| Roland Benedikter | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1965 |
| Occupation | Sociologist and Political Scientist |
Roland Benedikter is an Italian-Austrian Sociologist and Political Scientist with specialization in Multi- and Interdisciplinarity from the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol. Since 2009, he has been serving as European Foundation Fellow, in residence at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara with duties as the European Foundations' Research Professor of Interdisciplinary Political Sociology, and as Research Affiliate / Visiting Scholar at the Europe Center of Stanford University. The focus of his work is on Contextual Political Analysis, as related with Political sociology and Cultural analysis in an inter- and transdisciplinary methodological approach.
Benedikter is best known for his specialization in the analysis of contemporary societies, which takes shape in his 7-dimensional methodological approach to global change, integrating the discourse patterns - and systemic order logics - of six typological fields: economics, politics, culture, religion, demography and technology. According to Benedikter, the overall process of the "global systemic shift" as "reality process" is the resulting seventh dimension which can't be reduced to any aggregation of its parts, but has to be considered as "the sum that is more than its parts". Benedikter calls this 7-fold, multi-dimensional and trans-disciplinary approach "Systems Action theory". This is because it combines elements taken from Systems theory and from Action theory. In the framework of this approach, Benedikter also frequently addresses issues related to globalized Political economy and to technological advances.
Benedikter grew up in the multicultural and plurilingual environment of the Italian Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen, an Alpine border region between Northern Italy and Austria, that belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1919 and was in the peace treaty of Saint Germain following World War I given to Italy (see History of Tyrol). As a consequence of forced Italianization policy by the Benito Mussolini and his successor governments and/or expulsion of previously German speaking and Ladin speaking Tyrolians (South Tyrol Option Agreement 1939, Italianization of South Tyrol), the province was ridden, especially from the end of World War II until the 1970s, by ethnic conflicts between its Austrian and Italian populations. Eye-witnessing the situation raised early questions in Benedikter about the interweavement between politics and culture.
After completing the Classical-Humanistic College of Bruneck (with focus on ancient Greek, Latin, philosophy and languages, 1984) and MA studies in Comparative Cultures, Languages and Literatures at the Universities of Innsbruck and Padova (1990, 1992), Benedikter worked as a researcher of the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research on "Hermeneutics of Change at the Intersection of Politics and Culture" at the Free University of Berlin (1990–1991), then as Scientific Research Collaborator at the Department of English and American Studies of the University of Innsbruck (1991–1993). He later completed German Doctorates in Sociology (Free University of Berlin), Political Sciences (Free University of Berlin) and an Austrian Doctorate in Educational Sciences (University of Innsbruck). He also completed diplomas in Interdisciplinary American Studies, University of New Orleans UNO, US; Interdisciplinary South East Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University Bangkok, Thailand; International Cultural and Educational Management, University of Hamburg, Germany; as well as several postgraduate diplomas a.o. in Social and Cultural Psychology, Interdisciplinary Research Methods in the Social Sciences, and Applied Quantitative Research Methods and Analysis in the Social Sciences in the UK (Northampton University) and the US (Georgetown University and The Samueli Institute Alexandria). He further completed courses of specialization in Scientific Methodology with Alan Musgrave (Otago), Cultural and Minority Politics with Joseph Marko (Graz) and Policy Analysis with Bernd Marin (Vienna). The fact that Benedikter achieved academic degrees and diplomas in seven different disciplinary fields provided him the reputation of being "the embodiment of the classical Humboldt University" (Valentin Braitenberg, MIT Boston and Max Planck Institute Tübingen) and "a fairly exceptional figure in the contemporary academic world" (Manfred Markus, Head of the Department for English and American Studies, Innsbruck University).
From 1993-1996, Benedikter contributed to build up the European Academy for Applied Scientific Research EURAC Bolzano (with focus on Languages, Ethnic Studies and Minority Rights) and the trilingual Free University of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano from the bottom up. From 1995-2003, he was active in Applied European Cultural, Ethnicity and Minority Politics as the Personal Speaker and Special Secretary (Segretario particolare) of the Minister for Culture, Science and Education of the German and Raetoroman (Ladin) Ethnic Groups of the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol; of the President of the Cultural Commission of the Assembly of European Regions AER; and of the Vice President of the Federal Union of European National Minorities FUEN. In the same period, he was the speaker of many initiatives of the International Civil Society, a.o. on GATS and MAI, with focus on culturo-political and scientific issues. With respect to his parallel academic career, he never became member of any political party, but acted as an independent expert and intellectual.
