The Bonn Handbook of Globality

The original meaning of “aesthetics”—sensitivity—has, for centuries, tended to be narrowed down to only pleasurable impressions, excluding “terrible beauty” (the frightening, shocking, and alienating). Moreover, it has tended to be reduced to European standards of beauty or deformity. This reduction in popular usage is, however, misleading, rendering us blind to the fact that aesthetics has always been, not least due to increasing doubts about the viability of neo-Platonic kalokagathia and increasing cultural contacts with non-European aesthetics from classical antiquity (Egypt, Phoenicia, Persia, etc.) via the Middle Ages (Muslim Arabia) and Preromanticism (Arabia, Persia, India, China, etc.) to the present day. Globalization has, so far, continued and intensified a long-running development: the ongoing provocation of comfort by estrangement, of the ever changing Self by the ever intruding Other.

This essay considers changes in the field of archaeology as it is practiced in the Middle East today; impacted by global processes, the participation of local scholars in making alternative narratives about the past; and a renewed ethical sense in the way the past and archaeological sites are treated. The Global turn has impacted archaeology most in its scale of analysis and cultural points of reference: (1) rejecting simple, linear progression in sociocultural change; (2) in the conviction that ethical scholarly inquiry can no longer privilege the West; (3) the rejection of strictly defined cultural categories; and (4) recognizing the importance of local perspectives and local voices (reflecting the tensions between “global and local” in the Age of Globalization). Three concepts that form the foundation of archaeological theory are problematized in this way: the efficacy of a cultural materialist approach to understanding identity, periodization, and identifying the primary movers of sociocultural change.

“Art” is a unifying concept for the entirety of various arts that are dedicated to representing aesthetic themes or artistically designing objects; thus, it addresses both the intellect and the affinity for creative work. The concept of art, which is never static but rather always changing, is part of a European history of ideas and the result of a history of discourse among all the actors who are involved in art (especially artists, customers, the audience, art dealers, historians, scholars, and curators). It is also associated with a work concept that refers to production and the product as the result of a creative act, both materially (the object) and ephemerally (the action). One fundamental question is whether art is attributed to a religious or a secular context, even if both must be seen in many cultures as an indissoluble unit and Western distinctions do not apply. Art as a form of global interaction can be understood as a product of practical and intellectual encounters. Following the geopolitical shift, the locations of art multiplied—institutionalized through worldwide biennials and art fairs. Such new forums for negotiating the concept of art may be bound by location and time, but they demonstrate—independently from the old, Western art scene—a new mapping of the globally expanded practice of art. Within the global context, art is a kind of cultural distinction.

In western art and culture, “beauty” was long considered to be the decisive goal of human creativity. In precisely the same way, the connections between the concepts of “beautiful,” “good” and “true” were part of the core of Western educational concepts—just as their deconstruction or rejection is inscribed in the DNA of European concepts of the Modern. The worldwide diffusion of what people perceived to be “modern” or “art” could serve as a case study for Europe’s contribution to globalization: having long been identified with “Western,” the concept of “modern” also came to be equated with “progressive.”The dismantling of this hegemony and these prejudices, the revision of Western concepts is one positive effect of globalization. In light of the increasing commercialization of every aspect of life and the proliferation of aggressive consumer marketing, it is not surprising that nowadays, the worldwide “ideal of beauty” is still determined by Western fashion and cosmetic companies. But non-Western artists in particular reflect on the saturation of their living environments by Western ideals of consumption and marketing. Artists and art-historians worldwide work at larger and broader ideas and concepts of art and “beauty”, which are outside the limitations of national specifications or conventions and of the laws of commodification.

The concept of culture is inherently linked to the concept of change, as the human ability to create and maintain individual or shared identities depends on the ability to adapt to changing ecological and social environments. While it is generally accepted that triggers for cultural change are manifold and lead to very different developments, there is no consensus on the appraisal of cultural change. Since the eighteenth century, cultural change has been related to the idea of progress in Western thinking, resulting in the formulation of four logical positions towards the direction of cultural change: optimism (from good to better), secondary optimism (from bad to good), pessimism (from good to bad), or secondary pessimism (from bad to worse). From the 1960s, Cultural Studies have stressed cultural change as an opportunity to remove social and cultural deficits, whereas Culture and Development Theory questions the preponderance of Western thinking and encourages the introduction of indigenous, premodern, pluralistic, and participatory forms of culture into the global mainstream. In premodern East Asia, culture was seen as a force to change individuals and groups according to the prevalent Chinese model, which was, however, replaced by the Western model during the nineteenth century. While nowadays slogans such as “hybridization” or “McDonaldization” are used to describe the effects of cultural globalization, methodological and theoretical tools for the analysis of cultural change beneath the tip of the cultural “iceberg” are still lacking.

Cultural Memory, a concept and term coined by German Egyptologist Jan Assmann to analyze “the textuality of the past” (memory, historical consciousness, identity, and culture), can be described as “the individual storage of texts, images and rites that are meant for reuse related to various societies and epochs”. By cultivating this storage, Cultural Memory ensures cultural tradition and “stabilizes its self-image and conveys a collectively shared knowledge.”The recognition of globality is, for each cultural group, linked to the challenge of relating their cultural memory to the global community of solidarity. The continuing revision of cultural identity and belonging serves as a basis for the continuous cultural dynamics between cultural particularism and cosmopolitanism, homogenization, and pluralization. In this regard, cultural education participates in the cultural memory of humanity and obliges it to create the future of globality by being aware of the knowledge of diverse cultural traditions.

