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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.
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.
EU-Citizenship
(2018)
This introductory essay to the HSR Special Issue “Economists, Politics, and Society” argues for a strong field-theoretical programme inspired by Pierre Bourdieu to research economic life as an integral part of different social forms. Its main aim is threefold. First, we spell out the very distinct Durkheimian legacy in Bourdieu’s thinking and the way he applies it in researching economic phenomena. Without this background, much of what is actually part of how Bourdieu analysed economic aspects of social life would be overlooked or reduced to mere economic sociology. Second, we sketch the main theoretical concepts and heuristics used to analyse economic life from a field perspective. Third, we focus on practical methodological issues of field-analytical research into economic phenomena. We conclude with a short summary of the basic characteristics of this approach and discuss the main insights provided by the contributions to this special issue.
The volume provides a field-analytical methodology for researching knowledge based sociopolitical processes of transnationalization. Drawing on the seminal work by Pierre Bourdieu, we apply concepts of practice, habitus, and field to phenomena such as cross-national social trajectories, international procedures of evaluation, standardization and certification or supranational political structures. These transnational phenomena form part of general political struggles that legitimate social relationships in and beyond the nation state. Part 1 on "Methodological Foundations" discusses the consequences of Bourdieu's epistemology and methodology for theorizing and investigating transnational phenomena. The contributions show the import of field-theoretical concepts for post-national insights. Part 2 on "Investigating Political Fields" presents exemplary case studies in diverse research areas such as colonial imperialism, international academic rankings, European policy fields, and local school policy. While focusing on their research objects, the contributions also give an insight into the mechanisms involved in processes of transnationalization. The volume is an invitation for sociologists, political scientists and scholars in adjacent research areas to engage with reflexive and relational research practice and to further develop field-theoretical thought.
In this programmatic introduction, we lay out the foundations of an approach to analyzing knowledge-based political phenomena beyond the nation state from a field perspective. We understand transnational field analysis as a research program comprising genuine theoretical and methodological assumptions. While extant research is well aware of the theoretical assumptions of transnational field analysis, there is thus far relatively little awareness of the importance of its methodological premises. Addressing this imbalanced picture, we identify five methodological principles and specify consequences for studies of transnational fields. Our approach emphasizes that performing transnational field analysis goes beyond “taking a theory to the field”; it means engaging in and reflecting upon a complex research process that simultaneously draws upon and constructs theories of fields.
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.