Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - Institute of Asian and African Studies

Beyond Social Cohesion - Global Repertoires of Living Together (RePLITO)

In light of increased global interdependencies, Beyond social cohesion - Global repertoires of living together (RePLITO) takes neglected repertoires of living together as its starting point to rethink social cohesion from a transregional perspective. The project unites scholars with solid backgrounds in bridging different disciplines and epistemologies in teaching, research and international cooperation. By joining our expertise in the Middle East, Southern and East Africa, Central, Europe, South and Southeast Asia as well as Latin America, we engage in comparative and interdisciplinary research across these regions.

Repertories of living together serve as our conceptual starting point to explore how social actors or movements imagine and practice communal life and create bonds. RePLITO includes: i) discourses of coexistence as inscribed in intellectual and theoretical reflections and represented in popular culture, art and literature; ii) institutions and norms developed for (self-)governing living together in and with inequalities and differences; iii) social practices, observed in everyday life and within institutions. Although we start from different localities and regions, we understand repertoires of living together as relational rather than geographical units of analysis. These repertoires have been constituted and continue to be negotiated and transformed in the context of dynamic interactions beyond localities, nation-states and regions.    

In collaboration with OFF-University RePLITO aims to create a dynamic and interactive digital archive that brings together and conceptualizes multiple repertoires of living together. This digital resource combines the functions of a knowledge archive of Global Repertoires of Living Together (digital library, an open-access publication series, and podcasts of public lectures) with a platform for collaborative teaching and research-oriented learning for researchers and students based in multiple locations and regions. Our goal is to make available repertoires of knowledge and practices of living together that have so far not been accounted for, either because they were not institutionalized or because they did not count as “proper knowledge”.

Above all, RePLITO strives to overcome institutionalized divides between area studies and so-called systematic disciplines by establishing long-term collaborative research on a subject of acute academic and political relevance on a global scale. Such global perspectives on social cohesion are even more urgently needed in light of increasing tendencies to restore and push national boundaries through exclusive hegemonic politics or enhanced border regimes. 

RePLITO is one of six Eploration Projects funded in the framework of the Grand Challenges Initiative by the Berlin University Alliance (Oct 2020 - Sep 2023).

Project management:

Prof. Dr. Schirin Amir-Moazami (speaker, FU Berlin),

Prof. Dr. Nadja-Christina Schneider (co-speaker, HU Berlin)

Participating institutes:

Please contact schirin.amir-moazami@fu-berlin.de or nadja-christina.schneider@hu-berlin.de for further information.