Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script": Homepage

Contestations of the Liberal Script — SCRIPTS

The liberal script is increasingly coming under pressure due to the perceived failure to deliver on its promises. Radicalization and polarization tend to turn criticism of the liberal script into rejection of its core principles. SCRIPTS examines this deepening of contestations from a global, comparative, and historical perspective and seeks to explain their causes and understand their consequences.

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SCRIPTS Research Units (RU)

Four Research Units (RU) study contestations, their causes, and their consequences, focusing on specific issues each script has to address: Borders, Orders, (Re-)Allocation and Temporality. Each of these four consists of multidisciplinary research teams, systematically cutting across disciplinary and epistemic boundaries.

Research Projects

SCRIPTS is a research consortium for different types of research projects: General, short-term and affiliated research projects. All SCRIPTS-funded projects are linked to at least one Research Unit.

Cluster-Affiliated Research Projects

Projects that cut across SCRIPTS' research structure and complement its research agenda by bringing in external experts. Cluster-affiliated research projects are not funded by SCRIPTS.

SCRIPTS Research Units (RU)

RU Borders

Borders determine who belongs to a group or society and who can be legitimately excluded. The liberal script grants a nation-state control over its borders while also limiting the extent to which it can be exercised. This control stands in an uneasy relationship with ideas of personal and economic freedom and mobility and, generally, universal human rights.

RU Orders

Orders refer to the institutional core of the liberal script, which enables political and social coordination within a given society. This RU addresses orders as principles and institutional arrangements that structure expectations and practice in social and political areas. These arrangements have an impact on social and political areas, such as the making of binding rules, policing and jurisprudence, economic exchange, and gender relations.

RU (Re-)Allocation

The liberal script involves rules and goals for the (re-)allocation of goods and life chances in the face of social and material scarcities. The free market is assigned as the key mechanism of (re-)allocation, which results in uneven outcomes. The welfare states attempt to reduce these. Against this background, the RU (Re-)Allocation investigates contestations, causes and consequences of unequal market outcomes and how they combine with other allocation pressures on the liberal script.

RU Temporality

Understandings of temporality and of progress provide information on time scales, imaginations of transience and eternity, and the reproduction of social structure. Time, in the liberal view, moves linearly toward a future of progress, and it presumes that rational actors optimally allocate time to market and non-market activities. The RU Temporality investigates challenges to the liberal notion of time and alternative notions of temporal horizons.

Publications

Scientific publications

A selection of outstanding scientific, peer-reviewed publications in scientifc journals, published by SCRIPTS members in the course of their work at SCRIPTS and/or arising from the research projects.

SCRIPTS Working Paper Series

The series allows SCRIPTS' as well as visiting researchers to disseminate their research and pre-publication “works in progress” that contribute to the debate on contestations of the liberal script.

SCRIPTS Arguments

A compilation of various contributions from Principal Investigators responding to one of the core questions of the SCRIPTS research programme. It also acknowledges the diversity of academic viewpoints, traditions and approaches.

SCRIPTS Blog & Think Pieces

SCRIPTS blog & think pieces assemble a variety of analytical views, opinions, and commentaries by members and guest authors and are written in an accessible rather than an academic style.

Knowledge Exchange Lab (KEL)

Short Talks | Nervöse Demokratie

Journalist and author Georg Diez will be talking to SCRIPTS researchers on three evenings about the state and future of “nervous democracy” in the Humboldt Lab.

Science in Translation

The Knowledge Exchange Lab is taking part in the exhibition "After Nature" at the Humboldt Forum. With more than 80 video statements on a kinetic multimedia display, it invites visitors to engage in dialogue about challenges to the liberal script.

KEL Toolbox (PDF)

To learn more about what we mean by knowledge exchange, see our Toolbox.

Futuring the Liberal Script

Conversation series live from the silent green in Berlin-Wedding. SCRIPTS-Researchers and guests discuss crises of liberal societies and democracies from diverse perspectives.