Landnahme, das Wachstumsdilemma und die ?Achsen der Ungleichheit“

This contribution analyzes relations between capitalistLandnahme*, the current twofold??economic and ecological??crisis of capitalism and social inequality. The core assumption is that capitalist societies need to constantly seize non-capitalist social environments in order to safeguard processes of dynamic self-stabilization. At present however, a tipping point seems to have been reached as conventional economic growth, set to overcome economic crisis, inevitably increases ecological dangers. Advanced capitalist societies thus face a growth dilemma and it seems necessary to readjust the ??axes of inequality??. To this purpose a theory of capitalistLandnahme is essential, as this approach encapsulates an extended concept of exploitative relations, which allows for a pluralistic understanding of social antagonisms and relations of domination. This article offers a topical analysis of finance capitalism in order to exemplify this approach. It argues that theLandnahme theorem can be brought to bear fruitfully as an analytical link between a theory of capitalism and research in intersectionality.     

Acute and Everyday Violence in Sri Lanka

Police torture in Sri Lanka has been subject to extensive investigation and condemnation but remains a widespread and seemingly entrenched practice. Seeking to understand the resistance of such practices to existing interventions, this article locates the police’s use of torture within a broader geography of social violence in Sri Lanka. We discuss the findings of extensive fieldwork conducted in the north-west of Sri Lanka where we examined not only police behaviour and interactions between police and the broader community but also the social dynamics relationships more generally. One significant finding was that violence against certain types of people, including police use of torture against such people, is generally accepted, even as the police are broadly criticised in the community for their unethical and ineffective behaviour. Another significant finding was that the society is riven with social hierarchies and that patterns of domination are embedded in social, political and symbolic systems. We conclude that police torture needs to be understood against the background of broader cultural practices whereby social subjects are disciplined and policed to produce appropriate citizens and punish social boundary violations.     

Back to the Future: Changing Repertoire in Contemporary Protests

This article opposes theoretical attempts to explain the Brazilian 2013 cycle of protests by fragmentation. It argues that the plurality of social actors engaged in those protests faced a field of contention deeply framed by autonomist practices, which allowed the aggregation of very different political views in an all-embracing political phenomenon. In addition, it suggests a broader change in the repertoire of contention that involves elements from the two historical periods discussed by Charles Tilly. Contemporary political contention gathers together the parochial and direct elements of the pre-social movements era with the broader and cosmopolitan elements of the social movements era.     

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.     

Unvermeidbare Ungleichheiten? Alltagsweltliche Ungleichheitsdeutungen zwischen sozialer Konstruktion und gesellschaftlicher Notwendigkeit

The article sketches a tacit ??enlightened common sense?? within stratification research according to which citizens in modern societies regard inequality as being caused by social factors and therefore in need of legitimation. The paper asks whether this is a plausible assumption about lay interpretations of stratification. Based on qualitative interviews with interviewees in privileged and disadvantaged social positions, the article reconstructs an interpretive scheme of the ??inevitability of inequality?? which regards inequality as an inescapable necessity of every social order and not as a contingent societal construct. Yet, another interpretive scheme exists that emphasizes the influence of social origin and thereby points to the social roots of stratification. Empirically, however, both interpretive schemes coexist within the consciousness of the interviewees. The potential for the criticism of inequality is thus circumscribed.     

Celebrity Politicians: Popular Culture and Political Representation

Considerable political and media attention has focused on the phenomenon of the 'celebrity politician'. As this article illustrates, there are two main variants of the phenomenon. The first is the elected politician or candidate who uses elements of 'celebrityhood' to establish their claim to represent a group or cause. The second is the celebrity—the star of popular culture—who uses their popularity to speak for popular opinion. Both examples have been seen by critics to debase liberal democratic political representation. This article challenges this critique and argues that the celebrity politician is consistent with a coherent account of political representation. This does not mean that all examples of the celebrity politician are to be seen as legitimate, but that the representative claim has to be analysed more carefully and discriminatingly than the critics typically suppose.     

The Transition to 'New' Social Democracy: The Role of Capitalism, Representation and (Hampered) Contestation

This article argues that existing accounts of the transformation from 'traditional' to 'new' social democracy has thus far only identified the contextual changes that have prompted this move. In doing so, they have failed to account for the motives of social democratic party actors in undertaking the transition to 'new' social democracy in response to those changes. The article draws upon a critical realist method, and Marxist and anti-representational theories, to conceptualise 'traditional' social democratic party relations as suffering from tensions between constituents' demands for decommodification, the attempt by party elites to contain (and thereby 'represent') those demands and the (in)compatibility of this process of containment with the need to recommodify social relations in the light of periodic crises in contemporary capitalism. It argues that these tensions explain the attempt by party elites to promote the move towards 'new' social democracy, the (eventual) acquiescence of party constituents to those attempts and the subsequent exit from social democratic constituencies which has resulted. The argument is made with reference to the British Labour Party and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).     

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.     

Soziologie der Freundschaft

The article argues that nowadays research on friendship has reached a dead end. The only thing everyone in the field agrees on is: “friendship matters”. But how and what for is completely contingent, conceptionally as well as methodically. Alternatively the paper argues that the phenomenon of friendship becomes clearer when looked at under four functional aspects: first as a compensating practice of care for those who can’t trust in family bonds nor in welfare contracts; second as an intermediate social form that lasts longer than membership and partnership alike; third as a mirror of lifelong socialization of the self; and forth as a diffuse resource of organization and association. All aspects concern the enigma of voluntary bonds in a society of individuals.     

