SFB 1150: Cultures of Decision-Making

“决策文化”合作研究中心从历史比较和跨学科的角度研究了从中世纪到现在的决策社会实践。其目的是将决策作为一种社会行动形式来处理，这种社会行动既不是不言自明的，也不是一成不变的，而是以不断变化的社会和文化条件为基础的。我们假定决策是一个基本问题，是由于需要科普社会复杂性而产生的。此外，它也是一种以特定文化方式表达自己的现象，并且（在任何特定时间）在构建社会秩序方面发挥着不同的作用。因此，我们的中心目标是重建不同的历史“决策文化”，并使其对特定社会秩序的意义可见。我们的长期研究目标是双重的：首先，在分析研究计划的基础上，我们将研究选定的领域，问：决策是如何在不同的历史背景下框架，建模，执行和反映;在每种情况下，决策背后的文化特定条件是什么;以及它以什么方式反过来塑造了社会的制度和权力结构。我们还研究了决策文化如何以及为什么会长期变化。第二，我们希望提供一种动力，使决策成为历史文化科学的一个中心问题，并与当前非历史的决策话语形成对比。此外，鉴于对政治和日常生活中决策的普遍琐碎理性主义理解，合作研究中心可以为当前社会对决策的自我反思做出重要贡献。

The Collaborative Research Centre “Cultures of Decision-Making” examines the social practice of decision-making in a historical-comparative and interdisciplinary perspective from the Middle Ages to the present. Its aim is to address decision-making as a form of social action which is neither self-evident nor invariant, but which is based on changing social and cultural conditions. We presuppose that decision-making is a fundamental problem that results from the need to cope with social complexity. Furthermore, it is also a phenomenon which expresses itself in culturally-specific ways and which (at any given time) plays a different role in structuring the social order. Therefore, our central aim is to reconstruct different historical “cultures of decision-making” and to make visible their significance for particular social orders. Our long-term research goal is twofold: First, on the basis of an analytical research program, we will examine selected fields, asking: how decision-making was framed, modeled, performed and reflected on in different historical contexts; what the culture-specific conditions underlying decision-making were in each case; and in what ways it in turn shaped the institutional and power structure of society. We also examine how and why cultures of decision-making changed over the long term. Second, we want to provide an impetus for rendering decision-making a central problem of the historical cultural sciences as well as a contrast to current ahistorical discourses of decision-making. Furthermore, given the widespread trivial-rationalist understanding of decision-making in politics and everyday life, the Collaborative Research Centre can make an important contribution to current social self-reflection on decision-making.