Since 1994, Benedikter has been a Contract Professor, Visiting Professor, Fellow and Research Scholar of Cultural and Political Analysis at universities, academies and think-tanks in the US, the UK, Australia, Peru, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Bulgaria and Turkey. Institutions include Columbia University New York, Georgetown University Washington DC, Villanova University Philadelphia, RMIT University Melbourne, University of Northampton, Vienna University, Innsbruck University, Free University of Bolzano, Clemens Ohridski University Sofia, Universidad Catholica del Peru Lima and Mersin University. Benedikter has also been occasionally lecturing at various academic and para-academic institutions, among them the Diplomatic Academy of the Republic of Austria Vienna, The German-American Institute DAI Heidelberg, the Hardenberg Institute for Cultural Sciences Heidelberg and the Future Center Tyrol. He has served as Board Member of Ecolnet. Civil Society Institute for Multidisciplinary Research on Sustainability and Policy Advice Bolzano, Italy (successor of the former Institute for Transdisciplinary Research Bolzano-Innsbruck, co-founded by him in 1992); as Ordinary Member of the South Tyrolean Society of Political Science; as Ordinary Member of the Istituto di Politica Rome; as Member of the Social Sciences Expert Pool of the Technology Innovation Center Alto Adige; as Founding External Examiner and Founding External Advisor of the European Integrated Master Program (EIMP) "Social Banking and Social Finance" of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Plymouth, UK 2005-2010 (two terms); as Founding External Examiner and Founding Advisor of the European Integrated Master Program (EIMP) "Social Care and Education" of the Faculty of Educational Sciences of the same University 2006-2011 (two terms); and as External Examiner and Advisor of the International Study Programme on Preschool Peace Education of the Government of Kosovo at the University of Kosovo in Prishtina, Prezren and Drenas (2009).
Since 2011, he has been heading the scientific council of a major European research project on "Sustainable Economy: Human Capital for sustainable development" of the United Nations’ International Labour Organization (ILO) Turin, Italy. He is an ordinary member of the Scientific Council of the Alexander Langer Foundation Bolzano, and an ordinary member of the Award Committee of the Alexander Langer Award International for Sustainable Development and Interethnic Reconciliation. He is listed as Expert for Social and Political Sciences for programs of the Italian Government and the European Union, as well as for the Experts Pool for Project Selection and Supervision, The European Social Fund ESF Brussels, Department for European Affairs venue Bolzano. Since 2010, he has also been a Research and Teaching Associate of the European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder, Germany.
In general, in his multiple writings on the future of the higher education sector and the social sciences (since 1996), Benedikter asserts that the interdisciplinary model of the Humboldt university is the main example to follow. While the United States have kept this model for their unprecedented success and leadership in modern academia, Europe lost it step by step after WWII and has to re-discover and re-implement it in the 21st century, a.o. through the trans-national innovation and reform process since the 1990s, the so-called "Bologna Process".
Benedikter’s reseach and teaching is centered around the questions 1) how culture and economics can be understood as political and societal factors in the contemporary world, and 2) how contemporary global change can be read in a systematically multi-dimensional way, including technological and demographical shifts. Most of his writings address what he calls "historically symptomatic" phenomena. They try to read them by applying a multilayered expertise of different disciplines, including elements of the history of ideas, onto them. The innovative focus of Benedikter's attention lies in his systemically seven-dimensional approach. This approach tries to include Politics, Economics, Culture, Religion, Technology and Demography as the six different, but increasingly intertwined typologies of discourse and systemic order patterns in post-1989/91 societies - as well as their sum "which is more than its parts" as the seventh dimension - into a pluridimensional and transdisciplinary methodology of analysis. Benedikter calls this approach "Systems Action Theory", because it combines elements taken from Systems theory and Action theory.
The main research and teaching focus of Benedikter’s "Systems Action Theory" - conceptualized as inclusive form of Contextual Political Analysis - is dedicated to the ongoing global change and its relation with the accompanying change of paradigms. Benedikter’s general postulate is that we live in the epoch of a "seven-dimensional global systemic shift" connected to (at least) "three epochal ends":
The result is - seventh - a change in the whole of global societal order structures, which has to be differentiated regarding the connections, interdependences and conflicts between the six basic discourses and their system logics.
