27/08/2026
We are excited to announce our winter colloquium series 2026/27 on Political Order beyond Westphalian Statehood: Perspectives from Asia and Africa.
The decline and dismantling of empires and colonial states in large parts of Asia and Africa eventually gave way to the establishment of “nation-states” as the foundation of the international order of the 20th and 21st centuries. As many of these new entities fractured in the late 20th and 21st centuries, other bonds of solidarity (religious, ethnic, tribal) re-emerged, together with old and new visions of the tasks which political structures and social order are meant to ensure. While political theory has invested in the investigation of these “non-state actors”, what seems to emerge as a desideratum is a better understanding of the visions such actors have of the political and social order they are striving to establish, and how this relates to (pre-existing or newly created) social structures. What is the reach of the political order, how inclusive is it, and does it impact social structures? What new orders emerge out of these dynamics? While some conceptual formulations have resorted to "(dis)order" or "insurgency" in their attempts to make sense of these developments, we would like to ask which other characterizations help us understand these processes, their trajectories and impacts? And what are such non-state actors in different contexts?
Focussing on such processes in predominantly Muslim contexts without limiting itself to specifically religiously connoted projects, this lecture series examines which specific notions of statehood are articulated, and which worldly and otherworldly frameworks are invoked to legitimize them. This lecture series wants to investigate these notions, building on the ways in which they affect our theoretical and conceptual renderings of sociopolitical processes that shape the world today.
Organised by Ulrike Freitag, Stefan Kirmse, Maria Ketzmerick-Calandrino, Ahmad Moradi, Anandita Bajpai and Abdoulaye Sounaye.
Lectures take place in person at 5pm at ZMO. Participation via Zoom is also possible.
More info: https://www.zmo.de/en/events/lecture-series/zmo-kolloquium-im-wintersemester-2026-27
