Headlines
22 June 2010
International Panel Discussion on the Question: What is Poverty?
Poverty should be cut in half worldwide by the year 2015. This was one of the ambitious ‘Millennium Development Goals’ on which the international community agreed at the beginning of the new century. But what exactly is poverty and how should it be combated? In recent years a series of different policies concerning poverty reduction have been mooted in public and academic discourse. They propose competing answers to questions concerning the core of the concept of poverty, the current scope of poverty and how and by whom poverty can be adequately described.
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25 May 2010
An international conference on human rights entitled ‘Human Rights Today: Foundations and Politics’ will be held on June 17 and 18, 2010.
As a crucial ‘normative order’ of modernity, human rights are among the principal concerns of the Cluster of Excellence. Since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and as a reaction to the ‘barbarous acts’ committed by the totalitarian dictatorships, human richts have evolved into the justification narrative of political orders par excellence. At the same time, controversy rages not just over the substantive definition of human rights, but also over how they should be justified: How are they related to ‘strong’ – for instance, religious – convictions? How can human rights, as a shared normative orientation, be reconciled with cultural difference? How can the autonomy of the political be connected with the idea of human rights?
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18 May 2010
In the second Frankfurt Encounter, Feridun Zaimoglu and Rainer Forst will discuss ways of dealing with cultural and religious difference
Among the chief characteristics of modern societies is the increasing diversity of cultural and religious viewpoints. Yet at times it is as though we were back in the bleak times of religious conflicts – whether it be discussions over plans to build mosques, the Regensburg Address of the Pope, caricatures in Danish newspapers, or schoolteachers wearing headscarves.
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11 May 2010
Frank I. Michelman on the justification of democratic political systems
Following the well-received public lectures by the New York political scientist Nancy Fraser, it gives us great pleasure to welcome another prominent American scholar to the Frankfurt Lectures of the Cluster of Excellence. Frank I. Michelman, Professor of Law at Harvard University, will speak on May 17 and 18 on the topic ‘Contract and Common Ground: The Case of Liberty’.
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03 May 2010
International conference at the Goethe University Frankfurt, May 7-9, 2010
What form should normative foundations for peaceful coexistence in a multicultural and multi-religious society take? This question is the primary focus of the international conference ‘Formation of Normative Orders in the Islamic World’ which is being organised by the Cluster of Excellence at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Organisational responsibility for the conference is being assumed by Prof. Susanne Schröter, holder of the Chair in Anthropology of colonial and postcolonial orders and Director of the Cluster’s Junior Research Group ‘Contemporary discourses on state and society in the Islamic world’.
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26 April 2010
On Monday, 17 May, 2010 the ground-breaking ceremony for the new research building of the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” will be conducted at the Goethe University Frankfurt. The celebrations will take place in the presence of the Minister of State Eva Kühne-Hörmann and the President of the University Prof. Werner Müller-Esterl on the Westend Campus.
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30 March 2010
Nancy Fraser on the current crisis in capitalist societies
In the second series of Frankfurt Lectures of the Cluster of Excellence, the renowned political theorist Nancy Fraser will present her analysis of the crisis of capitalism. Fraser’s analysis builds upon the theory of the economist and social theorist Karl Polanyi, augmenting Polanyi’s thesis of a double movement of marketization and social protections with a third axis of social struggles: emancipation.
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26 March 2010
At the invitation of the Cluster of Excellence, Prof. Rossitsa Gradeva (American University in Bulgaria) has been appointed Guest Professor at the Goethe University Frankfurt for the Summer Semester 2010. The professorship has its home in the research project "Establishment of National Legal Systems in Post-ottoman South Eastern Europe" under the direction of the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History.
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09 March 2010
The Anniversary Conference of the German Sociological Association will take place on October 11-15, 2010 in Frankfurt am Main in collaboration with the Cluster of Excellence 'The Formation of Normative Orders'. The general topic of the conference will be 'Transnationalism and Society'. The provisional programme, which has just appeared and includes information about the main events, can be ordered with immediate effect from the conference office in Frankfurt.
Further information on this Anniversary Conference can be found here.
24 February 2010
Tom Königs and Reinhard Schmidt on the financial crisis and its consequences
‘Frankfurt Encounters’ is the title of the new discussion series of the Cluster of Excellence 'The Formation of Normative Orders'. On each occasion, the research network and the Frankfurter Kunstverein will invite two outstanding figures from politics, economics or culture at irregular intervals to reflect upon and discuss current social questions.
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15 February 2010
Panel discussion and workshop of the Cluster of Excellence on the direction of research in economics, 18-19 February, 2010
Is economics living up to its social responsibility or is it neglecting the contribution it should make to solving problems of economic policy? These are among the questions which will be addressed by a workshop and following panel discussion under the heading ‘Norms in Economics – Norms of the Economic Curriculum’.
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04 January 2010
Coming from Jacobs University Bremen, Jens Steffek joins the Cluster as professor of transnational governance in January 2010. His position is located at the Department of Political Science of Technische Universität Darmstadt where he will work on the emergence and transformation of justificatory narratives in global and European governance.
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Clémentine Deliss und Juliane Rebentisch diskutieren im dritten Frankfurter Stadtgespräch im Frankfurter Kunstverein über die Rolle der Kunst in Politik und Gesellschaft. 
