"The project investigates the astonishing convergence between different basic researches that strive for an anthropological generalization: The specifically human nature of Homo sapiens sapiens is seen in its ability to cooperate and the ability to cooperate is identified both ontogenetically and phylogenetically with transitions to the potential of cooperative pointing."

Executive Summary

The sub-project's topic is the investigation of the amazing convergence between different fundamental researches that strive for anthropological generalization: The specifically human of Homo sapiens sapiens is seen in its ability to cooperate, which is identified both ontogenetically and phylogenetically with transitions to the potential of cooperative pointing. In current practice-theoretical variants, cooperative pointing is also characterized by the fact that it develops and limits skills in a specific form; skills that can be taught and learned through cooperative seeing and pointing (through professional vision in communities of practice) as well as media that can be formed ad hoc or made permanent.

Despite its different manifestations in linguistics, linguistic anthropology, behavioral research, developmental psychology, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, distributed cognition and various philosophical discussions, this convergence has not produced any overarching terminology. So far, it has mainly been a patchwork of theoretical drafts, the attraction of which is precisely that they combine a basically recognizable convergence with disciplinary clarifications and empirical investigations. This constellation also challenges the history of science, insofar as the corresponding research connects to social-theoretical drafts of the category "interaction" ("Wechselwirkung"), the category that Georg Simmel used for good reasons at the end of the 19th century to justify "socialization" ("Vergesellschaftung") and by various other transfer routes back into German and partially translated: e.g. as "interaction" (from the American translation of "Interaction" in Chicago) and "reciprocity" in Durkheim and Mauss, but also as "mutuality" and "cooperation" (in structuralism and in phenomenology). The sub-project is dedicated to synthesizing this largely unrecognized conceptual and research history(s), including a series of media terms that were derived outside of media studies, primarily from terms of "mediation"; an interdisciplinary specialist history of linguistics, sociology and anthropology, as well as last but not least a media theory of cooperation, which should be able to cope with the oldest and newest media.