Der Europ?ische Gerichtshof als Motor der Integration: Eine akteursbezogene Erkl?rung

For nearly five decades, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has developed a decisively pro-European case law and has become the ??engine of integration??. Institutional explanations shed light on the Court??s room for manoevre. They have to be complemented by actor-centered explanations that shed light on the judges?? motives of action. The explanation offered by the following paper is unfolded in two steps. In the first one, the article describes idiosyncrasies of the European law discourse that already shaped the judges before they were appointed. The analysis of the idiosyncrasies corresponds to a scepticism towards the idea of national sovereignty, a belief in the necessity of creative and idealist, law-augmenting judges and a dominance of output-oriented legitimization strategies. In a second step, the article shows that in the sociological sense the ECJ judges constitute a group. While the individual judges share an understanding of the aims and functions of European law, the group develops its own identity and grants status to those who perform successful actions with respect to the common integration agenda. This explanation is more realistic than ??rational choice?? explanations which point to the direct and personal benefits that judges derive from their pro-European case law.     

Modernität – zur Kritik eines Schlüsselbegriffs soziologischer Zeitdiagnose

The article discusses different research perspectives of the concept of modernity. Against the background of Max Weber’s diagnosis of the time, it analyzes the circular construction of this concept. Using discourse theory, the article traces the most important meanings of this concept as developed in the work of authors like Beck, Luhmann, Taylor, Habermas and Eisenstadt. Contrary to existing assumptions of a universal concept of modernity, the article argues for a sociological analysis of the concept of modernity in the line of post-colonial approache, which then can be used for a more adequate diagnosis of the time.     

Arbeitnehmerfreizügigkeit und Diskriminierung auf dem deutschen Arbeitsmarkt – Europäische Politik,transnationaler Mobilitätsraum und nationales Feld

The paper deals with the interaction of horizontal and vertical European integration. It asks whether the principle of free movement of labour does not only legally but also de facto prevent discrimination of non-nationals in EU Member States. Theoretically, the analysis is framed by distinguishing three interrelated types of social fields: a supranational political field of free movement of labour, national labour market fields and an intermediary transnational space of mobility. Focusing on the German labour market and drawing on comprehensive administrative data the article shows that wage differences are to a large extend caused by differences in relevant labour market characteristics such as age or education. However, for the vast majority of EU non-nationals in Germany is also observed discrimination in payment. Strikingly, positive discrimination is more pronounced than negative discrimination. These differences are understood as hinting at the increasing importance of comparisons between national labour markets in the EU.     

Zur Europäisierung politischer Mobilisierung

Die Politik der EU gewinnt gegenüber nationalen Regierungen und Parlamenten zunehmend an Gewicht. Kommt es entsprechend auch zu einer Europäisierung der politischen Mobilisierung durch Parteien, Verbände und soziale Bewegungen? Dieser Frage wird anhand von illustrativen und systematischen Befunden nachgegangen. Im Bereich der Parteipolitik und namentlich des Wahlverhaltens gibt es keine deutlichen Anzeichen dafür, dass das Gewicht europäischer Fragen gestiegen ist. Mit Blick auf die Interessenverbände zeichnet sich eine kräftige Zunahme des EU-Lobbying ab, wobei nach wie vor große strukturelle Ungleichheiten bestehen zwischen den ressourcenstarken europäischen Dachverbänden in den Bereichen Industrie, Handel und Landwirtschaft einerseits und den Organisationen und Netzwerken von Arbeitnehmern, Frauen, Umweltschützern, Verbrauchern sowie Menschen- und Bürgerrechtlern andererseits. Im Feld der Protestpolitik ist die Datenlage zur Europäisierung nicht eindeutig. Auf Basis von in ihrer Qualität noch schwer einschätzbaren Daten scheint die Zahl EU-bezogener Proteste insgesamt, aber nicht in allen einzelnen EU-Ländern zuzunehmen. Auf der Grundlage detaillierter und verlässlicher Längsschnittdaten zum gesamten Protestgeschehen der vergangenen Jahrzehnte in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland sowie speziellerer Untersuchungen zu Umweltprotesten von 1988 bis 1997 ergibt sich ein Negativbefund. Von einer Europäisierung des Protests in der Bundesrepublik kann keine Rede sein. Dieses unerwartete Ergebnis sowie das weitgehende Fehlen von Protestaktionen in Brüssel wird abschließend anhand von vier Faktorenbündeln zu erklären versucht.     

Sigitas Geda: Metaphorizität als Prinzip der Textkohärenz im Poem Strazdas

Abstract

This study focuses on the cycle of poems “Strazdas”, written by the Lithuanian poet Geda (1945–1992). It shows how the understanding of the reader changes with every verse. In the centre of the analysis we find the word strazdas. On the one hand, it is the name of a Lithuanian romantic poet, on the other it means thrush. Both the poet and the bird are keys to understanding these poems. The study shows the interdependence of these lines of interpretation and connects them with a third line: Lithuania. The interpretation lines are founded on semantic and syntactic analysis, using Nekvapils' concept of compounded formations.

