ABSTRACT
Recent theoretical debates, which were led in different social science disciplines, show alternatives to the strict disciplinary separation of sociology, political science, IR and peace and conflict studies. By doing so, they also challenge a traditional understanding of research on social and political conflicts. It is in this context that different theoretical approaches, such as modern systems theory, poststructuralism, deconstructivism and new cultural studies’ approaches emphasize the necessity of new perspectives on social conflicts. These theories view conflicts as communicative and selfselective processes, in which incompatible expectations abound.1 More specifically, world society approachesregardless of whether they originate from Stanford, Darmstadt or Bielefeld-cross the strict border between scientific disciplines, on the one hand, and social and international conflicts, on the other.2 Last, but not least, research on conflicts has not only discovered theories of world society, but also, vice versa, within the debate on the evolution of the world society, conflicts have become a main topic of research.