In its most general sense, culture refers to the sum of all products of human activity. Human beings shape pre-existing things, produce innovations as part of their collective way of life, and transmit them to the next generation. In contrast to other primates, humans are biologically dependent on culture. ‘A culture’ most usually is used to describe the way of life of a group that is different from that of another (national, religious, language, spatial) group. Whereas culture is seen holistically as an encompassing phenomenon in anthropology, in the humanities it is mostly conceived as a component or functional subsystem in the social sciences. In current global interactions, culture is often used as an economic asset and as a political means to include and exclude people or ideas. With a concept of culture that focuses more on commonalities than difference, we could empirically find a common humanity within the diversity of cultures.

For a general definition of “dance,” it is advisable to confine oneself to the physical components, to the human body, and to space and time alone. The manifoldness and the variable cultural entanglements of “dance”—especially the dividing line drawn between the categories “ballet” and “dance”—defy any further definitional trial to give a very general functional outline. However, scholars like Curt Sachs and Joann Kealiinohomoku furthered the idea that all the phenomena of dance could be studied and interpreted by means of one consistent approach (informed by ethnology), no longer admitting western (high) culture a special status. Concepts like “Globalism and Dance” (Barbara Browning) or “Worlding Dance” (Susan Leigh Foster) have followed in this path. Recently, dance studies are confronted with the contexts of social media, video games, and a more and more differentiated leisure culture, in which dance becomes a medium for transnational forms of socialization. At the same time, traditional dance forms are incorporated in UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage and thereby redefined as global common property.

The history of film is marked by its origin from photography and specifically chronophotography. But its genuine career started as a popular mass media of public projections of moving images in film theaters. The first center of film production, Hollywood, is just typical for the double influence of national and international elements: the interest of creating the ideal of America and the immigrant status of the producers. Hollywood thus represented for the whole history of film as an international cultural phenomenon a menace of national hegemony. The ongoing demarcation of local signifiers in globalized movie narration implicates a confrontation with the regionality of national counter-tendencies which often end up in a kind of hybridization of transcultural elements (such as Bollywood).

Myths are stories which reduce complexity and naturalize the diversity of historical events. With the development of the critical consciousness, linked to historical thinking during the Enlightenment, the traditional myths are consequently rejected. But the yearning for a reduction of the contingency of everyday human life, which is impossible to comprehend with pure reason, does not disappear. In light of these considerations based on fundamental anthropological need, numerous romantic authors developed the concept of a new mythology. Myths which go back to the origin and take place in founding contexts have been repeatedly considered as particularly important. This chapter shows how such myths attribute meaning to give a basis to social communities in modern and postmodern times.

As prehistoric cave paintings indicate, the image is one of the oldest human cultural techniques. It would appear to be found in all human cultures in various forms and plays a crucial role in many religions. But although it is ubiquitous, its forms and practices can change considerably from culture to culture. These differences should be taken into account when speaking about the image in global terms. Especially forms like the tattoo, calligraphy, and the mask are marginal in “western” culture but central to other traditions and cultures of the image.

The cultural turn of the 1980s led to a kind of self-sociologicization in many areas of the former ‘liberal arts and humanities’ (Geisteswissenschaften) and, particularly, in the (ancient) philologies. The findings of the so-called cultural studies will, however, only be met with a weary smile by genuine sociologists. One superficial paradigm shift is followed by another, each producing new, arbitrary descriptions lacking any standard of relevance—descriptions whose regulatory idea is a vague notion of diversity. The corresponding self-inflicted marginalization of cultural studies can only be rectified by an epistemological break from the dominant, simplistic, symbolic-interactionist notion of culture. The hypocritical notion of critique in cultural studies must undergo a transcendental critique that undoes the dedifferentiation of the concepts ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’. By this way, the futile ‘cultural studies’ will become a future ‘science of culture’.

This chapter sketches the genealogy of the modern concept of literature as imaginative fiction. It retraces its origins in the European enlightenment and points to the fact that, from the beginning, this notion of literature-as-art was systematically related to the concept of national literature. Literature was seen to be national in its primary alignment; the international dimension of literary communication, as codified by Goethe’s concept of ‘world literature,’ played a secondary role. This chapter proceeds to demonstrate, first, how the European concept of literature was globalized in the wake of Western colonial and imperial rule; second, how it has been transformed, on its part, as a result of recent processes of economic, political, cultural and communicative globalization. This transformation is shown to have taken place on three different levels: (1) the level of literary institutions; (2) the level of literary forms, techniques and topics; and (3) the conceptual level (the concept of ‘world literature’ progressively giving way to ‘global literature’).

Although the genesis of the term goes back to the ancient world, the present age can be named the ‘museum epoch’. This chapter considers the genesis of the museum as an institution and as a term, starting in antiquity. The museum experienced its first globalization in the sixteenth century. While museum strategies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were oriented towards cultural differentiation, after World War II, the museum became a mass medium. This chapter explores the changing configurations of this institution from its beginning and since that moment, as an instrument of economic growth, as a player in the art market and as a place for corporate representations, in Europe and beyond. In Europe, the ethnological museums became re-conceptualized as national projects. This process is related to debates on objects and collections, on the relationship between art and ethnology and on new forms of collaborative curating and exhibiting with source communities. But still, museums can also be seen as places of criticism and of social imagination, to give globalism a new meaning.

Until well into the second half of the twentieth century, attempts to define ‘music’ were shaped by the vanishing point of a European/‘Western’ understanding of music. For some time, however, a clear, self-imposed reticence towards attempting a scientific definition of music can be recognized. Such problematizing approaches correspond with a growing awareness that the concept of music has, over the course of history and in diverse cultural contexts, demarcated a constantly changing range of phenomena. These insights lend weight to the concept of ‘world music’ and, in the further course of globalization und digitization, to new exchange processes, which no longer necessarily depend on western production and distribution infrastructures. As a result, ‘music’ emerges, at least in part, from the contribution of local practices into globally networked processes of musical interaction.

