300450 Global Problems: Theories, Methods, and Cases (MA: Politische Soziologie) (S) (SoSe 2025)

Solutions to global problems such as climate change or migration are developed depending on how they are understood, defined, and on what knowledge informs them. For this reason, scholarship on problem making challenges the assumption that problems, are simply given. Instead, problems are seen as constructed by various actors in different contexts and across scales. Against this background, this seminar introduces students to theories and methodologies of global problem formation. We will examine a number of empirical cases such as plastic pollution and try to tease out how actors across scales struggle to define problems and what corresponding problem solutions emerge from this struggle. Also, we will discuss cases in which the order is strangely reverse, namely when ‘solutions’ such as market instruments chase problems.

The seminar will be taught in English, but students are welcomed to write their term papers in German.