Polarisation
Around the world, political and societal discourse is suffering from an increasingly polarised public sphere. Polarisation occurs when the ‘middle’ is lost, and society divides into largely separate and non-interacting groups, with no sense of common ground and loss of mutual understanding and cooperation. Polarisation dynamics play out within specific ‘issues’ (think of climate change, vaccination policies, social justice topics), as well as more generally in the public sphere, with distrust, lack of interaction, and distaste, anger or even loathing resulting between members of opposing ‘camps’.
The polarisation of the public sphere diminishes the space for constructive and collaborative processes, and in this way it undermines democracy, as well as our ability to collectively address the enormous challenges of our time, such as the climate crisis and societal inequality. There is thus an urgent need to understand the dynamics of polarisation and how they play out in our societies, so that we can work to counteract them.
In this summer school students will have the opportunity to work together with researchers from the University of Groningen and Stellenbosch University, in the disciplines of (social) psychology, philosophy, political science, sociology, and other relevant disciplines, in an innovative hybrid and transdisciplinary programme addressing polarisation from multiple perspectives. Students will learn about and engage with current debates and emerging research insights which address and analyse our polarised times, and will work together in mixed groups (both in terms of discipline and country of study) on developing an intervention to mitigate against processes of polarisation in a specific context, brought in as a challenge by external societal partners.
Last modified: | 21 March 2024 3.17 p.m. |