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Birgit Meyers Keynote „Towards New Synergies: Social Sciences &#38; Humanities and the World“ (Originaltitel des Vortrages), gehalten auf der Synergy Conference 2019 der Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) am 7. Februar in Bussum, Niederlande, wurde zuerst auf dem Blog „Religious Matters in an Entangled World“ veröffentlicht.Birgit Meyer ist Professorin für Religionswissenschaft an der Universität Utrecht. Ihre Forschung beschäftigt sich unter anderem mit dem Verhältnis von Religion und Gesellschaft in der Gegenwart. Sie ist Vorsitzende des Wissenschaftlichen Beirats des Forum Transregionale Studien. Zuletzt erschienen sind von ihr Sense and Essence: Heritage and the Cultural Production of the Real (hrsg. von Birgit Meyer und Mattijs van de Port, Berghahn, 2018) und Taking Offense: Religion, Art, Visual Culture in Plural Configurations (hrsg. von Birgit Meyer, Christiane Kruse, Anne-Marie Korte, Wilhelm-Fink-Verlag, 2018).Synergy means working together, in such a way that the effects are greaterthan the sum of all parts. The choice of synergy as title – or motto – for aset of conferences that are to enhance interaction between all the parts andactors in the vast field of social sciences and humanities – SSH – shows greatambition. The two domains were joined together by bureaucratic decision, andnow the big question is how to respond to this structural transitionintellectually and practically. In my view, this transition could amount tomore than a mere low-profile cohabitation of different “scholarly species”within SSH aiming at a fair distribution of scarce funds, although this is alsoimportant. This transition could be taken as an occasion for debating anddeveloping our vision what research in the social sciences and humanities isabout in our time – against the horizon of the world. This is all the morepressing as we face major transitions on a global scale with strongrepercussions for local and national arenas. Society, just as synergy, is more than the sum of its parts, in that thebiological and cognitive capacities of humans are deployed within particularhistorically situated social-material environments. Referring to the binding,constraining and enabling collective regulations through which people relate toeach other and the material world in specific times and spaces, the social issubject to dynamics that can only be grasped through joint efforts from thedisciplines in the SSH field. Catchwords as globalization, neo-liberalizationand deregulation, mobility and plurality, postcolonialism, identity politics,racism and discrimination, climate change, and digitalization – the main themeof this conference – are prominent in our research agendas and spotlight theirglobal scope. How to position ourselves as scholars in this dynamic and transformingfield? What are the dangers and pitfalls, and what are new possibilitiesarising? What are our visions for the future of our academic work? How can wecontribute to understanding the complexities of our globalized and entangledworld and possibly indicate scenarios for policy intervention? This kind of big questions form the backdrop of this lecture, in which Iwant to present to you my vision of how to generate more synergy so as toadvance new and relevant directions for research. There are many possibilities to do so in the vast SSH fabric, and my visionis partial and personal. I think that the rise of new synergies acrossdisciplines requires personal reflection, so as to notice what one lacks andthus needs from other scholars, and what one can offer them in return. Thiskind of exchange is my simple formula for stimulating, mutually exciting andcritical interdisciplinary collaboration. So, let me begin with some brief notes about my background. German bybirth, I moved here in 1985 to study cultural anthropology because I was verymuch attracted by the progressive, cosmopolitan and informal climate of theNetherlands at the time, and found German academia all too narrow. I came tostay, and while I am now again in close contact with German colleagues in myfield, I see my scholarship as largely shaped through the possibilities offeredvia Dutch academic institutions. I am thankful for the generous funding by NWOthroughout the years, and have greatly benefited from taking part in suchinternationally well noted, intellectually exciting program initiatives asGlobalization and the Construction of Communal Identities and Sanpad(spearheaded by WOTRO), The Future of the Religious Past and Cultural Dynamics(GW), as well as from the possibility to carry out various projects as PI. Asan anthropologist working in religious studies, with a regional focus onAfrica, my work was situated in the interface of MagW (Social and BehavioralSciences), GW (Humanities) as well as WOTRO (initially: Research in Tropicalcountries; now Science for Global Development). Over the past 25 years there were many transformations concerning thestructure and infrastructure of funding in the scientific field. The mostrelevant for my own scholarship were the gradual withdrawal of WOTRO fromlarger issues with regard to research on society and culture in tropicalcountries – or as we say now: the Global South –, on the one hand, and thestrong focus on the Netherlands and Europa, combined with