Die sprachliche Form ist erhaben und vermeidet das Gewöhnliche <tt>o idiotikon</tt>, wenn sie fremdartige Ausdrücke <box>enikoi</box>verwendet. … Doch wenn jemand nur derartige Wörter verwenden wollte, dann wäre das Ergebnis entweder ein Rätsel {ainigma} oder ein Barbarismus <b>arbarismos</b>: wenn das Erzeugnis aus Metaphern besteht, ein Rätsel, wenn es aus Glossen besteht, ein Barabarismus. Denn das Wesen des Rätsels besteht darin, unvereinbare Wörter miteinander zu verknüpfen und hiermit gleichwohl etwas wirklich Vorhandenes zu bezeichnen.     

Auf dem Weg in eine europäische Gesellschaft?

After half a century of European integration it is legitimate to ask if, how and in how far a ?European society“ has emerged. But how is this difficult notion to be conceptualized? What is European, what denotes society? Following the distinction of unity and difference, this article sets out to discuss the analytical options of the perspective of unity (the model of the nation state, the United States of Europe, a reality sui generis) and of difference (the ?other“ of Europe by comparing Europe to the regions of the world). According to the main thesis, European society denotes a reality sui generis, i.e., is an emergent phenomenon which can neither be conceptualized by the old model of the nation state nor the new notion of world society. European society should be characterized according to its leitmotif of structured diversity, its cultural and historical legacies, its logic of institutional separation and differentiation and its common basic institutional infrastructure. European society, therefore, rests upon a shared historical community of fate and exhibits a multiple unity of economy, work, education, solidarity, law, religion and culture. The engine of Europeanization is the European Union which together with nation states and regions fosters a veritable pressure of convergence upon the European space. Given its taken-for-granted character, the European society is half latent, half manifest, half empirically traceable and analytically conceivable, half normatively desirable or controversial.     

Zwischen institutioneller Kontinuität und De-Institutionalisierung – Industrielle Dienstleistungen als Parallelwelt überbetrieblicher Arbeitsbeziehungen

This paper focuses on the paradox that the legal foundations of the German collective wage bargaining system have remained stable over the last four decades even though there has been simultaneously a significant decrease in the actual coverage of industry-wide collective agreements. Based on insights from historical institutionalism it is hypothesized that a mismatch between industry-based wage-setting and the inter-firm network as the unit of value creation causes an institutional fragmentation into segregated worlds of wage-setting. In these segregated worlds, employees experience changing wage-differentials according to their contract status although they fulfill similar job tasks within the same work context. Empirically, the paper uses industry-related services as prototypical example to illustrate this sort of institutional fragmentation. A comparison with other types of institutional change shows that fragmentation is characterized by continuous rule ambiguity and rule competition, which undermines the reliability of collective wage-setting while leaving the institutional setting formally untouched.     

Agilität als Chance für einen neuen Anlauf zum demokratischen Unternehmen?

There has been a long-standing discussion since the 1980s about the question whether new production models harbor a potential for extended employee participation and involvement, in most cases with disillusioning results. This paper is concerned with so called “agile methods”, which play an important part in the area of knowledge work in the course of the digital transformation. On the basis of two case studies from software development and industrial R&D, the paper examines the concrete implementation of these methods and the employees’ perspective upon them and their consequences. The result is that agile methods present a potential for extended employee participation and involvement; however, the realization of this potential depends on the concrete way how the agile concept of “empowerment” is implemented.     

Religion und Religiosit?t als Ursache von Homonegativit?t

Although the attitudes towards homosexuality have become more liberal especially in industrialized Western countries, there is still a huge variance in terms of the levels of homonegativity worldwide. This article seeks to explain this variance by means of a multi-level-analysis of 79 countries. The data stem from the last two waves of the World Values Survey. On the basis of this data, the article focuses on the power of the religious denomination of a person and her religiousness in order to explain her attitude towards homosexuality; for both variables a strong influence can be detected. In addition, the article indicates that, on the individual level, socio-demographic variables??e.g. age, gender, education, marital status or profession??are highly interconnected with the intensity of homonegativity. On the country-level, however, the main explanatory factors are both the economic development and the communist heritage. The article further highlights significant conditional relationships by introducing cross-level interactions and interaction terms on the individual level. The final model explains about 60% of the variance on the aggregate level and 30% on the individual level.     