Since the overall systemic shift follows the different and partly mutually independent, partly contradictory logics of the six respective discourses both synchronically and diachronically, their interweavement in a given space and time has to be understood. The reason for this is that an increasing number of contemporarily significant societal symptomatologies can only be understood adequately by integrating elements of all six logics, and by considering their interaction and interdependence. That implies that a transdisciplinary approach is applied, because the single disciplines seem not to be able to match the challenges of contemporary political and cultural hermeneutics alone anymore. For example, most significant phenomena of contemporary politics cannot be understood with the tools of classical Political Science alone anymore, because culture, religion, technology and demography are playing an increasingly important role in the definition and practice of politics. The interweavement of their characteristic logics (and ontologies) in a specific "reality process" must be understood primarily from the “inside”, not from the “outside”, i.e. by firstly applying their own modes and methods of thinking upon their analysis and by then criticizing them with regard to the respective consistency and validity.
In this sense, Benedikter's work is often considered that of a "classic intellectual with applied traits, concerned about a new enlightenment in the original sense, but in contemporary ways" (Hanns Fred Rathenow, Head of the Social Sciences Department and Director of the Program on Global Education and International Cooperation, TU Berlin University). This is because Benedikter's underlying concept of a truly contemporary, post-ideological intellectual implies as his/her central task not anymore to sketch ideal societies or utopias, as the intellectuals of the ideology-driven 20th century did, but rather to defend the mutual independence and autonomy between the four basic systemic discourses of politics, economics, culture and religion, and to additionally differentiate the discourses and logics of technology and demography from each of them. In this concept, the contemporary intellectual has to criticize every attempt of one of these six basic discourse patterns (or typological system logics) to interfere with, to mix up or even to usurp each other, making the defense of the borders between the discourses the most important task of intellectual analysis and intervention in the globalized, increasingly complex constellation of the 21st century. That is why the indispensable tool of the contemporary intellectual is a consistent multi- and transdisciplinary approach: Without knowledge in each of the six fields mentioned, a comprehensive (and complexity-adequate) analysis of what is happening is as impossible, as it is the defense of the boundaries between the six fields, and the critique of specific “nods” between them - like, for example, the politics of George W. Bush legitimated through and driven by religious discourse patterns, or the economization of culture in the forms of the rise of the “attention economy” or the “Neuromorphosis” of the Western (open societies) concept of the human being. The respective critique, aiming toward differentiation and mutual independence of the six fields from each other, is particularly relevant regarding the future of the existing open societies, but also of global democratization in the perspective of enlightenment, rationalism, liberalism, laicism, modernization and progressive societal differentiation.
According to Benedikter, to understand the global change of the present (i.e. the change composed of two overlapping layers of trajectory: the development caused by 1989/91 and the one since 9/11) we have to take a grip on the changes within the "cultural psychology" of "the West". To understand the recent developments within the paradigm formations of the West, which are “inscribed” into the "seven-dimensional global systemic shift", Benedikter writes extensively on a variety of contemporary topics, a.o. on the transformations issued by technological change, for example by the „new media“ and their societal and anthropological implications or by the emerging field of „Neurotechnology“, its ideological bases and predecessors. Since according to Benedikter most contemporary phenomenologies are not understandable anymore without reflecting about the media through which they are transmitted, analyzing the globalized "attention economy" and the new information and communication technologies (ICT) gets on the forefront of scientific self-reflection and awareness, increasingly influencing the theory and practice of perception, and thus of science as such. Another topic is late postmodernist philosophy, its orifices after 9/11 and its “post-postmodern” perspectives, including its - mostly unconsciously - inbuilt attempts towards the reconciliation of nominalism and realism in a “rational spirituality”.
Benedikter is also interested in the future of transcultural inclusive politics potentially arising from the postmodern heritage, and he addresses this topic with a special focus on minority and ethnicity politics. In this regard, he pays special attention to the relation between what he calls the “first generation of deconstructive Postmodernism” (1970–2004) and the “neo-idealistic” movements in “Western” civilization since the 1990s. In the face of the contemporary dialectics between the remnants of “Postmodernism” and the many forms of “Neoessentialism” emerging throughout the post-9/11 world, Benedikter searches for a third position between “postmodern” nominalism and “neo-substantialist” idealism. He calls this position sometimes a postmaterialist or neo-integral viewpoint (even if in the last years he increasingly distanced himself from such notions and definitions). The search for it includes questions on cultural and ethnic minority politics, i.e. for "unity in differentiation" (Juergen Habermas), but also on the “new Politics of the Mind”, i.e. the challenges related to the current “Neuromorphosis” of Western culture (already discussed in its very beginnings in the 1970s by Sir Carl Popper and John Eccles).