ever more emphasis onthe importance of societal impact, in SSH, on the other. These transformationsmade it increasingly difficult to land research projects with regard to theGlobal South outside of the realm of development issues. In my view this changeis a symptom of a deeper problem, and that is: An increasing narrowing down toissues that matter in our own society, whilst knowledge production in thebeginning of the 21st century de facto requires opening up towards dialoguesamong scholars across all disciplines here and elsewhere in the world. On the level of research policy, internationalization is often taken tomerely mean that Dutch research is ranked “top” in anglophone knowledgeproduction and able to attract “top” scholars from abroad. This is flawed, andin need of being revised to live up to the kind of knowledge production neededfor the 21st century. My aim in this lecture is therefore to spotlight zones for synergy in SSHthat seek to redress this problem. First, I will situate the field of SSH inthe light of the idea of the so-called two – or three – scholarly cultures inthe sense of Snow and Lepenies, and point out how and why the apprehension ofthe cultural dimension has facilitated new synergies across this field that canand should be further deployed. Second, I want to spotlight a salientshortcoming with regard to the horizon and scope of our research. My point willbe that in order to fully grasp the social and cultural transformations in ourhighly globalized and digitized world, SSH scholars have to transcend alingering epistemological Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism bybringing into conversation sound regionally-based research and generalexpertise. SSH – the field Already in secondary school, pupils in the Netherlands learn aboutdifferences between the alpha, beta and gamma sciences, concerning methods andtheories, as well as their societal valuation and status, with the alphasciences alas ranking quite low, and the beta ones on top. How to situate a coming together of humanities and social sciences in NWOin such as a configuration? An instructive historical reference in thisconnection is the Rede lecture by British physicist Charles Percy Snow “The Two Cultures and the ScientificRevolution”, delivered in 1959 andpublished as a book in 1963, in the midst of decolonization and the Cold War.Snow drew a sharp distinction between scholars in the natural sciences andtechnology, on the one hand, and scholars in literature, philology and relateddisciplines at the core of the humanities, on the other. Famously, and with agood sense of irony, he claimed that scholars from the two sides cannot talkwith each other because they produce their knowledge in distinct “cultures”.His choice for the term “culture” to indicate that knowledge production isgrounded in specific shared and binding ideas and regulations – or as I wouldsay a regime – is well taken.[1]But his identification of only two opposed and mutually incomprehensivecultures is wrong.For Snow, the culture of the natural and technical sciences was farsuperior to that of the “literary intellectuals”; progress and development inthe world were to be expected via the scientific insights of the former. Hisessay has generated an ongoing debate up to our time and was included by TheTimes in 2008 in a list of the hundred most influential books since WWII.[2]Obviously, Snow’s take on the literary intellectuals is a caricature of themuch broader field of the humanities, and his optimistic idea of naturalscience and technology as ensuring progress and security is dated, to say theleast. He suggested in passing that sociology and social history might be takenas a third culture that is on speaking terms with that of the scientists. The idea of the three cultures was deployed systematically by sociologistWolf Lepenies in his sophisticated analysis of the relations between thenatural sciences, humanities and sociology in France, UK and Germany. Publishedin 1985, his study Die Drei Kulturen focuses especially on the relationbetween sociology and the humanities, unpacking the competing aspirations ofsocial scientists and literary scholars in explaining the modern condition andoffering normative directions for life in highly technological andscience-driven societies in the early 20th century.[3]This competition involved disputes over the role and value of rationalityversus vitalism and the experience of life itself. It is clear that sociologyadopted a view of modern society as being increasingly rationalized. However,this did not mean that it understood rationalization and modernization as aconduit to happiness. This is, for instance, emphatically shown in Weber’sgloomy image of the iron cage at the end of the Protestant Ethic, according towhich modern humans carry the burden to struggle for meaning, and are envelopedin a destructive capitalist logic “until the last ton of fossilized coal isburnt”.