Narration, the telling of stories, is and has always been a universal, world-spanning phenomenon, “a panglobal fact of culture”. Instead of describing a “global turn” of narration, this chapter focuses on the pronounced interest in narration within a multitude of academic disciplines since the 1990s, which understand narration as an anthropologically determined and global form of perceiving and knowing the world and the self. It further goes into the resulting approaches for the analysis of narration within the field of cultural narratology, and, finally, considers transcultural narratology, which examines the question of how meaning is narratively produced and constructed in different cultures and which values are attached to it.

The reception of classical Greek and Latin culture has been an important aspect of Western civilization since antiquity itself. This tradition has undergone a number of challenges and transformations: the conquests of Alexander the Great and the adoption of Greek culture in Rome provided a first step towards a globalized civilization; the reception of classical culture in the Renaissance coincided with European expansion and colonialism and thus spread classical traditions to many parts of the world. Contemporary globalization has provided new challenges and has brought competing classical traditions into focus; nevertheless, antiquity remains a major component of European identity.

Theater is a universal form of human expression: somebody transforming him/herself into somebody else for an onlooking audience. From its archaic origin in ritual and cult and its earliest written form in Greek drama, community formation was perhaps its most essential function. This chapter sketches developments from its Greek beginnings (still influential today) through to the transformation into the “national theater” of modern Europe to the present state of a transnational and transcultural opening. It addresses the problem of breaking the restrictions of homogeneous (national) language and culture codes and points at the chances offered by an emphasis on the “performative,” in particular on the foregrounding of the living body and human’s existential rootedness against an increasing virtual reality created by the modern media. A “global” theater may be conceived not only as protest against the traditional (European) Bildungstheater and a modification of Enlightenment universalism, but as a conflicting negotiation of heterogeneity and an assertion of our common physical rootedness.

Tradition should be conceived as the inheritance of all the thoughts, values, techniques, customs, languages, and arts of a people that are stored in its cultural memory. As cultures have always changed with unavoidable contact with other groups, the popular usage of “traditional” or “historical” as the alleged contrary of “modern” is misleading, suggesting something purely national versus impure contamination—or something old, dying, or dead versus something innovative and vital. Tradition, however, is, like all history, an ongoing process of transmission and transformation, from the earliest recorded times to the present day. This is best researched in the case of the Classical Tradition of Greece and Rome, which has left its imprint on modern European culture, enriched by the classical traditions of non-European peoples (as in numerous translations of non-European texts and the earliest travelogues from Turkey, China, India, Persia, etc.). Here again, globalization continues and intensifies long-standing developments in a dialogue of giving and receiving.

The contribution is based on a sketch of the conceptual history of travel and its technical and infrastructural framework. It then argues that not before the mass media of the nineteenth century, especially newspapers and popular journals, is traveling is displayed as a cause and effect of globalization. Two consequences of global travelling popularized by mass media are analyzed: (1) the ubiquity of comparison (Nietzsche), which integrates the experience of otherness generated by travels into narratives of progress and primitive backwardness; (2) the enormous importance of the phenomenon of lost and missing persons. It appears in literary, scientific and media history, and as a legal problem. It refers to the disturbances and interruptions of world traffic and thus paradoxically demonstrates the increasingly dense and close network of globalization.

Though based on the historic interaction between Atlantic peoples, the Atlantic Civilization only became a reality after World War II with the East West conflict. It comprised a liberal economic order and democratic states, most of which were linked together in a military alliance and led by the United States. The system is now severely challenged by consequences of globalization and a revival of geopolitics, in particular Russia’s intervention in the Ukraine as well as terrorism and the rise of populism. Its future depends on successfully dealing with the new threats to its central values.

Globalization as transboundary interconnection is a process of juridification, which has left many traces in national constitutional doctrine and culture. The constitutional jurisprudence of the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) has always secured the permeability of the national legal order into the international sphere. Nonetheless, national constitutions remain the vital anchorage of liberty in the vortex of globalization. Globalization’s impact remains ambivalent: On the one hand, globalization tears down barriers and facilitates transboundary exercise of freedom, and fundamental rights standards amalgamate. On the other hand, globalization can also be a threat to fundamental rights. Deformalized globalization can hamper democratic self-determination. For example, courts of law assume a pivotal part of the responsibilities in international law-making, which formerly rested with the political organs of government und the legislative branch.

Democracy is one of the key terms of the globality debate, highlighting an old concept that is still captivating. In a global context, substantial differences appear between different systems in various countries that show diverse shapes in organizing democracies. Especially, the vulnerability of democratic processes to fall prey to populist agitators seems particularly high in a globalized world where the relationship and interaction between and within the political, social, and economic fields appear ever more opaque and complex. The democratic model is without doubt susceptible to criticism. Technological and communicative processes across the globe, as, for example, the means provided by Web 2.0, have an increasing impact on the constitution of modern democracies. Compared to nondemocratic and authoritarian regimes, democracy still seems to be the appropriate political model also for the globalized world.

The relevance of contemporary dictatorships as a political-social model of governance is in the political and actual power they possess, despite numerous democratization waves over the past decades. It is important to differentiate between democracy transition states and dictatorships based on ideology or religion. Democracies with their “path dependencies,” their numerous veto players, and their naturally slow decision making processes are put under pressure on a global level by the “modern” fast governance of the twenty-first century. Additionally, doubts remain about the extent to which democracy and economic prosperity (will) continue to be so tightly interwoven as has been the case in past decades. Dictatorship is by no means a historical relic. It represents a pernicious force on the global level and has proven to be more durable and sometimes more economically efficient, than many scholars expected. After all, on a global level, it seems to be more attractive than the west would like to see.

