: German media sociology is in the process of developing from a sociology of mass communication to a sociology of a deeply mediatized world. This corresponds with three more general themes of international media sociology: a rethinking of agency, a redefinition of social relations, and a rediscovery of order in light of the digital.The specificity of current German media sociology ’ s work to make sense of the digital can perhaps be captured most concisely by stating that it is dominated by a relational, process-oriented way of thinking that broadly seeks to describe and critically evaluate the transformation of social construction by digital media and their infrastructures. control, and cultural ordering.
A review of the German-language literature on social problems is confronted with the major difficulty that social problems are analyzed by many special sociologies (e.g., the sociology of deviant behavior and social control) without any explicit reference to the category of “social problems.” The present review will deal with this by concentrating on those publications that use the concept of “social problems” as developed in the controversies between structural functionalists (e.g., Robert Merton) on the one hand and symbolic interactionists (e.g., Herbert Blumer, Malcom Spector, John L. Kitsuse) and radical constructionists on the other. In German-language sociology, the latter approaches gained prevalence and have marginalized the “objectivist” position. Recent publications have been dedicated to analyses of “doing social problems.” It is, however, not always obvious how these analyses differ from the traditional labeling approach. Just as in the international literature, its German-language counterparts offer only few examples of internationally comparative studies of social problems and their constitution, even though such analyses would allow us to identify which conditions are relevant to the career of social problems.
: Economic sociology today is often seen as a new branch of American sociology that is strongly tied to the concept of ‘ social embeddedness ’ . However, European social science has a long tradition of analyzing economic issues from the broader perspective of social theory. This article focuses on the particular roots of German-language economic sociology and the goals that it has pursued during its redevelopment over the last 20 years. It argues that economic sociology in German-speaking countries is special due to its history and has now come to a crossroads.
Research into individual life courses can be considered a special means of investigating social change. This chapter reviews contributions to life-course research in German-language sociology with a focus on its development over the last two decades. We start with a brief overview of the early years of life-course research and sketch three strands of research that were original even by international standards. In the second section, we describe conceptual and methodical approaches to Germanlanguage life-course research along with important data collections that triggered a plethora of empirical life-course studies. Section three focuses on the primary fields of life-course research and provides examples of empirical contributions by quantitative studies. In section four,we address specific characteristics of biographical research in German-speaking countries that can fertilize life-course research. The chapter closes with some brief remarks about the challenges that life-course research faces in the future.
: This article outlines network research in German-speaking countries since the turn of the millennium. After briefly clarifying what is meant by network research in this context, it provides a short retrospective of German-language sociology ’ s contributions to network research in the previous century. It then focuses on the socio-political activities of sociological network research in German-speaking countries over the past 20 years. German-language network research exhibits two unique features in international comparison: a far-reaching debate on qualitative methods in network research (Section 4) and a theoretical debate on what has been coined relational sociology (Section 5).The article goes on to outline the contributions of network research to special sociologies in Section 6. Section 7 deals with the applications and developments of special methods of network research. The article ends with an outlook on the future of network research.
: Our article discusses recent developments in quantitative data collection and multivariate statistical analysis in quantitative social research. German-speaking authors have contributed heavily to the field of survey methodology and to discussions on the quality of data and the integration of survey data and digital trace data. We begin by discussing new developments in data collection. Afterwards we present a classification scheme for multivariate methods of analysis and discuss the state of the art in the most important areas, namely, regression, classification, clustering, and scaling. In terms of longitudinal data,we review recent contributions to the analysis of panel data, time series, event histories, and sequences. Further focal points are methods for the analysis of multilevel data and the opportunities and challenges arising from an increasing use of big data in the social sciences.
: This study discusses the development of social-movement research in the German-speaking world over the past two decades. The second part focuses on how different theories of society have conceptualized social movements. It asks whether there have been any new developments since the theory of new social movements lost its hegemony? This question is explored by considering three contributions from Niklas Luhmann, Jürgen Gerhards, and Ulrich Beck.The third part deals with the long-term transformation of social-cleavage structures and their analysis. In the fourth part, the study shifts its attention to the rise of the extreme right and the environmental movement. Most researchers would agree that recent public discourse in German-speaking countries has mostly been shaped by the spread of these two movements.
: This article outlines network research in German-speaking countries since the turn of the millennium. After briefly clarifying what is meant by network research in this context, it provides a short retrospective of German-language sociology ’ s contributions to network research in the previous century. It then focuses on the socio-political activities of sociological network research in German-speaking countries over the past 20 years. German-language network research exhibits two unique features in international comparison: a far-reaching debate on qualitative methods in network research (Section 4) and a theoretical debate on what has been coined relational sociology (Section 5).The article goes on to outline the contributions of network research to special sociologies in Section 6. Section 7 deals with the applications and developments of special methods of network research. The article ends with an outlook on the future of network research.