[4]The focus on rationalization implied that mainstream sociology long had littleanalytical use for the domains of the senses, emotions and aesthetics – themeswhich had a longstanding prominence in the humanities. As a third culture, thesocial sciences oscillate and mediate between the natural sciences and thehumanities. In my everyday life as a scholar in the SSH field I can still note somerepercussions of the tensions between social sciences and humanitiesspotlighted by Lepenies and others. These repercussions come to the fore, for instance, in fights over theadequacy of quantitative versus qualitative methods (Methodenstreit,especially within sociology) or in occasional sighs about mutualincomprehensibility between “tellers” and “vertellers” (counters andnarrators), and the lingering relatively low valuation of humanities researchin certain strands of public opinion. However, in the meantime the spectrum ofdisciplines in the alpha, gamma and beta sciences has become moredifferentiated and complex, and the two or three cultures model is of limiteduse in mapping it.[5] Thanksto a healthy dose of pragmatism typical for the research climate in theNetherlands, we have opened doors within and between the social sciences andhumanities, and have even ventured into new interdisciplinary conversationswith scholars in the natural sciences – e.g. around climate change, theanthropocene, new materialism and digitalization. One reason for the opening of doors and increasing transdisciplinarycollaboration is a more and more widely embraced understanding of scholarlyknowledge production as being dependent on and relative to human procedures andobservations; the scholarly striving for “truth” grounded on “facts” is locatedtherein. Far from implying idiosyncrasy and an “anything goes” attitude, thepoint is that knowledge production takes place in agreed-upon regimes thatauthorize choices for themes, appropriate methods, data analysis andmanagement, ways of reporting, ethics, modes of use and so on. As scholars weare to be aware of differences between regimes for knowledge production invarious disciplines, and debate the implementation of large transformationsthat concern us all, such as the turn to “big data” or possibilities forpublishing “open access” that come with an increasing digitalization of ourscholarly working conditions. One important factor for the creation of synergy between scholars from manydisciplines within the humanities, and to some extent the social sciences, is abroader appraisal of the cultural dimension in the anthropological sense ofhuman practices of meaning-making in all spheres of life.[6]At stake here is a take on culture not in the sense of a separate domain – witha big C – that would exist next to societal domains as the economy, politics,law, religion, but rather as a crucial aspect relevant to the study of allthese domains. This so-called “cultural turn” yielded a transformation of thevarious disciplines in the traditional Geisteswissenschaften towards a broader,interdisciplinary Kulturwissenschaft. This is not confined to Germany, Irecognize the same trend in our humanities in the Netherlands, and I also seereligious studies as part of this broadened field. In the meantime, the apprehension of the cultural dimension in the sense ofmeaning-making was further expanded by a focus on the body and the senses,affects and emotions, images and objects as being key to living together insociety and in dynamics of power. I notice that much research in the humanitiesgets closer to the themes addressed in the social sciences, while in turn manysocial scientists move beyond the initially strong focus on rationalization intheir domain into the direction of the humanities. For me, the point inincorporating the corporeal, aesthetic and material dimensions intosocial-cultural analysis is not a vitalist or even romanticist striving to atlong last capture life itself, but to contribute to a multi-faceted conceptualrepertoire and methodological toolkit which is more adequate to explore andanalyze dynamics of gathering, synchronizing and mobilizing humans with andagainst each other in their full complexity.[7]This is the background of my work on religion from a material and corporealperspective,[8] whichfocuses on the enduring relevance of religion, albeit in new forms, forprocesses of binding and bonding, and hence its potential to trigger conflictsbut also to allow for conviviality. Studying religious matters such asbuildings, objects, images and food and the commotion around them in religiouslyplural societies in Europe and Africa leads me into fruitful interdisciplinaryconversation with scholars across the humanities and social sciences, so farincluding art history, Islamic studies, cultural memory studies, genderstudies, urban studies, cultural sociology, and of course anthropology. So, in my view and experience, over the past years many possibilitiesopened up in the SSH spectrum for fruitful interaction across variousdisciplines and with regard to different themes. Against this background,digitalization is an excellent theme that calls for a crosscutting analysis byscholars from various angles. Digitalization is so interesting – and excitingand to some extent scary – because it involves a composite of technologicaldevices and societal applications that facilitates and requires new socialformations, forms of civic participation, labour relations and ways of working,consumer choices, political protest, religious encounters and spiritualexperiences, and modes of being in the world, in which people are ever moresingular and networked at the same time.