Afrika in der Globalisierungsfalle

In the summer semester of 2006, I had the pleasure of taking on the Otto von Freising Guest Professorship at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. I had just spent my last semester as a professor of Political Science with a focus on International Relations, Development Policy, and the Third World at the University of Hamburg in the winter semester of 2005/2006, and was now 'free' as an emeritus to accept the enticing offer from the Dean of the Faculty of History and Social Sciences, Prof. Dr. Joachim Detjen, and my colleague Klaus Schubert. I truly do not regret that decision. Between April and July 2006, I held a lecture on the topic 'Africa in History and Present' and conducted a main seminar on 'Development Policy in the Age of Globalization' for interested students in the beautiful baroque town of Eichstätt. In June and July 2006, I delivered two public lectures before the faculty as per my contract, only marginally distracted by the broadcast of the national matches during the World Cup. The two lectures thematically formed a unit, as the dynamics of globalization provided a common contemporary starting point for a kind of political localization, with particular consideration of cultural aspects. While the first lecture was titled 'Globalization - Blessing or Curse? Africa - Losers of Globalization?', the second addressed 'Cultural Globalization'. These lectures aimed to reflect on the challenges posed by primarily economic and technological globalization processes for the cultural meaning and orientation systems of states within the framework of social science discourse.