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Rankings have grown in importance in the last decades. This is particularly evident in, but not limited to, academia. In this paper, we propose a power analytical take on academic rankings as a transnational(izing) phenomenon. In doing so, we make two contributions. First, we develop a conceptual definition of rankings as consecratory institutions. After providing an overview of the most prominent types of rankings in the academic field and discussing the different forms they can take, we suggest that rankings operate through subjectivation, zero-sum comparisons, quantification, publication and generating a doxical belief. Second, we propose that rankings fulfil a strategic double function. As a particularly momentous consecratory institution, rankings propel power shifts in the academic field and beyond by preferring (and being pushed by) specific academic milieus, types of agents, paradigms, and strategies. As a dispositif, rankings operate at the intersection of different fields, open academic fields up for a lay audience and advance processes of transnationalization by facilitating new modes of governance for hubs of state institutions, private corporations, media corporations, and data providers. Concluding, we argue that the consecration and dispositif functions rely on some basic principles of the practical functioning of rankings.
Divorce à l’allemande
(2022)
Avec la création de l’Académie de sociologie (AS), le champ sociologique allemand compte désormais une nouvelle association professionnelle qui s’ajoute à la Société allemande de sociologie (DGS), établie de longue date. Cet article passe en revue les principales positions discursives, les sujets de controverse majeurs ainsi que les grandes lignes de fracture qui ont conduit à ce schisme. Les conflits contemporains sont interprétés au travers d’une représentation empirique du champ de la sociologie allemande. De manière générale, la sociologie allemande contemporaine apparaît une fois de plus dominée par deux camps opposés, arbitrairement définis mais puissants, qui se partagent la domination d’une discipline, pourtant réellement pluraliste.
Der oft beschworene Aufstieg der Managementberatung zu einem integralen Bestandteil von Unternehmensführung besitzt eine selten beachtete Seite: Managementberatung ist nicht nur zu einer anerkannten Praktik der „guten Regierung“ des Unternehmens geworden, sondern zugleich zu einer legitimen Form der Produktion von Managementwissen. Im Folgenden soll dem Wandel der diskursiven Praxis der Produktion von Managementwissen nachgegangen und seine Bedeutung für den Wandel der Praxis der Unternehmensführung eruiert werden. In einem ersten Schritt sind die Praxis des Managements und ihre Logik zu skizzieren, um einerseits den Alltag des Managements zu begreifen und andererseits zu verstehen, dass in diesem Alltag die Möglichkeit diskursiven Wandels angelegt ist.
Kampf und Konflikt
(2020)
Der Begriff des Kampfes nimmt in der Soziologie Max Webers eine zentrale Rolle ein. In § 8 der Soziologischen Grundbegriffe definiert Weber: »Kampf soll eine soziale Beziehung insoweit heißen, als das Handeln an der Absicht der Durchsetzung des eigenen Willens gegen Widerstand des oder der Partner orientiert ist« (WuG, 20). Als soziales Handeln sind Kämpfe objektiv verstehbar, weil die Handelnden mit ihrem Verhalten einen subjektiv gemeinten Sinn verbinden.
The paper argues that economists’ position-taking in discourses of crises should be understood in the light of economists’ positions in the academic field of economics. This hypothesis is investigated by performing a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) on a prosopographical data set of 144 French economists who positioned themselves between 2008 and 2021 in controversies over the euro crisis, the French political economic model, and French economics. In these disciplinary controversies, different forms of (post-)national academic capital are used by economists to either initiate change or defend the status quo. These strategies are then interpreted as part of more general power struggles over the basic national or post-national constitution and legitimate governance of economy and society.
This contribution presents an analysis of the structure and conflictual dynamics of contemporary German sociology which has recently separated into two professional societies. Using geometric data analysis, we present an empirical construction of the power/knowledge structure of the field, its paradigmatic plurality, and the various forms of sociological practices involved.
EU-Citizenship
(2018)
Struggling over crisis
(2018)
If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.” Following the premise of this quotation attributed to Winston Churchill, varying perceptions of the European crisis by academic economists and their structural homology to economists’ positions in the field of economics are examined. The dataset analysed using specific multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) comprises information on the careers of 480 German-speaking economists and on statements they made concerning crisis-related issues. It can be shown that the main structural differences in the composition and amount of scientific and academic capital held by economists as well as their age and degree of transnationalisation are linked to how they see the crisis: as a national sovereign debt crisis, as a European banking crisis, or as a crisis of European integration and institutions.