Narrativisations
Human production of meaning is fundamentally narrative. The IRTG “Baltic Peripeties” applies this premise to conduct innovative studies in the field of Baltic Sea region research.
The second research frame examines phenomena already understood as narrative and which, consequently, can be analysed with regard to their peripeties. The focus of the research questions is on the duality of every peripety: 1) the choice of peripety determines what its respective narrative will look like, and 2) the peripety is not given through a chain of occurrences, but is instead the object of a work of interpretation that determines whether or not an occurrence is suitable to act as a peripety. The research frame is therefore based on the hypothesis that groups in their various sociocultural dimensions – families, companies, organisations, regions, nations, etc. – are constituted through the construction of narratives. This hypothesis also claims that alternative stories of minorities exist alongside the dominant narratives.
The foci of this second research frame are, on the one hand, the competition of historically provable narratives constructed by the same peripeties, and, on the other hand, projects that are interested in the competition of alternative peripeties, which means, they deal with the constellations in which different social groups construct alternative peripeties from the same chain of occurrences. In which cases have different groups generated alternative peripeties from the same chronology? And why, within a given cultural context, have formerly established turning points given way over time to alternative peripeties? How, for instance, does the Catholic Church tell the story of Reformation in a Lutheran Swedish context? Is, for instance, the Reformation still an identity-providing turning point for majority groups in the Baltic Sea region?