“Diplomacy” has been subject to a constant process of change since negotiations, and mediations have been documented starting about 2500 BC. As a system of state relationships with permanent representations, diplomatic laws, and generally binding modes of behavior, diplomacy is a phenomenon of Early Modern Europe. However, the “transformation of the world” in the nineteenth century eventually ended the dominance of the existing Europe-centered diplomatic system. While the bipolar world after 1945 initially seemed to be a golden era for traditional diplomacy, this notion seems doubtful today. But as long as there is nothing like a world government and as long as post-national ideas—which some observers have long been heralding—are only visible in a few selected European countries, even a global world will not reject diplomacy as a sober mediating instance.

Every democracy is based on the national people as the sole subject of political and democratic legitimation. The demos is the chore condition for democracy. In the near future, however, an increasingly differentiated and complex system of international relations will develop as a consequence of the rapid process of globalization. In addition to the further existing and possibly developing states with limited ability to act, even more new—regional and global—international organizations, communities, and better integrated unions of states will be created. These associations of states need democratic legitimation but cannot generate it themselves. It is imperative to establish a sufficiently democratic level of legitimation for these international organizations under the new circumstances. To provide them with a solid foundation of democratic legitimacy, the democratic potential of the nations—their demos—is still needed.

The rise of the empire as a focus of academic interest was a reaction to a previous boom of scholarly investigations into nationalism. Conducted against the background of the birth of a number of new states in Southeastern and Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world, this led to ethnocentric interpretations of history. The “imperial turn” reflected a desire to counteract the teleology of a national approach. At the same time, the growing international economic, social, and cultural interconnectedness led historians to investigate processes and phenomena beyond, and oblique to, national boundaries. Transnational history looks at nonnational agents like NGOs or commercial enterprises, perceiving people not primarily as members of a particular national community but through other aspects of their identity: as migrants or tourists, as artists, as students, or as missionaries. In this context, the study of empires is understood as part of a conceptual history of the present which concentrates on transnational and transcultural processes of exchange and hybridization. The growing interest in the history of multinational empires arises from the insight that empires were transnational agglomerations of power that advanced cultural exchange and economic interdependence and channeled migration flows: and as such were decisive agents in shaping the conditions of a globalized world.

The original link between the mythical figure of Europe and the continent is speculative. During long periods, “Europe” was far from being the essential designation for the geographic and cultural space the term refers to at the present time. Neither the Roman Empire nor medieval Christianity considered themselves as essentially European. Nevertheless, partisans of European unity tend to project their ideal into a distant past, thus creating a teleological narrative with the EU as the coronation of history starting in Ancient Greece. The period after World War II saw the final decline of a European domination that had reached its apogee in the colonial empires of the late nineteenth century. Independence movements referred to European values as a means of furthering decolonization. In a postcolonial context, “provincializing Europe” (Dipesh Chakrabarty) remains one of the most important intellectual challenges.

Different forms of federalism go back to Greek antiquity and developed in Europe in the Middle Ages. The first evolution of a federation into a state took place in Switzerland and by the independent declaration of colonies in North America. Federal states are characterized by a balancing of the interests of member states, as well as the instrument used to maintain the balance of power. Today federalism, federations, and regional integration are global phenomena. The modern concept of federalism is associated with very different typologies, which reveal structural and systemic differences. There are tensions not only between centralizing federal states but also when one or several states exercise significant economic, territorial, or population-related dominance over the other member states. Regional economic organizations imply tendencies of regional federalization being associated with the globalization of trade and the financial relationships between the states.

The terminological understanding and concepts of government, to govern, and governance have undergone a significant evolution in recent decades. Most notable has been a shift away from focusing on the institution of “government” to instead assessing “governance.” Rather than portraying the act of governing as one of a sovereign entity presiding over the governed and shaping public life with a multitude of tools, modern interpretations of governance acknowledge the restraints governmental actors and institutions face in a complex, multilayered, and globalized environment. Political steering at the hands of a government now requires interactions and cooperation both with an increasing number of other public as well as private actors, as an accelerated globalization has frequently left national borders virtually obsolete. Whether the democratic standards of the domestic sphere can be replicated in the international realm to ensure continued democratic governance remains a topic of contention.

If one looks at the specifically European understanding of normativity, a history of law emerges, which developed with the passing on of written characters from Mesopotamia via Egypt, Greece, and Rome. This European understanding is shaped in particular by the interlinking of normativity with notions of justice, especially by the Early Church. It was only with the development of world trade in modern times that this conception of law—as an argumentative structure, rather than as a concrete stock of norms—spread throughout the world.

The monopoly on the use of force, significantly shaped by Max Weber, generally refers to the state monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force—a crucial characteristic of the modern territorial state. The acceptance of the state’s monopoly on the use of force by a private person is based on their expectation that the state authority seems to be prepared and capable to guarantee the minimum amount of safety and to realize the equal enjoyment of these safety benefits for everyone. In today’s world, the exclusivity of the monopoly of force is often challenged, given the phenomenon of failed states, organized crime in metropolises, privatization in the defense sector, etc. Hence, the model of the territorial state based on sovereignty and the monopoly on the use of force which has been globally implemented needs to be redefined under international law in order to adapt to the present circumstances and political realities in our current framework.

The nation is a very old European concept that found its modern expression in the eighteenth century. Its global influence made it one of the most successful European ideas that have ever existed. Today, virtually all states of the world refer to themselves as nation states. During its global success story starting with the American Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, the concept underwent important changes, involving the integration of non-European traditions often reinterpreted within the framework of national imagery. After World War II, nationalism became an important weapon in the struggle for independence that transformed European colonies into independent states. In postcolonial societies, the use of European or Western strategies of nation-building often proved unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, the nation still remains one of the most powerful ideas structuring political life throughout the world.

