WiZeGG is involved in the research project “Theory of Subjectivation”, which comprises two sub-projects and is funded by the “Science and Scholarship for Sustainable Development” funding programme of the Ministry for Science and Culture of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation. The project has been carried out at the University of Oldenburg and the Leuphana University of Lüneburg from 2015 to 2018.

The aim of the overall project is to investigate forms of attributing responsibility in the context of sustainability. It is assumed in this context that relationships of responsibility vary in that they are produced in different sustainability concepts (ecological modernisation, macroeconomic management, post-growth, post-collapse) as well as a corresponding knowledge of systems, goals and transformation, corresponding forms of communication and everyday practices.

The WiZeGG project area understands responsibilisation as a ‘neo-social’ mode of subjectivation and is concerned in two sub-projects with the question, which forms of subjectivation go hand in hand with the establishment of the sustainability model: On the one hand, a genealogical-historical study will examine the conditions for the development of a sustainability discourse and the relationships of responsibility included therein. On the other hand, a praxeological-ethnographic study will look at the sustainability-related responsibilisation within everyday practices.