Research Program
Inequality and difference are pervasive social realities that shape how societies organise life, distribute value and imagine forms of living together. They are expressions of historical processes of valuation, exclusion and recognition that determine whose lives, knowledges and practices are rendered visible or marginalised. Understanding these dynamics requires attention to the interplay of material structures, symbolic orders and affective experiences that together sustain patterns of inclusion and exclusion.
As conditions and outcomes of contested social processes, inequalities concern access to, participation in and entitlement over material and immaterial resources alike, including knowledge, space, labour, meaning and being. Likewise, difference is not simply a matter of categorical distinction but is shaped by power-laden relations through which identities, boundaries and belongings are produced, negotiated and at times transformed. Rather than separating economic inequalities from cultural or symbolic ones, the DK conceives dynamics of inequality and difference as dynamically intertwined within broader configurations of power and social imagination, with a particular focus on de-/postcolonial and intersectional perspectives. Racialised, social, economic, linguistic, gendered and epistemic hierarchies intersect and co-produce one another across local, national and transnational contexts.
Research in the DK therefore approaches inequality and difference as phenomena that are historically specific, institutionally mediated and continuously reconstituted through everyday practices and global interdependencies. It asks how forms of exclusion and belonging are organised and contested; how categories such as class, gender, language and “race” are intertwined; and how new social and epistemic formations emerge from sites of tension, negotiation and contestation.
Inequality and difference are broad phenomena and are therefore examined in the DK from multi- and transdisciplinary perspectives. A wide range of disciplines from five faculties of the University of Innsbruck is involved: Educational Science, European Ethnology/Empirical Cultural Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Geography, History, Literary Studies, Musicology, Philosophy, Linguistics, Economic Policy and Economic History. In addition, the MCI (Social Work, Social Policy & Management) is institutionally associated, extending this exchange into applied and international contexts.
The DK is affiliated with the Research Area Cultural Encounters – Cultural Conflicts and networked with the Research Centres InnPeace, Cultures in Contact, and Migration & Globalisation.
The aim of the DK is to offer doctoral candidates optimal intellectual and institutional conditions for their research: fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, international networking and collective knowledge production.