TY - JOUR A1 - Mackert, Jürgen T1 - The secret society of torturers BT - the social shaping of extremely violent behaviour JF - Internationale journal of conflict and violence N2 - The Secret Society of Torturers107How do normal people become able to torture others? In order to explain this puzzling social phenomenon, we have to take secrecy – the characteristic trait of modern torture – as the lynchpin of the analysis. Following Georg Simmel’s formal analysis of the “secret society”, the contribution reconstructs structural and cultural aspects of the secret society of torturers that generate social processes that allow its members to behave extremely violently, forcing individuals to turn into torturers. The contribution argues that the form of social behaviour that we call torture is socially shaped. It goes beyond social psychology to de-velop an explanation from the perspective of relational sociology Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0070-ijcv-2015130 SN - 1864–1385 VL - 9 IS - 1 SP - 106 EP - 120 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mackert, Jürgen T1 - Social life as collective struggle BT - closure theory and the problem of solidarity JF - sozialpolitik.ch N2 - In recent years, all over the globe we have seen intensifying economic exploitation, political disenfranchisement, social marginalization and cultural repression in all kinds of political regimes, from liberal democratic to authoritarian and dictatorial. Although the strategies vary with regard to regime and context, in all of them we observe that while a growing number of social groups are speaking out and rising against them, a presumably much higher number of groups do not. In this article, I argue that all these processes can be conceived as aspects of ongoing closure struggles in social life. However, in order to understand why some social groups are able to fight against closure strategies while others are not, closure theory in its current state of elaboration is not of any help. While it operates with the term solidarization, it does not offer any explanation of how such acting in solidarity may become possible in closure struggles. The article is a mainly theoretical contribution of how to solve this problem. KW - social closure KW - struggle KW - solidarization KW - democracy Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.18753/2297-8224-174 SN - 2297-8224 IS - 1 PB - Universität CY - Freiburg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mackert, Jürgen T1 - Social Closure JF - Oxford Bibliographies N2 - “Social closure” is one of the most basic terms and concepts in sociology. Basically, closure refers to processes of drawing boundaries, constructing identities, and building communities in order to monopolize scarce resources for one’s own group, thereby excluding others from using them. Society is not a homogenous entity but is instead internally structured and subdivided by processes of social closure. Some social formations, such as groups, organizations, or institutions, may be open to everybody, provided they are capable of participation, while access to most others is limited due to certain criteria that either allow people to become members or exclude them from membership. Therefore, social closure is a ubiquitous, everyday phenomenon that can be observed in almost every sphere and place in the social world. Members of societies experience closure from the very beginning of their social life. To be excluded from certain groups starts at school, where presumably homogenous classes begin to subdivide into distinct peer groups or sports teams. Here, exclusion may be rather arbitrary, but the experience of having a door slammed in one’s face proceeds in cases, where inclusion depends on formal rules or preconditions. Access to private schools follows explicit rules and depends on financial capacities; access to university depends on a certificate or diploma, eventually from certain schools only; membership in a highly prestigious club depends on economic and social capital and the respective social networks; and finally, in the case of migration, people will have to be eligible for citizenship and pass the thorny path of naturalization. However, it is not just the enormous plurality of forms that makes social closure crucial for sociology. Rather, the process of closure of social relations—of groups, organizations, institutions, and even national societies—is the fundamental process of both “communal” (Vergemeinschaftung) and “associative” relationships (Vergesellschaftung), and neither would be possible without social closure. In this broad and fundamental sense, social closure is not restricted to processes in national societies. It even allows for understanding crucial processes of the way the social world is organized at the regional or global level. Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0084 PB - Oxford University CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mackert, Jürgen T1 - Reorganiszation and Stabilization BT - social mechanisms in ́Emile Durkheim’s professional ethics and civicMorals: a contribution to the explanation of social processes JF - Journal of classical sociology N2 - The consequences of economic globalization have created a new interest in ́EmileDurkheim’s conception of an institutional and moral reorganization of modernsociety that he developed in Professional Ethics and Civic Morals. Contrary toexisting attempts to explain these political processes towards democratization, thisarticle argues for a causal analysis of social change and concentrates on the socialmechanisms that trigger the reorganization process of modern society. Two thesesare entertained. The first thesis argues that the programme of an institutional andmoral reorganization of modern society can be reanalysed as a causal process ofdemocratization. This process takes two steps. While social mechanisms of reorgan-izationbring about the institutional and moral reorganization of modern society,social mechanisms of stabilizationguarantee the functioning of the emergingdemocratic system. Further, the second thesis argues that this kind of explanationcan be applied to Durkheim’s vision of a European confederation. The analysisreveals that his idea of a ‘post-national’ constellation refers to crucial problems ofthe recent debate regarding a democratic deficit in the European Union, and itshows that Durkheim’s contribution to both political sociology and historical-comparative research has been misconceived and prematurely repudiated. Y1 - 2004 UR - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/1468795X04046970 SN - 1468-795X SN - 1741-2897 VL - 4 IS - 3 SP - 311 EP - 336 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wolf, Hannah A1 - Mackert, Jürgen ED - Mackert, Jürgen ED - Turner, Bryan S. ED - Wolf, Hannah T1 - Introduction BT - Urban warfare – neo-liberalism’s assault on democratic life in the city JF - Urban Change and Citizenship in Times of Crisis Vol. 2. Urban Neo-liberalisation N2 - The processes of neo-liberalisation, coined as ‘actually existing neo-liberalism’ are by their very nature variegated and context-specific and can appear in multi-faceted and contradictory forms. Consequentially, sociological reflection has tried to conceptualise ongoing processes of transforming the city under the concept of urban neo-liberalism which is generally understood as the contextually specific and path-dependent realisation of neo-liberal restructuration projects, embedded in varying social, political, economic, and cultural ‘regulatory landscapes’. As much as neo-liberalism as ideology and political programme aims at erasing any democratic participation in society, its proponents have taken sides pushing ahead the re-conceptualisation of the city as a market with the right of the stronger ‘to do down the weaker’. The city has become a focal point for neo-liberalism’s war against democracy and citizens. Turning social relations into market transactions in order to restructure cities is not a new idea from the neo-liberals but one of the non-negotiable dogmas of their religion called science. Y1 - 2020 SN - 978-0-42926-228-9 SN - 978-0-429-55288-5 SN - 978-0-429-56182-5 SN - 978-0-429-55735-4 SP - 1 EP - 14 PB - Routledge CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wolf, Hannah A1 - Mackert, Jürgen T1 - Introduction JF - Urban Change and Citizenship in Times of Crisis N2 - The processes of neo-liberalisation, coined as ‘actually existing neo-liberalism’ are by their very nature variegated and context-specific and can appear in multi-faceted and contradictory forms. Consequentially, sociological reflection has tried to conceptualise ongoing processes of transforming the city under the concept of urban neo-liberalism which is generally understood as the contextually specific and path-dependent realisation of neo-liberal restructuration projects, embedded in varying social, political, economic, and cultural ‘regulatory landscapes’. As much as neo-liberalism as ideology and political programme aims at erasing any democratic participation in society, its proponents have taken sides pushing ahead the re-conceptualisation of the city as a market with the right of the stronger ‘to do down the weaker’. The city has become a focal point for neo-liberalism’s war against democracy and citizens. Turning social relations into market transactions in order to restructure cities is not a new idea from the neo-liberals but one of the non-negotiable dogmas of their religion called science. Y1 - 2020 SN - 978-0-429-26228-9 SN - 978-0-367-20564-5 SP - 1 EP - 14 PB - Routledge CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mackert, Jürgen T1 - Introduction JF - The condition of democracy. - Volume 3 : Postcolonial and settler colonial contexts JF - a `master-race democracy` : mythos and lies of Western liberal civilization Y1 - 2021 SN - 978-0-367-74538-7 SN - 978-1-003-15838-7 SP - 1 EP - 13 PB - Routledge CY - London ER -