into account qualitative determinants of political violence. It aims at making visible the causes and effects of language change by means of concept-historical and concept-analytical reconstruction. The work package is coordinated by PRIF.
To what extent can recent research on violence from the social and cultural sciences be opened up for peace and conflict research and made fruitful as a useful complement to theories of violence? These questions are at the center of this work package. Building on the linguistic nature of violence, the project combines a theoretic approach with empirical case studies on violence in Germany in order to investigate the affectivity and materiality of violence as well as the effect of technologies on increasing individual and collective propensity to violence. The work package is coordinated by Philipps University Marburg.