One may choose a broad or a narrow concept of peace. Here, the narrow concept of peace as the absence of war is advocated. On the one hand, the risk of war results from the anarchical order of power or the resulting security dilemma. Its prominent solution is “peace by strength” or “security by superiority”. Unfortunately, this reinforces the dilemma instead of overcoming it. That is why great power politics tends to be a tragedy. On the other hand, territorial delimitation or border issues play a major role. Because of rising economic development, the loss of strength gradient has lost some of its importance. Waging war against distant adversaries has become ever easier. But capitalist economic development and globalization can also contribute to pacification. There is something like a capitalist peace which depends on free trade, the avoidance of state-owned enterprises, and the avoidance of protectionism. Moreover, capitalism promotes prosperity and democracy which pacifies relations between democracies.

Most historians who analyze globalization swear by structural and qualitative methods. Rightly so. But their studies should be supplemented by a comparative analysis of political leaders who have made the twentieth century a place of unique well-being on the one hand and a slaughterhouse on the other. The following essay recalls several types of top-ranking political players: monarchs, revolutionaries who became founders of respectable new states or of monstrous tyrannies, military dictators, fighters for freedom, saviors of the endangered democracies, and charismatic spiritual leaders. The most gratifying positive stimuli but also the most hideous atrocities have been the result of policies of leaders of the dominant great powers. To a large extent, their incompatible concepts have shaped the history of globalization in the twentieth century with long-distance effects into our own age.

Power (Macht) and domination (Herrschaft) have shaped human societies all throughout history. Hardly any historical study of cultures goes without reference to these terms, besides they are the underlying parameters of nearly all research, even if not explicitly verbalized. Still, the theoretical discussion has not led to generally accepted results. What is more, the theories must persist in the context of the very complex process of globalization that needs to be explained. The further discussion on power will show if the multiplicity of theoretical concepts enhances or rather hinders knowledge. Therefore, power and domination have to be studied from a consistently transcultural perspective. Not only historical or political science but also other humanistic disciplines—especially those taking a non-European perspective—are challenged to look for a new and transcultural basis in their study of power and domination.

Not least because of the debate on deregulation launched by the EU, the terms “to regulate” and “regulation” have experienced a considerable upturn in use. Despite the wide scope of application, the conceptual pair of economic regulation (refers to market state interventions in market processes) and social regulation (in general every influence of the state on social processes) evolved in the Anglo-American economic and legal sciences. Within the economic interpretation, a differentiated typology of regulation has developed, which creates antonymous word pairs that need to be clarified. Hereby specifically European associated experiences have been made, that may be an advantage for the further expansion of the discourse framework, so that the European Union can be confident regarding a global turn.

The term “sanction”, originating in Roman legal language, denotes, on the one hand, the enactment of a law, and, on the other hand, an unfavorable legal consequence in case of a violation of a law. Central to the law of sanctions is the criminal penalty, intended to enforce the observance of a society’s elementary norms of behavior. The term is of use for the social sciences particularly regarding the functional analysis of societal structures and applies to measures against deviating behavior. With regard to the term, international legal policy is notably influenced by the central idea of security. The means to attain security are changing in almost all areas of society from reaction to prevention. In the wake of globalization, an increase in legal comparisons of the study of sanctions and transnational criminal prosecution (“Weltrechtspflege”, the “principle of international prosecution of [world-wide] crimes”) is to be expected. This is exemplified by the establishment of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Sovereignty has long been recognized as one of the defining features of statehood and, at the same time, as a fundamental concept of international law. The concept of sovereignty has always been receptive to binding international commitments as an expression of the sovereign autonomy of States. The ever-closer network of international obligations and the growing interdependence of States have not diminished the significance of sovereignty in the international arena. Nonetheless, the “global turn” has had a remarkable impact on the traditional understanding of sovereignty. Increasing independence of states, new forms of political and economic integration, arrangements for international security, human rights regimes, and the activism of the UN Security Council displayed over the last decades have transformed the concept of sovereignty. Sovereignty not only encapsulates rights and powers flowing from the territorial and personal jurisdiction of States it is also a focal point of concurrent responsibility (e.g., in respect of global commons or the protection of human rights). In a constitutional context, sovereignty has experienced a renaissance as code for democratic self-determination. The process of European integration with supranational structures of decision-making by and for the European Union’s member states bears witness to the elasticity of sovereignty as a legal and political concept. The inherent limitations of sovereignty which flow from the basic principles of international law enhance the legitimacy of the exercise of sovereign powers.

The concept of World order is located between claim and reality. Consequently, the two idealtypes compete in the tension between realism and idealism. Ideas about a world state or democratic peace compete with the realistic models of “hegemonic stability” or the “balance of power”. The Cold War acted as a substitute for order. Since 1989, the competition between various world order models has given way to growing disorder in the world.

The concept of cognition has undergone considerable extension, first, by intensive empirical study of representational systems and their role for the possession and application of cognitive capacities and second, by the turn to practical knowledge. By these two developments, the field of research on cognition has been opening with respect to which all eager attempts of demarcation between the humanities and the sciences seem to be outdated. This brings about institutional changes in the scientific landscape as can be seen in the current tendency to find interdisciplinary centres for the investigation of cognitive phenomena all over the world.

