The Globalization of Knowledge and its Consequences: The Transfer and Transformation Processes of Knowledge Across Different Cultures

The aim of this project is to focus on a hitherto neglected dimension of globalization processes, the globalization of knowledge. The much discussed globalization process of the present mainly refers to the economic processes of the globalization of the markets for goods, capital, and labor, whereas the global diffusion of technical innovations and bodies of knowledge is often merely considered as either a presupposition or a consequence of economic, political, and cultural processes. But globalization is not only a phenomenon of the present and it involves knowledge in more significant ways.
In this project, the globalization of knowledge is being analyzed by integrating diverse studies of the conditions, pathways, and consequences of historical processes of the production, the transmission and the transformation of knowledge, relating them to present processes of globalization.
The main goal of the research project is to explain this geographic diffusion of knowledge throughout history in terms of historical-epistemological concepts. The project aims at a unified and systematic account of the globalization of knowledge by means of large-scale comparative research grounded in empirical detail. Individual investigations contribute the breadth of empirical detail that the research initiative requires. In order to gain the critical breadth, the project draws necessarily on contributions from visiting-scholars. The theoretical framework developed in the course of the project comprises a core set of concepts which will necessarily be extended and revised in the course of further research. The basic concepts include a typology of knowledge forms, knowledge representation structures, and knowledge transfer processes.
The network established at a Dahlem Conference in 2007 has since been expanded. The participating scholars have collaborated in a variety of meetings and exchanges on producing a series of volumes dedicated to an integrated and coherent history of the globalization of knowledge.
The four research foci of the project are chosen such that theoretical claims can be validated with reference to outstanding historical phases in which knowledge production, transmission and transformation was critical for advancing processes of intercultural transmission.