[9]Horizon world While I appreciate and participate enthusiastically in new interactionsemerging within the humanities and across SSH along these lines, with myresearch focus on religion in Ghana, I also at times feel peripheral in theseinteractions. This may be due to my own incapacity to make regionally groundedexpertise relevant to ongoing debates. But I think that it also implies anunderlying structural issue: the preponderance of epistemologies that situatecertain regions at a temporal and spatial distance from the presumed centerwhich is the West, as pointed out by Johannes Fabian in his book Time andthe Other.[10] Theproblem is, in other words, a tenacious Eurocentrism enshrined in a great dealof mainstream SSH thinking in the Western world. At the same time I collaborate with, for instance, historians,sociologists, political scientists, philosophers and religious studies scholarsat various universities across Africa. In their work these colleagues pay muchattention to colonial and postcolonial relations and, in order to grasp thepredicament their societies are in, have to take Europe into account, albeit bycalling for its “provincialization”. They know much more about us, than viceversa! The idea that Europe has become provincialized goes back to Hans-GeorgGadamer, who noted that while the “natural sciences can call forth a quickinternational echo”, the predominant role of Europe in world history hasdeclined in favour of other regional configurations. This insight was furtherdeveloped by Dipesh Chakrabarty in his book Provincializing Europe.[11]He argued that the phenomenon of political modernity that was distributedacross the globe with European colonial expansion and came to stay in theaftermath of decolonization is inadequate and yet unavoidable and to someextent indispensable for scholars working in the Global South. This is so,Chakrabarty argues, because it is impossible to think of modern state institutions,bureaucracy and capitalism without referring to concepts as citizenship, state,civil society and so on that are rooted in the intellectual traditions ofEuropean Enlightenment. But at the same time, analyzing formerly colonizedsocieties with these concepts marginalizes local, traditional vocabularies fororganizing political rule and social life. Hence his plea to provincializeWestern thought, by bringing it back to its historical roots and the conditionsof its global spread. I found this very useful in my own attempt to decenterthe study of religion, so as to move beyond the Western – and de factoProtestant – concepts that shaped our approaches to religion.[12]But at our end, such reflection happens more or less in the margins of SSH,in certain postcolonial research initiatives.[13]By and large, scholars here – exceptions granted – tend to be much lessinterested to take into account a region and its academics beyond Europe intheir conceptual reflexion, thereby perhaps unwittingly “provincializing” andisolating themselves. Less than a month ago, during my visit to the Institutefor African Studies at the University of Ghana the director Prof Dzodzi Tsikata(PhD from Leiden University) sighed that Europe is more and more centered onand preoccupied with itself. To grasp the complex entanglements of our currentworld, however, we need another attitude. As my friend and colleague, theGhanaian historian Samuel Ntewusu (PhD from Leiden University), put it: “weneed new interpretations for old things” – a point he made in the context ofour joint research project (involving scholars from the University of Ghana,Utrecht University and the African-Studies Centre Leiden), such as themodalities of the co-existence of Muslims and Christians in Madina, a suburb ofAccra.[14]So far forms of knowledge production that criticize and seek to transcend aEuropean bias tend to occur in the context of regional studies, that is,African studies, Asian Studies, Latin American Studies, and the like, but muchless in the echelons of general SSH. Often anthropologists feature as interlocutors who converse and collaboratewith scholars from multiple disciplinary backgrounds in these fields. This is,of course, not surprising, given that anthropology initially was defined as thestudy of other cultures and societies, and assembled holistic knowledge aboutthese cultures and societies that were classified as being located on presumedearlier stages of human development; this was a long prevailing way of orderingthe diversity of societies, cultures and religions encountered with colonialoutreach into a hierarchical evolutionary scheme, even though they were allco-present at the same time. But certainly since the 1960s, in the aftermath ofdecolonization, anthropology engaged in critical self-reflection about theepistemologies employed to “make its object” (Fabian 1983, see note 10) andbroadened its scope towards an anthropology at home in Europe. A lot could be,and has been, said about the role of anthropology in the configuration of SSHdisciplines and its relation to regional studies. But my point here will be adifferent one. The social sciences and the humanities in Europe emerged as a set ofdisciplines that were oriented on nation-states in Europe. In disciplines as,for instance, history, art history, law, sociology, economics or politicalscience, we still find remnants of what Ulrick Beck aptly described as “methodologicalnationalism”[15] – ascholarly attitude that takes the