KFG 17: Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective.

预测和操纵偶发生活事件的做法在全球范围内广泛存在，并证明了尽管科学和技术的强大话语，但仍具有惊人的弹性。基于对深奥实践的启发式工作定义，该项目的目标是（1）从全球和跨文化的角度绘制这些实践的领域，（2）系统地比较实践者，他们的解释，合理化和合法化策略，以及（3）开发一个解释模型，尽管全球强大的科学和技术话语，这些实践仍然存在。(4)通过开发细致入微的二级语言，将改进对此类做法的分类评估和学术分类。最后，（5）该项目结合了最近关于非本质主义比较研究的可能性和局限性的争论。因此，它打算-通过Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe的格式-探索评估和映射这样一个广泛的研究领域的新途径，尽管在人文学科的现代研究的典型专业化和区域化。该项目具有跨文化和当代的重点，并结合了文化和社会人类学，宗教研究，区域研究和语言学，社会学以及政治学的方法。Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe的形式允许汇集来自不同学科的大量学者，他们在不同的文化和区域背景下研究深奥的实践和从业者以及与之相关的替代理性，以收集和比较他们的研究成果-从而产生对数据水平的分析见解，方法和理论，不能产生的个别研究或他们仅仅串联。在这方面，Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe打算发展一种深奥实践的文化理论，有助于解释深奥实践的弹性，它们在大量例子中的类型相似性，以及它们-从跨文化的角度来看-非常不同的社会和话语评价。将特别关注的问题，为什么深奥的做法是不断排斥在某些文化环境中，而他们仍然接受，甚至在其他制度化。为此，将考虑来自不同领域的理论模型-特别是从宗教和仪式的认知和社会心理学研究领域，但也从宗教史上的人类学，社会学，哲学和越轨行为研究领域。

Practices for predicting and manipulating contingent life events are globally widespread and attest a striking resilience in spite of powerful discourses of science and technology. Based on a heuristic working definition of esoteric practices, the goal of the project is (1) to map the field of such practices from a global and transcultural perspective, (2) to systematically compare the practitioners, their interpretation, rationalisation and legitimisation strategies, and (3) to develop an explanatory model for the persistence of such practices in spite of globally powerful discourses of science and technology. (4) Through developing a nuanced second-order language, the taxonomical assessment and scholarly classification of such practices will be improved. Finally, (5) the project ties on recent debates on the possibilities and limits of non-essentialist comparative research. It thus intends – through the format of the Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe – to explore new avenues for assessing and mapping such a broad research field despite the typical specialisation and regionalisation of modern research in the humanities. The project has a transcultural and contemporary focus and combines methods from cultural and social anthropology, religious studies, the area studies and philology, sociology as well as political science. The format of Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe allows for bringing together a large number of scholars from different disciplines, who work on esoteric practices and practitioners and the alternative rationalities associated therewith in different cultural and regional contexts, in order to gather and compare their research findings – thereby generating analytical insights on the level of the level of data, method and theory that cannot be produced by individual studies or their mere concatenation. In this regard, the Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe intends to develop a cultural theory of esoteric practices that helps to explain the resilience of esoteric practices, their typological similarities across a large number of examples, as well as their – from an intercultural perspective – very different social and discursive evaluations. Special attention will be given to the question of why esoteric practices are continuously ostracised in certain cultural settings, whereas they remain accepted or even institutionalised in others. To that end, theoretical models from different domains will be taken into account – especially from the realm of the cognitive and social-psychological study of religion and ritual, but also from the fields of anthropology, sociology, philosophy and deviance studies in the history of religion.