Human beings are permanently confronted with change. For a deeper understanding of societies and their living environments, it is revealing how people react to processes of change, trigger them or are involved in them.

In this context, resources play a decisive role: they express what people perceive as relevant for their lives in order to satisfy physical, social or religious needs, for example. Resources are thus involved in the construction of societies in many ways.

ReForm aims to explore the potential of resources for change, which, especially with regard to socio-ecological aspects, can be considered significant not only for human history, but also for contemporary society. In a multi-perspective approach, the project partners from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and economics want to examine exemplarily how people are intertwined with their material environment through various practices and how social institutions emerge and change during these processes.