An important focus of Benedikter’s work is to define “limits of validity” or “boundaries of legitimacy” between the six macro-spheres of Politics, Economics, Culture, Religion, Technology and Demography and their respective discourses in addressing specific questions, examples, cases or "symptomatic phenomenologies" in the public societal debate in the sense of a "historic symptomatology". The question here is how the six spheres of discourse can remain mutually independent without interfering into each others’ autonomous logics and patterns of unfolding within the always unique constellation of a concrete case, question or application. Benedikter considers this to be one decisive question for the future of the “open societies”, democracy and “democratization” on the whole, and in principle. Regarding the “global Renaissance of Religion” as an emerging political and cultural factor and its fight against the secular thought of the West, Benedikter argues that both sides have to transcend their insufficiently balanced views. According to Benedikter, the current mainstream Cultural and Social Analysis of “the West” must learn to differentiate between “regressive” and “progressive” forms of Spirituality, and to start an in-depth dialogue between them.
Benedikter is co-author of Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker’s "Report to the Club of Rome 2003: Limits to Privatization. How to Avoid too Much of a Good Thing". He is author of three books - one of them about the "Sustainable Democratization of Iraq" (see: Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–present) through culture- and ethnicity-oriented strategies, one about "Social Banking and Social Finance: Answers to the Economic Crisis" (see: Late-2000s financial crisis) and one about the current "Zeitgeist" as embodied in the "Attention Economy" and in Sport as a mediatical and cultural phenomenon -, and of more than 100 book chapters and essays in books (a.o. Routledge, Francis and Taylor, Springer, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press) and specialized journals. He is editor and co-author of 14 books (a.o. „Economy and Culture in Dialogue“ and „The Social Sciences in the 21st Century“), of 19 articles in 4 international encyclopedias, and of more than 40 essays for newspapers in Russia, Turkey, Slovenia, Germany, Austria and Italy. He is author and editor of the book series "Transdisciplinary Studies on Contemporary Societies" (since 2005, Vienna), "Italian Philosophy for the 21st Century" (3 vol., since 2002, Stuttgart) and "Postmaterialism – The Second Generation" (7 vol., 2001–2005, Vienna). His writings – originally mainly in German, English and Italian - have been translated into French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Turkish, Persian and Macedonian, and re-published repeatedly, also on the Internet. Given to their broadly accessible style and language, Benedikter's publications have been considered as "exceptionally powerful and inspiring" (Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker).
Benedikter is on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journals: "Synesis. A Journal of Science, Technology, Ethics, and Policy"; "Cultural Intelligence: Issues in Security and Defense"; “Integral Review. A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal for New Thought, Research, and Praxis”; and “Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine“. He has been referee of incoming articles for "Zeitschrift für Politik. Wissenschaftliches Organ der Hochschule für Politik München" (the oldest German political science journal), "Mind and Matter. A Journal for Interdisciplinary Mind-Matter Research and Policy", and editorial collaborator of “Politica. Year Book of the South Tyrolean Association of Political Science. Ordinary member of both the Italian and Austrian Associations of Political Science" (international section).
Benedikter was awarded the Dr. Otto Seibert Award for the Advancement of Scientific Publications of the University of Innsbruck 2005, the DAMUS Foundation Research Grant Award 2005-07 and the European Foundation Professorship Award 2008. He was elected Fellow of Georgetown University Washington DC in 2008 and Associate Fellow of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Arlington in 2008, elevated to Full Fellow in 2010, and awarded 5 major international Research Grants between 1996 and 2009. In November 2010, the Study Program "Social Banking and Social Finance" of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Plymouth, UK, for which Benedikter served as the Founding External Examiner and Founding External Advisor from 2005 until the end of 2010 was awarded the Special Prize of the German Continuing Education Innovation Awards by the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education Bonn.
Benedikter is active in international policy advice since the 2000s, a.o. in the framework of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Washington DC (James Giordano), as well as in cooperation with several European foundations and corporate consultants.
Benedikter cooperates with artists like Giovanni Melillo Kostner (Fotografi senza frontiere / Photographers without frontiers, a global NGO) and Martha Jimenez Rosano on issues located at the interface between social research, art and documentation.