By focusing on the difference between politics and the political as well as on current trends towards post-democracy, this paper attempts an assessment of Germanlanguage contributions to contemporary political sociology. Even though the subject is still searching for its native disciplinary territory and its disciplinary boundaries, scholars in German-speaking countries have only recently begun to engage with new approaches that have arisen from science and technology studies (STS) or other fields that have pursued innovative research and theories of the political. This argument is underpinned in some detail by comparing three contributions from German-speaking sociologists to the debate on post-democracy. Given the far-reaching events and transformations in recent history that have put politics in flux and exerted strain on democracy, political sociology has appeared to be rather hesitant to veer from its established ways of thinking and explore new territory.
Starting from a relational concept of space, Martina Löw discusses findings in spatial sociology on the basis of modernity’s foremost spatial types―namely, the city and the territory―and fundamental relational opposites (urban–rural; time– space; territory–fluid space). She gives an overview of current sociological debates in Germany with a special focus on the sociology of knowledge. The article considers research on the intrinsic logic of cities as well as recent concepts dealing with the dynamization of spatial relations. One major hypothesis is that the constitution of space today is characterized by a network of interdependencies formed by processes of translocalization and polycontexturality, overwriting or undermining traditional territorial spatial structures, which remain nonetheless relevant.
Science and higher education in Germanyh aveu ndergone profound changes over the last 20 years.Here one might think of New Public Management reforms, the Bologna Process, or the Excellence Initiative.At the sametime, basictenets of the German system, such as the strongr ole of the professoriate,t he absenceo f tuition fees, and the diversified structure of public research institutions have remained unchanged.This makes Germany an intriguing case for sociological research.F ollowing am acro-meso-micro logic, we present the major findingso ft hat research, highlighting theoretical contributions,empirical findings, and methodological innovations,aswell as future perspectivesonthe studyofchangeand continuity of science and higher education in Germany.
During the last twenty years, sociological analysis has improved our understanding of the dynamic interrelationships between demographic aging and changes in individual aging processes, particularly by looking in more detail at structural and cohort changes in the life situation of the elderly population. Sociological research has provided particularly fruitful contributions on the impact of demographic aging (low fertility rates combined with increased life expectancy) on intergenerational relationships. While research on demographic aging and individual aging has made much progress, public perceptions and political discourses are still dominated by deficit-oriented and simplified views of demographic aging (also due to the fact that demographic aging is mostly measured by using obsolete chronological age definitions).
During the last two decades, comparative social-policy research has improved our understanding of the causes, processes, dynamics, and consequences of change in social policies. It has also broadened the horizon of sociological theory and research. It has shown that understanding the nature and generosity of welfare-state policies is crucial for explaining the cross-national differences in social structures as well as the effects of social-policy reforms on social inequality, poverty risks, social cleavages, and social cohesion. This review of the development of social-policy research focuses on theory and research in the field,with its primary emphasis being on sociological social-policy research in German-speaking countries.
Social inequalities constituteone of the largest research fieldsofsociology in the German-speakingc ountries.This field has been successfullyi nstitutionalized and internationalized in recent decades.Today, it rests on ar ich data infrastructure and alarge bodyofcumulativeresearch.The article traces this advancement in terms of shifting theoretical paradigms,methodological innovations, and the establishment of the current data infrastructure.It particularlyh ighlights recent developments in four corea reas of inequality research: educational inequality and returns on education; employment and the labor market; income, wealth, and poverty;a nd social mobility.
: The sociology of inequality over the past few decades has been characterized by its fragmentation into an assembly of small-scale aspects of inequality and by a disjointed perspective that breaks up the modern history of inequality into several phases. This is the result of shortcomings in previous theory-building. This contribution presents new theoretical approaches that have been developed in the past years: a micro-sociological or action-theoretical one, a macro-sociological one, and some strategies — at a meso level of abstraction — that allow us to identify mechanisms of social inequality.The article will highlight the limitations and opportunities of these recent approaches, especially by clarifying the question of what characterizes the basic constellation of social inequalities in the current era.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the body has been a generally recognized object of investigation in German-speaking sociology. At the same time, the body is also discussed as a subject of empirical research and as a fundamental theoretical concept. A distinct feature of German sociology is that it differentiates between the physical body (Körper) and the felt body (Leib). This article explains both the philosophical foundation of this conceptual distinction and its sociological relevance and presents research in the fields of sports, medicine, and media.We show the different ways in which the felt body and the physical body serve as a theoretical basis in sociological investigations and/or are treated as empirical objects.
Thisarticle provides an overviewonresearch on intimate relationships and the familyi nG ermanys ince the turn of the millennium.It is argued that "German familysociology" has undergone major changes in various ways.Intheoretical terms, micro-theoretical approaches have largely replacedf ormer macro-sociological debates on de-institutionalization and pluralization of the family.In empirical research, the application of al ife course perspective and the use of longitudinal data have become more and moree stablished.In substantial terms,r esearchers have pursued integrative research perspectivesthat link familydynamics to other life domains.Not least,p ublication strategies shifted in favoro fE nglish languagea nd international journals.In sum, these developments have fundamentallyc hanged the German research landscape on intimate relationships and the family.
