Projekte
Aktuelle Projekte & Drittmittel
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Influence of Financial Elites: Trajectories, Socialization, Values and the repercussions of wealth in Germany, France and the UK.
Funding: Volkswagenstiftung
Project partners: Jay Rowell (Centre Marc Bloch), Louise Ashley (Queen Mary University of London), Christian Schneickert (University of Magdeburg), Marlène Benquet (IRISSO), Sébastien Michon (SAGE - Uni Strasbourg)
Duration: 2025 - 2029The project investigates how the financial and consulting elite contributes to the increase of wealth inequalities and related repercussions on the environment, social spending or public regulation. Mobilizing a comparative sociology of elite professions, the project will study social reproduction, the formation, consolidation and expression of worldviews as well as mobilities into other industries and politics in Germany, France, the UK and the EU. Through interviews and a longitudinal survey, the project will first research selection and socialization mechanisms forging a self-image of deservingness which legitimizes the high monetary rewards of the financial and consulting elite and their wealthy clients. These qualitative insights will then complement the analysis of a series of original biographical databases. By focusing on new patterns of elite formation, the project will study mobilities and networks of influence linking financial and consulting elites with other sectors of the economy and politics. It will explore how worldviews, priorities and cognitive tools brought into other elite fields through career mobility, consulting and lobbying impact the way in which governments and corporations operate in a world confronted with existential issues such as climate change, the sustainability of the welfare State, as well as wealth, income and social polarization.
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Aufstieg, Fall oder Transformation der Erlebnisgesellschaft? Eine empirische Untersuchung für Deutschland und Europa.
Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
More recent sociological theories paint a rather gloomy picture of contemporary German and European societies. The contrast to the 1980s and 1990s is remarkable. Paradigmatic for the former optimism was the thesis of the “experience society” by Gerhard Schulze (1992): from his perspective, in view of the material abundance, modernization had turned from the outside inwards, away from an orientation towards status and material success towards the almost playful "project of the beautiful life". As a result, social inequalities have also become largely irrelevant in everyday-life, which Schulze calls subjective de-stratification.Confronted with the most recent sociological diagnoses and the increasing economic inequality and insecurity addressed there, important questions arise in this regard: Is the experience society already history again? Or are we still - and perhaps even more than ever - living in an experience society? Or has society recently developed in a completely different direction in the face of new socio-ecological crises and challenges (keywords: sustainability and the great transition debate)?Against this background, the proposed project is intended to clarify the position of German society, departing from the theory of the experience society which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2022. Our primary goal is to investigate whether the path towards an experiential society is still intact (scenario "Rise of the Experience Society") or has reversed itself (scenario "Fall of the Experience Society"). The project is also open to the possibility that in the face of the new existential problem of sustainability, societal development has taken a new direction which could not have been conceived in Schulze's theory (scenario "Transformation of the Experience Society").To achieve its goal, the project focuses on two basic assumptions of Schulze's theory: that of an in-ward-directed modernization towards subjective experiences and well-being and that of a subjective de-stratification of society. We examine these basic assumptions for Germany over time (from about 1980 until today), and additionally in an international - especially European - country comparisons using current cross-sectional data (from about 2000 until today). The research project is largely based on secondary data analysis; only for the topic of “transformation” we plan an explorative primary data collection. Our project is not only highly relevant to understand present-day society, but fills a long-standing research gap in macro-sociology.
Project partners: Jan Delhey & Christian Schneickert (University of Magdeburg)
Duration: 2022-2025
Eliten, Macht und konflikthafte Differenzierung. Zur Verbindung von System- und Feldtheorie am empirischen Beispiel des Feldwechsels von politischen und wirtschaftlichen Eliten im internationalen Vergleich (Projekt aus Haushaltsmitteln). National Coordinator World Elite Database (WED) Germany: https://worldelitedatabase.org/
Abgeschlossene Projekte
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Soziale Milieus, habituelle Klassenfraktionen und sozio-politische Räume im internationalen Vergleich. Entwicklung einer integrierten qualitativen und quantitativen empirischen Habitusanalyse und deren Umsetzung innerhalb der Fortentwicklung klassischer Milieuindikatoren in international vergleichen Bevölkerungsumfragen (Habilitationsprojekt).
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Macht und Ungleicheit in der Wissenschaft. Feldanalytische Perspektiven in der Wissenschafts- und Hochschulforschung (Projekt aus Haushaltsmitteln)
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Vortragsreise Brasilien (gefördert durch DAAD)
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Die Globalisierung nationaler Eliten. Politische und wirtschaftliche Eliten in Deutschland, den USA, Indien und Brasilien (Dissertationsprojekt an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Partner-Institutionen: Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, India / FLACSO Argentina, Buenos Aires / Universidade Federal Juiz de Fora, Brasilien)
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Pierre Bourdieus Konzeption des Habitus. Vernetzung interdisziplinärer und methodischer Ansätze zur Rezeption und Weiterentwicklung des Habituskonzeptes. Gemeinsam mit Alexander Lenger und Florian Schumacher. Gefördert von der Internationalen Graduierten Akademie, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.
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Studentische Hilfskräfte und MitarbeiterInnen im deutschen Bildungswesen. Gemeinsam mit Alexander Lenger. Gefördert von der GEW und der Max-Traeger-Gesellschaft.