Dynamics of power
“Power” and “abuse of power” are currently on everyone’s lips. However, the causes and consequences of power are evaluated and assessed very differently. For example, the discussions surrounding the #MeToo movement, church institutions and universities reveal existing power mechanisms and their fatal potential for abuse. The question then arises as to how these can be changed. In other contexts – for example in international relations, at least since the Russian attack on Ukraine – power is increasingly understood as an inescapable factor that calls a rule-based order into question and that must be accepted, whether intentionally or not.
In historical studies, power has always been one of the most important categories of analysis. For historical studies, this always involves very specific cases of abuse and control of power. At the same time, questions are asked about the emergence, handling or effect of power relations. From a historical perspective, power proves to be a product of complex relationships and exists in politics and business as well as in families and gender relations. Alongside formal power, informal forms or those of a communicative or cultural nature emerge. Last but not least, the The motto “Dynamics of power” points out that power, like domination, requires a resonance space within which it can unfold and is simultaneously subject to processes of dissolution, diffusion or subversion.
At the 55th Deutsche Historikertag, there will be a multifaceted examination of the dynamics of power. The discussions will focus on the following aspects, among others:
- Phenomena of the use and abuse of power, power control or power conflicts in all areas and in all epochs of historical reality
- basic mechanisms, practices and dynamics of power from a diachronic and/or synchronic perspective
- different forms of power and their interplay (formal and informal, political, economic or cultural forms)
- Phenomena of loss of power, diffusion or subversion or processes of empowerment
- Representation, communication and reception of power relations
- Discussion of different terms and concepts of power, historiographical and methodological approaches to questions of power
- Reflections on the relationship between science and power, whether within the discipline of history or in the relationship of one’s own discipline to the outside world