On the Move: People, Objects, Signs (MOVE)

The Doctorate School

The doctorate school “On the move: people, objects, signs” investigates the interplay of moving people, objects, practices, and signs in connection with old and new immobilities, infrastructures, technical networks, and forms of social organisation. Contemporary societies are characterised by profound societal and cultural transformation processes which together have produced a multitude of processes of movement. They will be examined from two perspectives: Firstly, in the historical-theoretical perspective based on the notion that foundations of modern societies and cultural spheres, which in their dichotomous constitution have been regarded cornerstones, underwent a process of movement; for example, the boundaries of public and private domains, paid work and leisure, places of residency and travel. Also, today social practices and materiality are not as clearly defined as they were several decades ago. Secondly, a new scientific approach will be utilised. It is based on the intersectionality of areas within social life, which were so far investigated separately, and suggests an integrated investigation. The doctorate school is designed for interdisciplinary research to better account for the increasing social complexity caused by transformation processes within the past centuries. The theoretical aim is to explain consequences of this transformation. Based on this, the empirical focus lies on the movement of people, objects, practices, and signs. The underlying circumstances and resulting effects of the movement of people, objects, and signs will be investigated with regard to reciprocal, regional, national, and transnational processes of transformation. Presently, labour, money, capital, commodities, wealth, information, knowledge, experiences and perceptions all circulate on a global scale on the basis of social and material structures and dis/abled by diverse forms of mobility. Our scientific analyses are based on these central processes. The dissertation projects in this doctorate school analyse processes and phenomena in the context of the mobility of persons (tourism, voluntary and forced migration, sport, transportation, labour), objects (things, resources, commodities), and signs (discourse, art, knowledge and information, identity).