We are happy to announce the launch of our international project  ‘Universality and the Acceptance Potential of Social Science Knowledge: On the Circulation of Knowledge between Europe and the Global South’. Four interconnected research projects are going to be carried out in the next four years and at same time we will be supporting and  complementing one another.

Our studies focus on the following ambivalent phenomenon: on the one hand, the European research area and its achievements still enjoy a high standing outside of Europe. On the other hand, the worldwide influence of the European theoretical tradition is increasingly being perceived as dominant, and European social science’s claim to universality is, as a result, seen as overbearing and presumptuous. By investigating this field of tension, we aim to obtain innovative ideas for the future positioning of the European scholarly community and its successful activity within the internationalized field of social sciences.

This endeavour has been made possible above all through the funding of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research  (German:  BMBF) within the ‘Free Space for the Humanities’ funding initiative on the subject of  ‘Europe Viewed from the Outside’. The  Institute of Sociology at the Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg has agreed to act as a home for our project. Our international advisory board will support us scientifically: Prof.  Hermann Schwengel and Prof. Sabine Dabringhaus from the University of Freiburg, Prof. Jìmí O. Adésínà of Rhodes University as well as Prof. Ari Sitas from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Assoc. Prof. Syed Farid Alatas from the National University of Singapore, Prof. Monica Budowski from the University of Fribourg  in Switzerland, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Ecevit from the  Middle East Technical University  in Turkey, Dr. Terry Shinn from the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne/CNRS  and Dr. Roland Waast from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)  -  Ex  ORSTOM  in France. In addition, at present four  researchers are associated to the project: Dr. Miriam Nandi (English studies), Dr. Paruedee Nguitragool (Political Science) und Barbara Riedel (M.A., Social Anthropology) from the  University of Freiburg, as well as Dr. Sabine Ammon (Philosophy and Architecture) from the Technical University Berlin. Twelve Fellows from around the world are also going to work with us here in Freiburg, each for several months, in order to promote the international and interdisciplinary scholarly exchange of our project. We will be welcoming our fellows to Freiburg beginning in April 2011.

Institute of Postcolonial Studies, North Melbourne

James Belich, Kate Darian-Smith, Lorenzo Veracini

The southern question is figured as a struggle by colonies to liberate themselves from metropolitan centres in order to realise their own destinies at the other end of the world. This includes taking up the challenge of co-existence with peoples originally displaced by the process of colonisation. But what remains of the relation between metropolitan centre and periphery? Is there evidence of exchange between oldland and newland that offers a more reciprocal arrangement? What does this mean for potential solidarity between countries of the periphery?

Professor James Belich is at the Stout Research Centre, University of Wellington. His two volumes on New Zealand history, Making Peoples and Paradise Reforged, are considered comprehensive and engaging. His recent publication Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, 1780-1930 is described in the TLS as ‘one of the most important works on the broad processes of modern world history to have appeared for years.’

Professor Kate Darian-Smith is Professor of Australian Studies and History at the University of Melbourne. Kate has written widely on Australian history and on the British world. Her works include, as co-editor of Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures, Melbourne University Press, 2007 and Text, Theory, Space: land, literature and history in South Africa and Australia, Routledge, 1996. She is currently working on an ARC-funded project (with Penny Edmonds and Julie Evans) on Conciliation Narratives in British Settler Societies in the Pacific Rim.

Dr Lorenzo Veracini is a Senior Research Fellow at Swinburne University and holds a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship. He joined the ISR in early 2009 and has studied history and historiography in Italy and the UK before moving to Australia in the late 1990s. He is the author of Israel and Settler Society (Pluto Press 2006) and What is Settler Colonialism? (forthcoming). He is currently writing a global history of settler colonialism and is on the editorial board of the new journal, Settler Colonial Studies.

Institute of Postcolonial Studies
78-80 Curzon Street
North Melbourne
Victoria 3051 Australia (map)
Tel: 03 9329 6381
Admission – $5 for waged, $3 for unwaged, and free for members.

There are many who would contest the Western-centric view of modernism, yet do not subscribe to the idea that it has an ‘other side’ in the South. Nicolas Bourriaud, author of Relational Aesthetics, presents the idea of a ‘globalisation from scratch’, which is a flat symmetrical world where all peoples have equal access to the global electronic stage. Thus one of the critiques of a ‘southern perspective’ is that it is beholden to a cold-war mentality the divides the world neatly into west and ‘the rest’. Bourriaud presents a context that is not complicated that by this past and celebrates plurality.

So from a ‘southern perspective’, there are questions of such an approach. While celebrating plurality, its product as a curated exhibition is still concentric. This plurality is still inevitably concentrated in the art galleries of metropolitan centres.

And like its precursor ‘relational aesthetics’, altermodernity depends on an immanence that is liberated in free play. Such deferral of necessity and tradition is subject to the Bourdieu’s critique of aestheticisation in Distinction. It becomes a marker of class which has garnered the necessary surplus capital to rise above political squabbling over resources.

These are familiar criticisms of Bourriaud, but there is a danger that they position ‘southern perspectives’ as a voice of resentment, rather than an active site for engagement of ideas. At the least, there should be a possibility of dialectic between north and south, whereby each exposes the other’s limits. But for this to happen requires an acknowledgement that the world is divided, albeit messily.

• 1 x 75% post-doctoral position
• 1 x 50% doctoral position
• 1 x 50% position for administrative support to the project management

The project shall be funded through the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) initiative “Freedom for Research in the Humanities”, under the topic “Europe seen from the outside”. The project aims at building a junior research group and will be located at the Global Studies Program of the Sociology Institute at Freiburg University

Research Positions (Post Doctoral and Doctoral)

Both research positions (75% post-doctoral and 50% doctoral) shall each deal with one sub-project of the overall project. Researchers are expected to acquire academic qualifications (PhD or qualifications relevant to pursue an academic career in the post-doc-phase).

Applications should include a short research proposal. In order to prepare proposals, more detailed information on the overall project and on the sub-projects in which positions are opened are available with the project coordinator (contact see below). Very good oral and written competency in English are a requirement, competency in further languages is an advantage. Experience in the international scholarly community as well as in team work are an advantage.

Administrative Position

This position has been opened for the administrative support of the project leader. This comprises administrative tasks, support of the project leader with respect to the organisation of project activities such as conferences or publication projects, organisation of the stays of international fellows to the project in Freiburg.

Application details

All positions are limited to the duration of the project for four years. The project starts on 01.07.2010 subject to the provision of funds. Application deadline is 20.01.2010. The university aims at increasing the participation of women and explicitly encourages qualified women to apply.

For contact details, the official advertisement (in German) is to be found on the website of Freiburg University: research positions and the administrative position.