Regarding his own preferences, as far as known Benedikter has been particulary positive about Darren Aronofsky's 2006 film The Fountain. According to his statements over time though, his favourite movie seems to be "Out 1 - Noli me tangere" by Jacques Rivette (1971–72, 12:40 hours, 16 mm) and some films of Jean-Luc Godard, Andreji Tarkowskij and Wim Wenders. Some of his favourite books are Thomas Aquinas' "On Being and Essence", "Faust" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Les miserables" by Victor Hugo and "The Philosophy of Freedom" by Rudolf Steiner; and among his favourite painters are Giotto, Max Beckmann and Emilio Vedova. With regard to the arts, Benedikter in its basic sensitivity to time and space has been occasionally asserting to be essentially "a musician", being destined, at the age between 18 and 20, to become a pianist after 13 years of professional education. Benedikter is known to be an experienced composer of experimental pop music tracks since the 1990s, all of them in the classical instrumentation: 2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 drums, singers, and all of them, as far as known, in 7/4 rhythm without exception. The 7/4 rhythm, according to Benedikter, "forces you to fly in a balanced and attentive way, as the future requires, instead of stamping in 4/4, as classical rock'n'roll and pop wanted to suggest, which was probably right for our (progressively) rebellious mothers and fathers but is the past now for the new generations. 7/4 is kind of the 'golden ratio' transferred to music".
Also, "music is time that resists against time" because it "brings time to consciousness of itself, of its own happening while it is happening, and thus it is something maybe more human than the current human being, and something more political than most politics that are being enacted today". In this sense, Benedikter is ambiguous about Italian artist’s Giovanotti's affirmation that "to create another reality against this most disenchanted political and social reality of our times, it is just to let music happen, any music whatever, of any kind that pleases people, and not to give this or that message at all through this music, because it is the very different pleasure of music as such, of any kind, that creates that different reality people are searching for, in the end and in essence. Music itself, independently of its message, is the different reality, the alternative and the answer." According to Benedikter, "such a statement is to some extent symptomatic for today's cultural industry: in times of global socio-political change it is legitimate insofar as a big part of the contemporary music business is really just about distracting us and pleasing us here and now. This trend is indeed due to the different reality our everyday lives need, and which we are in bad shortage of. Nevertheless, the societal needs of the West (and of democracies to be created around the world, for sure) are not about alternative realities or utopias, and not about spaces to retreat into. They are rather about reflecting about what we do, about our own decisions and plans. If we could observe our thoughts while we are thinking, not only afterwards as Hegel asserted, that would mean to develop rationality and enlightenment from its initial diachronic stage into a second, synchronic stage. Music is an exercise in the observation of consciousness while it occurs, an awareness that feels and understands itself while it happens, and that manifests that it is aware of itself. In the more 'universal' (and socio-anthropological) sense, music can be understood as an example for modern rationality to become aware of itself in actu, in order to become what it unconsciously wants and needs to be: a consciousness aware of itself while it is put into action. And in fact at its best, music is a self-aware consciousness that happens as pure time, as process suspended between past and future. In this sense, music is the ideal model for a thinking mind in general. It is a model of rationality and enlightenment as a concrete performative act in time and space, instead as an abstract programme or ideology. I think we can and we should transfer some of these aspects music is about to academic thinking and science, particularly to the social sciences and the humanities."
Concretizing such a philosophy, most of Benedikter's - in their majority still unpublished - tracks and multi-voice compositions have supposedly been inspired by his long term friends Herbert Salzmann, Gerold Hausberger (alias Gerold Hausberg) Christian Kessler, Much Hager and Michael Koegler, who formed the Austrian band Lux (i.e. Let there be light) in the 1990s and later where part of Benedikter's co-authored trans-national band project "Curzon" until the first half of the 2000s. Benedikter is also author of several unpublished radio plays and photography installations.
Nevertheless, Benedikter - in many public statements, dialogues and interviews of the recent years - seems to be of the opinion that there is no art whatsoever that compares to the new images of the universe provided by ESO, ALMA (since October 3, 2011) and Hubble, being them "figurally and geometrically like modern art by Emilio Vedova, but just much more than that", i.e. "the most moving and stunning perceptions probably ever caught by the eye of humanity, in search of its own place, role and mission in space and time". (Cf. ALMA opens its eyes, http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1137/ and http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1137e/)
Benedikter is an internationally acclaimed speaker. According to his statements, besides the classical speeches of the ancient times, one of his favourite public speeches is Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement address of June 14, 2005: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html "because it has all what a good speech needs: Personality, countenance, containment, clear structure, honesty, the surprise factor, humour, modesty, revelation, emotion and conciseness".