The programme approached seven themes:
1. Forms of belonging and modes of social integration
Team Leader: Professor Klaus Kreiser (Bamberg, Germany)
Individuals become part of society through processes of socialisation. As they go through such processes, individuals become members of intermediary groups and institutions that contribute also - in different ways - to their individuality. Such groups/institutions encompass a person's life from birth to death. The varieties of "family" types and relationships will be addressed in the framework of families, as for example in the mamlšk system. Large formations, e.g., the army, the bureaucracy, and the 'ulam’' corps, have their own modes of integration, which include elements of socialisation supplementary to formal education.
2. Norms and oppositions
Team Leader: Professor Walter Dostal (Wien, Austria)
All societies produce a corpus of legal norms aimed at regulating the functioning of the social body. One of the principal questions we wish to ask in this workshop is how the principles of law in Islamic lands - whether religious law as expressed through the shari'a, or secular law issuing from political authority - are translated into practice in daily life.
3. Power relationships
Team Leader: Professor Paul Dumont (Strasbourg, France)
One of the basic objectives of the team should be to measure the margin of freedom of movement which state structures leave to the individual in Muslim societies. What means are at the state's disposal in dictating its norms to the men and women who constitute the social fabric?
4. Modes of production
Team Leader: Professor Zafer Toprak (Istanbul, Turkey)
It must be admitted - if only hypothetically - that there is a close correlation between the modes of economic production and the role given to the individual in society. It therefore follows that these processes of individuation do not follow a uniform trajectory, and that there may be regression of individuation just as there exist economic discontinuance and involutions. However, the main issue is not to look at the individual in society in broad general terms, but to individuals as they relate to the process of economic change.
5. Images and representations
Team Leader: Professor Robin Ostle (Oxford, United Kingdom)
The research should revolve around two areas of a broad range of cultural activities: a) manifestations of the consciousness of self on the part of the creative individual b) the processes of inspiration and innovation, and the legitimation of these processes. Taking into account the current state of research, the work will be further subdivided into: material culture, literate culture and manifestations of collective memory.
6. Religious activity and experience
Team Leader: Professor Mercedes Garcia-Arenal (Madrid, Spain)
The special perspective of this thematic group is the personal religious experience (the individual psychological aspect) and its implications in the form of religious activities and movements. To this field belongs also the study of the role of the individual initiative and its functions. The field demands studies from the perspective of the psychology and sociology of religion, but also that of the philosophy of religion.
7. Muslims in contemporary Western Europe
Team Leader: Professor Felice Dassetto (Louvain, Belgium).
Activities
Detailed list of the programme activities (PDF 1.1KB)