Die Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union und die Bedeutung kollektiver Identitäten

Auf der Grundlage eines historisch-soziologischen Ansatzes stellt dieser Beitrag eine Analyse der Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union und der darin eingebetteten kollektiven Identitäten in einem west- und osteuropäischen Vergleich vor. Er geht grundsätzlich davon aus, dass der Prozess der Osterweiterung im Kontext der Rekonstitution der europäischen Zivilisation als einer Rekonstruktion ihrer historischstrukturellen: sozioökonomischen, politischen wie kulturellen Ungleichheitsmatrix analysiert werden muss. Für den Prozess der Osterweiterung, seine Grundlagen, Sequenzen und zukünftige Entwicklungsrichtung spielen dabei vor allem auch die kollektiven Identitäten und ihr wechselseitiger Bezug auf der west- wie osteuropäischen Seite eine zentrale Rolle. Auf der westlichen Seite zeigt die vergleichende Analyse Frankreichs, Deutschlands, Großbritanniens und Schwedens gegenüber Osteuropa eine grundsätzlich westlich-zivilisierende, allerdings je nach Struktur der nationalen Identitäten und politischen Kulturen unterschiedliche Ausrichtung auf. Auf der östlichen Seite zeigt sich dagegen im Vergleich zwischen Polen, Tschechien, Ungarn und Russland eine ebenfalls je nach Struktur der nationalen Identität unterschiedliche, aber ambivalente: imitative wie defensive Orientierung auf Westeuropa. Diese kulturelle Ungleichzeitigkeit zwischen West- und Osteuropa wird — so die Grundthese — eine entscheidende Rolle in dem faktischen Verlauf der Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union spielen.     

Intersektionalit?t als Beitrag zu einer gesellschaftstheoretisch informierten Ungleichheitsforschung

The following article argues that an in depth analysis of different living conditions requires a theoretical and empirical perspective which does not only take into account class but also other categories of social inequality such as gender, race and body. Departing from the idea that these categories are mutually intertwined, the article suggests an intersectional multi-layered approach which allows to examine reciprocal effects between class, gender, race and body on three different levels: the level of social structures, the level of identity construction and the level of symbolic representation. Considering the theoretical relationship between the analysis of class and social inequality, the article also intends to understand and explain how these different levels of analysis are interrelated, how the linkage between social categories and levels of social reality have to be methodologically reflected and how they can be made accessible in and through empirical research.     

Schönheitschirurgie-Patientinnen als „ugly dopes“? Zur Medialität der Entscheidungsfindung für plastisch-chirurgische Eingriffe

The mass media’s view on the current practices of aesthetic surgery is typically negotiated in the social sciences within the realm of ideology critique: The claim is that the mass media culture industry encourages particularly female consumers to undergo surgical interventions in order to optimize their body and thus instructs them to better market themselves (their entrepreneurial self). Furthermore, this process is not sufficiently reflected by the patients; according to the discourse in social science, they mutate to “ugly dopes” who are not truly aware of the conditions to which their decision for physical optimization is subject. This paper proposes a different reading of the mediality of plastic surgery, based on an empirical analysis of interviews with plastic surgery patients. The media certainly play a crucial role as carriers of format templates for body images, but they also are being translated in particular practical contexts. There is no continuum between the body images that are displayed by the media and their individual acquirement. The medial format templates must be actively incorporated into the conflictual everyday contexts of decision making. The effect of the media is therefore accounted for by their connectivity to life-world and has a permanent, continuous irritation as a result, caused by body images.     

Gewalt in Ordnungskonflikten als Problem der erklärenden Soziologie

The article argues that the uprisings during the Arab Spring as well as the riots in either the banlieues of French cities or in London have to be considered as violent conflicts that pose a serious threat to the social orders in which they emerge. These different kinds of social resistance have in common that they communicate more or less developed alternative conceptions of social orders that challenge what has been considered legitimate so far. Until now, sociology has neither successfully explained such kinds of conflicts nor the way they are triggered. Therefore, the article discusses crucial problems of a sociology of violence, i.e. violence as term and concept, theoretical and methodological deficits and, finally, assumptions about the role of violence in conflict-ridden processes of modernization and civilization in general. The article argues that a sociology of violence should concentrate on the nexus of social order and violence in order to explain how and why violent conflicts emerge in specific social contexts. Thus, a sociology of violence should take an effort to reconstruct the crucial social mechanisms that underlie the dynamics of emerging violence in processes of production and reproduction of social order.     

Zur Europäisierung der Handlungs- und Einstellungshorizonte: Ein makrosoziologischer Vergleich der EU-Mitgliedstaaten

Building on the transactionalist paradigm in the tradition of Karl W. Deutsch as well as on Arndt Sorge’s theory of tiered social spaces, this study examines why everyday actions and attitudes are more centered on Europe (i.?e. “Europeanized”) in some EU member states than in others. Analyzing a variety of survey data on the EU-27 countries with partial correlation models, it is shown that the macro-level determinants of Europeanization differ between actions and attitudes. While actions are more Europe-centered in small and affluent countries, attitudes are more Europe-centered in post-communist states as well as in countries that are located in the geographical center of the EU and that do not have a protestant religious tradition. Contrary to transactionalist theory, the Europeanization of actions does not coincide with the Europeanization of attitudes: “doing Europe” and “feeling Europe” do not go hand in hand.     

