Refine
Has Fulltext
- no (29)
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (19)
- Part of a Book (9)
- Monograph/Edited Volume (1)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (29)
Keywords
- Relational sociology (3)
- Dynamics (2)
- Explanation (2)
- Georg Simmel (2)
- Processes (2)
- Secret society of torturers (2)
- Torture (2)
- Chances de vie (1)
- Clôture sociale (1)
- Collective violence (1)
Institute
Citizenship
(2024)
Soziale Schließung
(2023)
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.
Introduction
(2020)
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.
Schließung, soziale
(2020)
In Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft führt Weber das Konzept »offener« und »geschlossener« sozialer Beziehungen (s. Kap. II.4) als § 10 der Soziologischen Grundbegriffe systematisch nach der Unterscheidung von »Vergemeinschaftung « und »Vergesellschaftung« (WuG, 21 § 9) ein. Während das soziale Handeln (s. Kap. II.16) bei der ersten dieser beiden Formen sozialer Beziehungen auf affektuell oder traditional begründeter Zusammengehörigkeit von Individuen beruht, gründet es bei der zweiten auf der wert- oder zweckrationalen Orientierung ihres Handelns. Trotz dieser wichtigen, anhand seiner Handlungstypen getroffenen Unterscheidung, macht Weber dann allerdings zugleich deutlich, dass im Hinblick auf Prozesse sozialer Schließung kein Unterschied darin besteht, ob es sich um subjektiv gefühlte oder rational motivierte Zusammengehörigkeiten dreht. Vielmehr gilt jegliche soziale Beziehung nach außen hin als »offen«, »wenn und insoweit die Teilnahme an dem an ihrem Sinngehalt orientierten gegenseitigen Handeln, welches sie konstituiert, nach ihren geltenden Ordnungen niemand verwehrt wird, der dazu tatsächlich in der Lage und geneigt ist« (ebd., 23).
Introduction
(2020)
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.
EU-Citizenship
(2018)
Introduction
(2018)
The rise of populism has promoted a broad, vivid and flourishing debate in the social sciences that seems to have arisen even in the face of the ties between right-wing populism and the extreme right. The social sciences are struggling with how properly to conceptualise and theorise populism as a social and political phenomenon. Incongruity or asynchrony of events in factual history and their being conceptualised is obviously critical with regard to the problems that arise with defining and conceptualising populism. The plurality of usages, applications and meanings of populism thus only shows how, in a vivid debate, scholars can observe a contest for coming to terms with a concept that remains in flux and that needs to be continually revised given rapidly changing social conditions. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
We the people
(2018)
The chapter argues that populism as a modern phenomenon is closely linked with the great democratic revolutions that, for the first time in history, addressed ‘the people’ as the sovereign, thereby constituting the modern citizen. Yet, ‘the people’ can and do draw boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. In an analytical perspective the article suggests a distinction between three forms of populism, ‘organic populism’, ‘liberal economic populism’, and ‘liberal cultural populism’, that operate differently. Applying closure theory to these different forms allows understanding of the different processes of populist politics that today promote exclusion by applying differentiated strategies of social closure.