modern nation-state for granted as thenatural social and political form, and fails to pay due attention to complexconnections and movements across nations and regions. Though a flourishingcritical literature emerged to redress this problematic orientation, especiallyin the field of migration studies and global history, the problem of a limitedfocus on the nation-state as central unit of analysis still lingers on.Concomitantly, there has been much critique of the Eurocentric bias that stillinforms concepts and methods of the social sciences and humanities, resultingin a view of European history as the universal model for development andprogress. For some years now, this Eurocentrism has been criticized from theangle of postcolonial studies, and attempts to articulate a “theory from theSouth” and decolonize Western academia. In our ever more connected, but also pluriform and multipolar world, it isnecessary to critically rethink the divide between “West” and “Rest” and theways in which it is mapped on the division between the universal and theregionally specific which still underpins our knowledge production. As ananthropologist and religious studies scholar working in Ghana for 30 years anddeeply involved both in African Studies and thematic debates in SSH, I amconvinced of the need to critically rethink the well-trodden trajectories inwhich current knowledge production occurs. In this context I find it quitepuzzling that the Western model of the university has spread across the world,and yet most disciplines in SSH barely engage with scholarship in the GlobalSouth “on eye level”. This is not to say that each and every individual scholarshould engage in regional studies outside of Europe, but the point is the needfor another mindset. But there is some light. And, alas, I have to say that especially inGermany, over the past 15 years there have been various initiatives that striveto create synergies between so-called systematic disciplines in SSH and areastudies. The aim is to develop innovative, transregional or transculturalapproaches that seek to reconfigure such generalizing disciplines as, forinstance, law, art history, history, philology or urban sociology by makingscholars aware of the specific, European and thus regional roots of thesedisciplines as a condition to embark on a truly universalizing production ofknowledge.[16] Iserve for instance on the advisory board of the Forum for TransregionaleStudien, Berlin, which over the past decade has taken various initiatives inthe interface of regional studies and systematic disciplines, including longterm research projects, summer schools, workshops and public events. As is stated on the website of the Forum: The “world” looks different,depending on where one views it from. Knowledge is tied to position, so transregionalstudies must take into consideration a wide variety of perspectives. The goalis not a German or European view of the world, but dialogue with differinginterpretations and exchange with researchers from other parts of the world.Not only the objects of study are “transregional”, but also the process andpersonnel of its study.[17]I find this kind of initiative, in line with the recommendations of the GermanWissenschaftsrat for internationalization of the universities,[18]refreshing and stimulating, and see it as a lab for developing scholarship inSSH for the 21st century. For me it is intriguing to note that in Germany there now is quite muchattention for scholarly exchange with and in various regions of the world. Thisis somewhat ironic, for at the time I left Germany I found it quiteself-centered and closed, whereas the Netherlands were so open then for suchexchanges and knew certain programs to sponsor them, next to the much widerscope of WOTRO across SSH and the natural sciences at the time. In a way I feelsomewhat awkward in pointing to such initiatives launched in Germany right now,as I really do not want to come across as someone suggesting that things arebetter over there. Many things are not, of course. And it is for good reasonsthat German academic institutions like to collaborate with scholars in theNetherlands, and admire the Dutch successes in international arenas, includingthe capacity to achieve ERC grants. But what strikes me in comparing the frameworks in which academic workunfolds in both countries is that here in the Netherlands there is a markedrefocusing of scholarly research on the Netherlands and to some extent Europe;tellingly the Nationale Wetenschapsagenda privileges themes and questionsdefined as relevant for and by Dutch society.[19]This raises the question how we conceptualize “national” and “Dutch”. I wouldinsist that even though in public debate often a distinction is affirmedbetween “native” and thus “really” Dutch people and all kinds of (relative)newcomers, as SSH scholars working on our highly diverse society we cannotafford to reiterate a Eurocentric or nationalistic perspective in our analysisof the current diversity or plurality. In the light of our well taken andnecessary attempts to prove our importance and usefulness to politicians andpolicy makers, I see a risk of increasingly narrowing down the focus of SSHresearch and our mindset to the level of (a narrow understanding of) Dutchsociety and culture, whereas we should seriously think about how to broaden ourhorizon towards the world epistemologically and methodologically, as well as inour practical research collaborations and in our teaching. The world, obviously, is not just elsewhere and far away, it is presenthere in our increasingly plural and diverse cities and entangled society.