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"Reversing the Gaze" - Workshop in Edinburgh

As part of project "Reversing the Gaze", Ralph Weber and Lerato Posholi spoke at a workshop on "Conceptualisations of "democratic crises" in different area studies communities" in Edinburgh. Ralph Weber gave a talk on "European Studies: RESILIENCE as a Case of Self-Reversing the Gaze" and Lerato Posholi presented on "Concepts and contexts: The politics of concepts and their use across North-South". The workshop took place on 11-12 May 2023.

The overarching question of the "Reversing the Gaze" project is: How can we use concepts developed in the Global South for general knowledge gain? The methodological approach used here is a 'reciprocal comparison'. In three case studies, concepts developed for the study of political processes and structures in the global South ('re-tribalisation', 'political society', 'the cunning state') are applied to Europe.

Ralph Weber is Associate Professor of European Global Studies at the Institute for European Global Studies. He specializes in Political Theory, Chinese Politics, and modern Confucianism. Currently, he is the President of the European Association for Chinese Philosophy and the Chair of the Section on Political Theory in the Swiss Political Science Association.

Lerato Posholi is an SNSF Fellow in the project "Reversing the Gaze: Towards Post-Comparative Area Studies" at the Institute for European Global Studies. She holds a PhD in Education from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her research interests include social epistemology, decolonial theory and curriculum studies.

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