Universitäre Leistungsbewertungen als Bedrohung der akademischen Identität? Ein subjektorientierter Blick auf die Beurteilung und Kontrolle wissenschaftlicher Leistungen im Zeichen von New Public Management

It’s been argued that the implementation of new performance measurement systems in universities profoundly affect university professors’ occupational life. Even though they’re members of a profession whose self-conception is likely to conflict with organizational attempts to evaluate their research and teaching performances, professors are nowadays expected to provide an account of their performance and to adhere to new evaluation criteria. The study examines the presumed tensions based on qualitative interviews conducted with concerned professors. The study, thus, demonstrates the conflicts between new performance management measures and academic identity concepts. Similarly, it shows the limits of new performance management measures as criteria for capturing professorial accomplishments and success. However, as the analyzed material implies, these conflicts and limits are somewhat ambivalent and anything but unidimensional. In fact, a complex and to some extent contradictory picture emerges, given that ambiguous and sometimes positive perceptions of new performance management co-exist with clearly dismissive responses. Hence, performance measurement practices are not per se perceived as a threat to academic identity.     

Imaginäre Grenzen. Zur Entstehung impliziter Kollektivität in EU-Europa

Drawing on a practice-theoretical approach inspired by the notion of the social imaginary, imaginary borders in the European Union are conceptualized as the public emergence, maintenance and modification of interpretations about European borders through practices of circulation of symbols, commodities, and people. The construction of borders in the EU is thus neither located on the attitudinal level nor conceived of as the deliberate construction of meaning, but as the unintended emergence of the border as a meaningful category from taken-for-granted practices carrying their own meaning. Focusing on twin towns’ activities in the European Union as a paradigmatic location for the articulation of political-cultural understandings of the EU, it is argued that these articulations are not only embedded within economic and social circuits, but in the first place emerge from them as taken-for-granted and imaginary meanings of what the EU as a polity is and where its borders are. Methodologically, this calls for an understanding of the relationship between imaginary political collectivity and its economic, social and cultural channels of circulation which is not conceived as a text-context-relation but as one of mutual imaginary constitution.     

Umbruch und Kontinuität des Erwerbseinstiegs in Russland

The paper analyzes the influence of institutional change on the transition from school to work in Russia during socialism and the transition period. Using information from the “Education and Employment Survey for Russia” and comparing the birth cohorts 1949–1986, we analyze the duration of the respondents’ first job episode and the transition out of the first job. The results document shorter first job durations, increasing risks of unemployment and, in the case of women, more rapid transitions out of the labor market. However, the basic patterns of transition from education to job positions continued to exist. Thus, the transition from school to work in Russia did not experience an abrupt change but a gradual adjustment to the new economic order.     

Die Konstruktion der soziologischen Realität durch Forschungsrating

The article subjects the research rating of sociology, published in 2008 and carried out by an evaluation group on behalf of the German Science Council, to a secondary analysis. It is shown that the research rating constructs a reality of sociology which does justice neither to the variety of sociological knowledge production nor to its own claim of multidimensionality. Unwillingly, the peer reviewed article has imposed itself as the dominant criterion for assessing the research quality of research units against other types of publication and other activities such as externally funded research, knowledge transfer for practical problem-solving and knowledge diffusion in the public sphere. This preference also affected the assessment of entire research institutions with regard to their impact and efficiency as well as the devaluation of knowledge transfer and diffusion. In this way, sociology is limited to the type of professional sociology, while critical, public and policy-oriented sociology are displaced.     

Ökonomisches Kapital der Eltern und Medizinstudium im Ausland. Wie Europäisierungs- und Globalisierungsprozesse die Reproduktion sozialer Ungleichheiten verändern

The fact that university degrees are accepted throughout Europe has led to the founding of medical faculties, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, that offer medical studies in German or English and thus attracting students from richer Western European countries like Germany. Unlike medical studies in Germany, access to these foreign universities is not dependent on the final school exam grade, but on the ability to pay high tuition fees. The article compares the social class background of medicine students in Germany with German medicine students in Hungary. The analysis shows that the percentage of medicine students who come from higher social classes is even higher in Hungary than it already is in Germany. Studying medicine in Hungary primarily serves as an immediate reproduction of the parents’ profession as many of German medicine students in Hungary have a parent who belongs to the medical profession. The case of German students studying medicine abroad illustrates how Europeanization and Globalization have changed the reproduction of social inequalities; upper classes profit most from the new opportunities.