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'Europe reverse' - Sicily as a laboratory for 'hybrid statehood' in Europe

Research Team: Dr. Lene Faust (Universität Bern) / PD Dr. Christian Henrich-Franke

Funded by Volkswagenstiftung in the funding line 'Originalitätsverdacht' since 2021

Project Description

‘Limited statehood’ has for a long time been rather unknown in European states. Politics and sciences have primarily asked, how concepts of European statehood can be adapted to other (conflict troubled) parts of the world. Nowadays, however, many European (big) cities feature territories, in which (democratic) institutions can only be kept running at enormous personal and financial efforts. ‘Hybrid statehood’ as territorial and temporary coexistence of limited and full statehood is part of everyday life there.

This project will reverse the previous scientific perspective on the export of societal forms of organisation. Point of departure is the hypothesis that Sicily is a suitable laboratory to analyse ‘hybrid statehood’. There, people cope with the challenges of hybrid statehood in complex practices of everyday life. They developed reasonable forms of social organisation, which can be described as multidimensional (clientele) networks. What can we learn from the relative stability of these forms of societal organisation at the urban micro level for the coexistence in territories of hybrid statehood within the EU?

The project combines a social science-historical ‘top down’ perspective with an anthropological ‘bottom up’ perspective on social micro organisations. It aims at formulating a new concept of ‘hybrid statehood’.

Presentations