A cultural symposium celebrates its premiere
Goethe-Institut invites guests from around the world to Weimar.
It was a global marketplace for ideas: the sociologist Eva Illouz from Israel came to Weimar especially, as did the US social theorist Jeremy Rifkin, the Czech economist Tomáš Sedláček and the culture and education activist Janet Pillai from Malaysia – and many, many more besides. For three days in June 2016, around 300 symposium participants discussed the topic of “sharing and exchange”. “We wanted a theme that would have links to economics, culture and politics,” says project director Andreas Ströhl, citing Marcel Mauss‘ description of exchange as a social fact that is to be found in all social subsystems. This unusual cultural symposium hosted by the Goethe-Institut is to be held every two years in future.
