Abstract

Territoriality is today increasingly less tied to geographic locations, but in stead manifests as a multifaceted phenomenon in which national and power political demands play a similar role as international financial flows, technical infrastructure and mass media attention. And so communications technologies and the mobility of information technically create a new, globally effective territorial order which requires new critical methods and strategies for its used analysis and design.

Currently there is lots of talk about ‘crises’. We are however, economically just as ecologically, by no means in a crisis, but we have found ourselves at the limit of a 250 year long, extremely successful system. It is particularly surprising that the knowledge necessary for this diagnosis has been available, in some cases for decades, but that no appropriate action has followed from this knowledge […]. Radical changes in life styles and options for action do not work with top-down implementation, but must be tested in everyday life and, if found successful, spread until they become part of the cultural mainstream. The future depends on this potential being more attentively taken, promoted and made political.

• Harald Welzer (DE) is a sociologist and social psychologist. He is head of the Center for Interdisciplinary Memory Research in Essen and research professor for social psychology at the University of Witten-Herdecke. He works on memory cultures and the psychology of the holocaust and violence.