Project Details
Projekt
GRK 1288: Friends, Patrons, Clients. The Practice and Semantics of Friendship and Patronage in Comparative Historical and Anthropological Perspective
Subject Area
History
Term
from 2006 to 2015
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 12406603
The Research Training Group is to analyse personal relations that go beyond the context of family and kinship in different historical periods and different cultures, covering symmetrical ties of loyalty (between equals) as well as asymmetrical ones (patronage, clientage). Such personal or face-to-face social relations are clearly a phenomenon, which we encounter in all societies and cultures in different forms; they are, therefore, an eminently suitable subject for comparative research. The research programme deliberately looks at both friendship and patronage. Only in combining both fields of research can the origins of the modern ideal of a totally symmetrical emotional and affective friendship, which is not marred by any notions of self-interest, be explained in historical context, while at the same time trying to avoid an approach that looks at patronage in pre-modern societies only as a means of self-advancement without any emotional content.
The Research Training Group is to be guided by a number of general questions which focus inter alia on the semantics of friendship and patronage, the historical ups and downs of friendship as a leitmotif and guiding principle of social relations, the special importance of intercultural and gender-related aspects of friendship, and the relationship between specific forms of friendship and a given political culture.
Equally, the economic aspects of such social ties (e.g. mutual economic support) and the social practices and institutions, which give stability to friendship and patronage by establishing trust and confidence, are to be examined. We want to look at the values and norms which constitute friendship in different cultures and periods of history, and at the special circumstances that give friendship and patronage in politics an aura of illegitimacy or corruption. The Research Training Group also aims to reassess the role of friendship in modern societies, which is often considered as a marginal, purely private phenomenon without any clear institutional framework, in a long-term historical perspective.
The Research Training Group is to be guided by a number of general questions which focus inter alia on the semantics of friendship and patronage, the historical ups and downs of friendship as a leitmotif and guiding principle of social relations, the special importance of intercultural and gender-related aspects of friendship, and the relationship between specific forms of friendship and a given political culture.
Equally, the economic aspects of such social ties (e.g. mutual economic support) and the social practices and institutions, which give stability to friendship and patronage by establishing trust and confidence, are to be examined. We want to look at the values and norms which constitute friendship in different cultures and periods of history, and at the special circumstances that give friendship and patronage in politics an aura of illegitimacy or corruption. The Research Training Group also aims to reassess the role of friendship in modern societies, which is often considered as a marginal, purely private phenomenon without any clear institutional framework, in a long-term historical perspective.
DFG Programme
Research Training Groups
Applicant Institution
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Participating Researchers
Professor Dr. Ronald G. Asch; Professor Dr. Ulrich Bröckling; Professorin Dr. Sabine Dabringhaus; Professor Dr. Wolfgang Eßbach; Professor Dr. Hans-Helmuth Gander; Professorin Dr. Sylvia Paletschek; Professorin Dr. Sitta von Reden; Professorin Dr. Gisela Riescher; Professorin Dr. Judith Schlehe; Professorin Dr. Birgit Studt; Professor Dr. Thomas Zotz
Spokesperson
Professor Dr. Dietmar Neutatz, since 10/2012