The historical background of Ferdinand Tönnies’ differentiation between community and society was the late transformation of the feudal order of estates into modern civil society in Germany. Sociological theory turned the Tönniesian typical distinction to a historical one between traditional and modern society. The text argues that community does not mean a small society, but its counterpart. Based on this terminology, the relation between local communities and global society can be divided in three different types which can be described as (first) compensation in the Western World, (second) hierarchy in Asia and (third) regression in failed states.

Ever since the wrath of Achilles or Cain’s fratricide, conflict has been a constant factor in the history of mankind, for better or worse. The ancient Greek author Hesiod distinguished between good and bad eris and thus evoked not only the destructive force but also the creative potential of conflict as a catalyst for change and progress, as a source of inspiration in literature and the visual arts, and as an impulse for self- and community-fashioning. In Western culture, this productive dimension of conflict is determined to an important extent by the Classical Tradition, which not only provided literary models and rhetorical techniques of conflict but also initiated a wide-ranging meta-discourse on its nature, possibilities, and limits. The encounter and confrontation of this Western culture of conflict with other notions and traditions of negotiating personal or collective interests through contention is one of the great challenges of our times in the search for a middle ground between a painful clash of civilisations and a nebulous multi-culturalism.

“Global Age,” “Digital Revolution,” and “Clash of Civilizations,” according to Martin Albrow, Manuel Castells, Samuel P. Huntington and others, could give the impression that consensual, universal, and constant conventions and agreements are first unnecessary and second, often even impossible in a world that has become multicultural and virtual. This essay is meant to irritate and destroy conventional meanings and tries to highlight some of the problems and ambiguities of heterogeneous, homogeneous, and incompatible communities in a global and digital world.

The notion of “cosmos” is tied to a multiplicity of metaphysical ideas which imply both ontological concepts and mythological narratives dating back to Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths as well as to the “YHWH” tradition of ancient Israel. As a discipline, cosmology is connected to Christian Wolff, who plotted it in his rationalist metaphysics. While in the wake of rationalist philosophy and its increasing reference to empirical methods, the ontological presuppositions of cosmology lost their convincing power; modern developments tied to the linguistic and cultural turn allowed for a new interplay between mythological cosmologies and their hermeneutic understanding. Hence, methodological intersectionality has turned cosmology into an issue of interest far beyond theology and the study of antiquity to both transcendental and phenomenological approaches, continental and analytic philosophies, reaching out even to astronomical physics.

Ethics can generally be understood as the normative theory of moral reasons. It examines conditions for the possibility of ethical practice and formulates justifiable normative conceptions for the conduct of individual persons, as well as for the organisation of communities, and societal institutions.Throughout the course of the development of Western ethics, several approaches to the normative questions about morally good actions and how to lead a good life have emerged; the most prominent among them are virtue ethics, contractualism, deontological ethics or the ethics of autonomy, and consequentialism. In modern times, these approaches are confronted with a broadening political, cultural, and economic exchange due to the process of globalization. In order to meet emerging normative challenges, ethics has to be considered part of an intercultural discourse of reasons. This is the only way to transcend ideology and dogmatism and take into account the cultural pluralism of a globalized world.

In a European context, the understanding of “eternity” and “finitude” are the objects of complex philosophical as well as Jewish-Christian discourse. Not only once it originated in the chasm between Jewish-Christian tenets and Greek-Roman, as well as Celtic-Germanic cosmology and reasoning. In virtue of the encounter of Western and Eastern religious doctrine and philosophical rationale, this discourse was animated to question the relations of said dichotomy once again. Its understanding has become more complex through cultural exchange in general. In succession to this continuous extension of Western ideas, the contrasts among the Abrahamic traditions regarding their images of God forfeit part of their harsh contours. Furthermore, it turns out that not all differences tell of an extensive, barren incompatibility, but rather have proven to be a prolific opportunity to bring to mind buried treasuries of one’s own spiritual traditions.

The concepts of freedom, equality and solidarity are known as the three core demands of the French Revolution and are still central to modern societies. A reconstruction of these concepts cannot be done in a linear way, and a closer examination shows that they are often ambiguous. Keeping this in mind, it is important to distinguish between positive and negative liberty or that equality can refer to different aspects. For example, there is the concept of equality in distribution, in procedures also a concept of egalitarian results. Moreover, the idea of solidarity seems to be complex as it can occur in social communities on the one hand or in a contractual manner in trade unions or based on insurance law on the other hand. Although these three concepts were criticized and transformed throughout history, the demand for freedom, equality and solidarity is still present today.

English “humanity” has a double meaning encapsulating both biological and ethical qualities—distinguished in the adjectives “human” and “humane” as well as in the German nouns “Menschheit” and “Menschlichkeit”—in the wake of Ciceros’s changing use of Latin “humanitas”: education in Greek and Latin raises the mere biological category man to a level that distinguishes it from animals. Christianity adopted this concept of the formation of man (“Menschenbildung”) in the context of its theology of imitatio Dei, later secularized as liberal education (“humanistische Bildung”). Globalization has brought men closer to each other through modern communication technologies, but has also made the Eurocentric character of the Western notion of “humanity” more apparent and led to more cultural clashes. Supra-national education in schools and universities will be needed to overcome misunderstandings, teach tolerance, and establish ethical as well as human rights norms that find general acceptance, reanimating the ideal of a “citizen of the world”.

The notion of “human dignity” is on everybody’s lips. More importantly, it has become a fundamental concept in all areas of life, in politics and society, in technology and science, in religion and the world of work. This chapter seeks to uncover the philosophical groundwork recognizable in the history of philosophy before the notion of “human dignity” was adopted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other protocols spread around the world. That includes the close connection of the two notions “dignity” and “person” in medieval theology, ultimately leading to Kant’s prominent concept of “person” and “dignity.” It includes further the idea that human dignity is rooted in human freedom. Finally, human dignity could not be thought of as a universal value, if the idea of the “human as human” had not been developed during the enlightenment.