[20]Grasping the tensions and possibilities of these complex plural configurationsrequires concerted efforts of scholars knowing the languages, history andculture of people originating from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin Americaor the Middle East who are here, and scholars of other SSH disciplines whoconventionally focus on the Netherlands. Practically, making new connectionsbetween these fields and striving for collaboration with scholarly colleaguesin the Global South “on eye level” requires facilities, including possibilitiesfor more PhD positions and fellowships for scholars from the Global South inour universities. In sum, in my view the big challenge for us is no longer to get on speakingterms with each other across the old divide of the different scholarly“cultures” of the social sciences and humanities. We collaborate quite wellalready with regard to many themes and use crosscutting approaches. The bigchallenge we face as SSH scholars is to move beyond the divide betweenpresumably universal knowledge and regional research located in certain areasin the world, and to develop forms of internationalization that bring Europeback to its right proportion. [1] &#160;Seealso Rudolf Stichweh, 2006, Die zwei Kulturen? Gegenwärtige Beziehungen vonNatur- und Humanwissenschaften. Luzerner Universitätsreden Nr. 18, 7-22.&#160;https://www.unilu.ch/fileadmin/universitaet/unileitung/dokumente/universitaetsreden/unireden_18.pdf[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/books/review/Dizikes-t.html[3] Wolf Lepenies, 1985, Die drei Kulturen. Soziologiezwischen Literatur und Wissenschaft. München: Hanser.[4] Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spiritof Capitalism (orig 2005), Chapter 5. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/weber/protestant-ethic/ch05.htm[5] See Stichweh 2006: 13-17 (see note 1).[6] Michael Lackner &#38; Michael Werner, 1999, Der culturalturn in den Humanwissenschaften. Area Studies im Auf-oder Abwind esKulturalismus? Herausgegeben vom Programmbeirat der Werner Reimers Konferenzen,Bad Homburg. https://www.perspectivia.net/publikationen/ads/wrk2[7] E.g. Mattijs van de Port &#38; Birgit Meyer,2018, Heritage Dynamics: Politics of Authentication, Aesthetics of Persuasionand the Cultural Production of the Real (co-authored with Mattijs van de Port),in: Sense and Essence. Heritage and the Cultural Construction of the Real.Co-edited with Mattijs van de Port. Oxford/New York: Berghahn. 1-39 http://www.berghahnbooks.com/downloads/intros/MeyerSense_intro.pdf[8] www.religiousmatters.nl[9] See e.g. the recent works by Felix Stalder (2016,Kultur der Digitalität, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp; https://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/felix-stalder/kultur-der-digitalitaet.html) and Andreas Reckwitz (2017, Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten, Berlin:Suhrkamp; https://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/andreas-reckwitz/die-gesellschaft-der-singularitaeten.html).[10] Johannes Fabian, 1983, Time and the Other: HowAnthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia UP. For a summary see: http://strongreading.blogspot.com/2011/07/johannes-fabian-time-and-other.html[11] Dipesh Chakrabarty, 2007 (orig 2001),Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference.Princeton: Princeton UP; press.princeton.edu/titles/8507.html[12] See Birgit Meyer, 2012, Mediation and theGenesis of Presence, Inaugural Lecture, Utrecht University; https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/257546[13] For instance, the Postcolonial StudiesInitiative at Utrecht University: http://www.postcolonialstudies.nl[14] https://www.religiousmatters.nl/buildings-images-and-objects/madina/[15] E.g. Ulrich Beck, 2007, The CosmopolitanCondition Why Methodological Nationalism Fails, Theory, Culture &#38; Society24(7–8): 286-290.[16] See e.g. the Forum for Transregionale Studien,and its vibrant blog, which brings together various initiatives fortransregional and transcultural research: https://trafo.hypotheses.org. The Forumalso organized a seminar reflection about „Der cultural turn in denHumanwissenschaften. Area Studies im Auf-oder Abwind des Kulturalismus?“ byLackner and Weber (see above), 20 years after the initial publication: https://www.forum-transregionale-studien.de/startseite/aktuelles-details.html?tx_news_pi1%5Bnews%5D=2442[17] https://www.forum-transregionale-studien.de/en/about-us/transregional-studies.html[18] https://www.wissenschaftsrat.de/download/archiv/pm_1518.pdf[19] https://vragen.wetenschapsagenda.nl[20] See e.g. my recent article on Europe as a new“frontier zone”: Birgit Meyer, 2018, Frontier Zones and the Study of Religion,Journal for the Study of Religion 31 (2): 57-78; https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/375375Citation: Birgit Meyer, Social Sciences, Humanities and the World , in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 25.03.2019, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/18267.