Under the heading of “images of man” or “human images” (German: Menschenbilder), this chapter deals with those paradigms of being human which describe the goal or destiny to what a human being could or should develop realizing his or her potentials during their lifetime. Because human nature has a specific “world openness” (German: Weltoffenheit) and is characterized by a significant expressivity there is not only one “image of man” or “human image” in the history of culture, but a significant number of such “images.” Each one is rich in content and normative in function (as guiding goal of education, as paradigm of developing personal identity, as morally orientating pattern in the field of action, and others). This chapter analyzes the roots of such “images of man” or “human images,” their character as “comprehensive doctrines” and various significant types that occur.

The “marriage-based family” is an original “form of life,” i.e., it defines the relations it generates, rather than being defined by some set of predetermined relations. The starting point of an adequate account of marriage and family is an ascriptive approach seeking to explore marriage and family from its core-phenomena outwards. These patterns do not recur arbitrarily or by chance; they arise because the intimate connection with certain goods to human beings are constantly being drawn. Forming identity, initiating tradition, communication of love, and empowerment to pursue the own good within the human world let the family appear as a global good whose specificity is based on the deep spatial dimension of a twofold genealogy of the generation and the person. As a result, there can be no question of a dissolution of marriage and family in the age of globalization.

When handling the concept “meaning of life,” it is necessary to differentiate between meaning of life in a strict sense and meaning in life. While the meaning of life refers to human life in general and out of a super subjective perspective, the meaning in life considers the meaning in an individual life out of a subjective perspective. However, in both versions, a problem arises as to whether the question of a meaningful life could be answered objectively or subjectively. A possible though controversial solution is a unity between the happiness from the subjective perspective and the meaningfulness from the objective. Further, the conflict between meaning of life and morality favors an objectivist approach in the attribution of meaning.

“Oikos” is the Greek word for “house.” This chapter tries to outline how “house” has been understood from biblical times to the present age, separating the view on the house from the outside and from within. From the outside, it is mostly seen as a safe haven, a place which one desires to reach; from within it is often felt as a place of tribulation and sometimes even of crime. These views have essentially not changed until now. What has changed is the position of the head of the household and the outer borders of what is, in a broader sense, seen as one’s “house”: So, in a way, we are at home, when we speak by phone from another continent with our family. In the global age, the idea of a world-oikos has forced itself on our minds. While, concerning this world-oikos, collective reason cannot simply be summoned, it seems that, at least for some time, a head of the world-oikos, e.g., a world-parliament, seems to be required.

In the Western context, the understanding of religion is strongly influenced by the religious conceptions of the Greeks and Romans and, in particular, by the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Since 1700, a stronger difference between concrete religio, in the sense of cultic worship, and religion in general has been made. A general concept of religion, which might also be employed in opposition to revealed religion, garnered significance in the course of the Enlightenment. Formerly, the prevalent terminology for non-Christian religion was fides, lex, or secta. Usually, non-Christian religions have not developed a general concept of religion. Despite the initial global turn in topics of religion in the nineteenth century, due to the academic interest in non-Christian religions, even in the present the application of a concept of religion oriented on Western standards is indispensable. Yet the openness of this descriptive concept is crucial. Notwithstanding the critique of a substantial and functional concept of religion, the efforts to define a systematic concept of religion remain relevant.

Rituals and/or rites traditionally belong to the religious realm, denoting actions with a repetitive character, which are performed by members of religious communities. They are, however, universal in their character and purpose and can thus be easily observed outside ecclesiastical contexts as well. This extension of the ritual concept is denoted as the “global turn,” finding itself closely related to historical circumstances and changes in (ritual) habits of everyday life. Globalization, in particular, has led to fundamental changes in what can be perceived as ritual behavior, with fundamentalism being one of the extremes. Religious scientific research is thus left with the notion that modern rituals have more or less detached from religious life and shifted towards the individual realm. Besides definition and history of the ritual, this chapter points out ambivalences that come with changes in the ritual concept, exploring ways towards an appropriate ritual criticism.

Religions place different priorities on textual traditions, and it is necessary to be aware that not every text plays an important role in religion is a “Sacred Book.” But it is beyond doubt that Sacred Books play(ed) an important role in the history of religions, as often they were taken as undisputed sources for studying religions with a “constitutive” significance for the religion in question. Despite of this, there always have been tensions between “writing” and the effectiveness of the spoken word.A trans-regional distribution of Sacred Books began long before the modern age of globalization, as processes of translating and spreading such texts or books were necessary when a religion started to expand from its original area to other regions. This also made it necessary to interpret Sacred Books in a new cultural context; therefore, the spreading of religions and globalization challenges hermeneutic processes. The more a Sacred Book is known not only to specialists, but also to the public, the more also the normativity and the exclusiveness sometimes become relative. This also leads to a change of religions in modern times.

This chapter discusses the shift from a space-centered discourse of globalization to a reflexive and time-aware consciousness of globality. Globalization was seen as a result of a revolution in communication and transport technologies, therefore as a change in the order of things, especially the exchange of commodities, hence a standardization of culture. The pessimistic narrative of truncation or even extinction of differences and otherness was replaced by a new vision of overcoming the iron cage of modernity and the annunciation of a new era of civilization, i.e., the experience of fulfilled end time, in the turn of millennium.

Although the term “truth” may imply a certain uniqueness, which is for instance portrayed in the ontological equalization of truth and the monotheistic God throughout Christian thought; its conceptualizations are actually extensive and plentiful. Besides said ontological depictions of truth, one also comes across subjectivity-, epistemological-, transcendence-, coherence-, consensus-, and ethics-related delineations of truth, among others. In consequence of the global turn, this diversity became even more evident. Approaches emphasizing freedom-related aspects of truth, as well as mystical approaches that are redolent of peculiarities of apophatic theology, gained in significance. This kind of recurrence is a testimonial to the insight that cultures do not stand in opposition to one another like monolithic entities with unconditional claims to truth, but are, rather, in and of themselves, plural patterns and combinations. This constitutes the foundation of intercultural, or transcultural, exchange. Simultaneously, it calls for a universal horizon of truth as a background to the different perspectives on truth, so they can be recognized in their uniqueness.

The term “values” has been used in occidental ethics since the nineteenth century. Presently, discussions around ethical values include, e.g., freedom, justice, peace, sustainability, and tolerance. In the course of globalization, the significance of these values is to be interpreted as applicable to global society as a whole. This should also be taken into consideration with reference to cultural pluralism. Justice and tolerance are among those values that have a particularly high significance in the face of today’s global challenges. Fundamental ethical values have become binding in international law through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

There has long been a substantial asymmetry with regard to usage and salience of globalization, globalism, and globality. This applies in particular to globality, both in public and academic discourses. Consequently, it remains necessary to determine more systematically what constitutes globality and to address the much neglected question of whether and to what extent globality can be shaped. To these ends, this contribution elaborates distinctive characters of globality as conditions of spatial expansion across the globe, which can pertain to ideas, products, or institutions among other things. Moreover, it demonstrates how globality amounts to results of human action that can take countless forms over space and time. As such, the particular qualities of globality, including its basic reference to space, human centeredness, as well as its complex relationship to power and structures, become evident, revealing the shaping power and potential of globality.

The phenomenon of globality has had significant consequences for both languages and literatures. The disciplines of linguistics and literary studies are in the process of redefining their subject matter as well as their theoretical and methodological approaches to meet the challenge of adopting a global perspective. In linguistics, the “global turn” has for instance led to a growing interest in the properties and dynamics of “global languages” in general and “World Englishes” in particular. In literary studies, the growing impact of Postcolonial Studies since the late 1970s and the awareness of globalization have caused an extension with respect to the subject matter and the theoretical and methodological approaches that are drawn upon. There also appear to be more and more literary texts which address issues related to globalization in terms of their themes and/or structural and linguistic features. With its increasing interest in “world literature,” the field of comparative literature faces new challenges such as having to rely on translations and negotiating between the global and the local in readings of literary texts.

This chapter describes, first, the present situation of Christianity within global society in relation to other major religions. Furthermore, it describes the historical process of the globalization of Christianity since its origins and Christianity’s limited awareness of other religions. It is suggested that in Christianity, “global turn” primarily means a change in religious perception in the early twentieth century. Subsequently, in the wake of the ecumenical movement and of the Holocaust, the Western churches and their theologians began thoroughly to reassess their views of foreign peoples and cultures such that in much of Christian theology nowadays a great openness in dealing with other faiths can be found. Finally, this chapter discusses a number of academic challenges which theology and the study of the Christian religion are facing in the age of globality.

The relationship between the global turn and the perception of cultures is ambivalent and the concept of culture is highly debated, with numerous definitions in existence. The Islamic world as a whole is frequently referred to as a “culture,” the image of the Orient in the nineteenth century was always linked to an imperialist attitude, which went hand in hand with disdain for other “cultures.” The relationship between Islam and the West has been multilayered and changing and has massively and sustainably shaped the collective consciousness in Europe. As a field, Islamic Studies (Islamwissenschaft) was and is forced to fundamentally redefine itself: The only way for it to survive the challenge of globality is to distance itself from the view that the Islamic world is one uniform “cultural area” or even “culture” that can only be analyzed from the outside or on a textual basis. There is a need to replace the essentializing cultural perception of the Islamic world with empirically underpinned analyses of the local social orders within that world.

The term “Globality” should not be restricted to the economic, political, and historical developments which have taken place after World War II. As the Mexican Silver dollar won a firm place in the finance system of Imperial China between the sixteenth and twentieth century, the interaction between Europe, Asia, and Middle America has a history of almost 500 years. The problem, however, is how do we define it. Unfortunately, the fruitful encounter of, for instance, China and West-Europe is very often misunderstood as Westernization. Talking about the material and cultural exchange requires a defining of the terms which are used in a global context. The idea of the West is coined by Russia in the eighteenth century and implicates a pejorative meaning up till now. Besides, the recent criticisms of globalization as some kind of Americanization falls too easily prey to unhistorical thinking: Self and Other are not necessarily contradictions. The contribution tries to clarify the basic assumptions of our academic concepts.

The thesis that the globalization process can also be understood as a process of humanization is central. People are distinguished by the fact that they are able to differentiate between good and evil, for example, and by the fact that they can agree on this difference. If the questions—what constitutes a good life, what does good order look like?—are generally applicable, the answers must be as well.Globality means that we share diverse cultural participation in the globalization process. People take part in the globalization process from every part of the Earth and from many different cultures and civilizations. The realm of the human cannot be seen in the opposite way, as the negative of a globality in which humanity is robbed of its essential qualities, for instance human dignity, family, nation, culture and freedom. Globality is the point of cultural encounter, the point of difference. Either these universal standards exist, if there is humanity, or they are negated—with all of the associated consequences for the respective orders and cultures.Globality does not mean that everything that culturally and factually exists and has validity must also be acknowledged. What is culturally practiced is not automatically sacrosanct.Shadows occur when progress on the path of modernity is implemented in such a way that ligatures suffer and elements are stripped out that are fundamental for human beings: identity, closeness, continuity—moments that are threatened by the globalization process.