Rape of the Congo: Understanding sexual violence in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Though the occurrence of rape in the conduct of war is by no means historically new, research into its causes and functions has only really begun in the past couple of decades. War rape is a difficult phenomenon about which to generalise, considering the variances in context and actors involved. This article, however, attempts to synthesise existing literature through the analysis of a case study that can enhance our understanding of rape as a weapon of war and the contextual conditions that facilitate its use. Applying this theoretical framework to the extreme war rape occurring in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), this article offers insight into understanding the function of sexual violence in the ongoing conflict in the DRC. In particular, this article argues that the use of rape as a weapon in the Congo's bloody war must be understood in relation to both social constructs of masculinity and the politics of exploitation that have shaped much of the country's history.     

‘Fighting for the Right’: A Functionalist Oral-History Analysis of Conservative Brazilian Women from the Military Dictatorship (1964–1985) to Jair Bolsonaro's Presidency (2018–)

Conservative women in Brazil played a significant role in the 1964 military coup and Bolsonaro's 2018 election victory. Oral history interviews with conservative women who experienced these two significant political events indicate that they both occurred in a climate of heightened anxiety and anti-modern moral panic, where social order and traditional structures such as the family and the church were perceived to be under threat from feminism and Marxism. Although it is somewhat disregarded in contemporary studies, this article argues that functionalist ideology, which upholds the sanctity of the traditional family, serves to explain why Brazilian conservative women continue to fervently support the patriarchal status quo.     

Class or Citizenship? Debating Workplace Conflict in China

While a new working class is in the process of remaking itself in China, the latest trend in labour studies has rejected the Marxist tradition which sees the social relations of production as the point of departure for analysing workplace conflict. According to the new current, influenced by post-structuralism, class is only one of the identities articulated by workers, and it can be understood only with reference to their discourses. By critically evaluating an important book by Ching Kwan Lee (Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt), this article suggests that her approach generalising workers' protests with the notion of citizenship cannot satisfactorily explain the changing pattern of labour protests in China since 2004. By using fieldwork data and connecting the analysis of the social relations of production with the changing patterns of workers' struggle, this paper argues that migrant workers protests are a significant part of the emerging class conflict in China.     

Transformationstheorie auf neuen Pfaden?

The article explores the theoretical debates on postcommunist transformations since 1998 with a focus on substantial reorientations and innovations. After identifying important novel or discursively strengthened approaches, three of them are presented and critically discussed in more detail: the post-communism approach, the steering or governance approach, and the Europeanization approach. The examination leads to the result that, indeed, a ??second generation?? has emerged. It has largely overcome universalistic assumptions and gained explanatory power by more complex theoretical architectures as well as systematic time-space-embeddings or contextualizations. The new generation also demonstrates an intensive exchange with the field of general theories of social change. A final consideration makes the case for interdisciplinary and general theories of societal transformations as a necessary step in the advancement of the theoretical debate.     

From "pirates" to "militants": A historical perspective on anti-state and anti-oil company mobilization among the Ijaw of Warri, Western Niger Delta

Against the background of recent attempts to explain insurgencyin the Niger Delta in the context of the "greed" of militantgroups, this article argues that insurgency can best be explainedby examining the social origins of militant groups. Focusingon the case of the Ijaw of Warri, from among whom the Movementfor the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) emerged, thearticle seeks to demonstrate that insurgency is the consequenceof longstanding experiences of political and social-culturalmarginalization. Militant groups emerged as a result of thefailure of the state and oil companies to respond to peacefulprotests in previous decades.     

Reign-seeking and the Rise of the Unelected in Thailand

ABSTRACT

This article develops the concept of “reign-seeking” to capture the unprecedented collective action of the Thai professional and official elite prior to the 2014 military coup and the establishment of a military regime. It argues that this phenomenon reflects broad and deep political dynamics, for which the dominant scholarship on authoritarianism and Thai politics cannot adequately explain. The changing incentives of these supposedly non-partisan actors are interwoven with neo-liberal governance reform driven by a desire for depoliticisation and the minimisation of rent-seeking. This idea has been rationalised in Thailand since the promulgation of the 1997 Constitution resulting in the rise of technocratic and judicial bodies designed to discipline elected politicians and political parties. However, such institutional reconfigurations have consolidated the incentive for people considering themselves to be prospective candidates to “reign” in these organisations. As evident in the 2014 coup, these unconventional political actors – academics, doctors and civil society leaders – made collective efforts to topple the elected government in exchange for gaining selection into the wide range of unelected bodies. Governance reform in Thailand has hitherto reinforced the status quo, although the article further argues that reign-seekers should be seen as contingent, rather than consistent, authoritarians.     

Exzessive individuelle Gewalt. „School Shootings“ und „Lone Wolf Terrorism“ als soziale Phänomene

Since the middle of the 1990s both, school shootings as in Littleton 1999 or Newtown 2012 and terrorist attacks by lone offenders (lone wolf terrorism) as in Oslo 2011 or Aurora 2012 are perceived as extremely disputed social phenomena. They have not only shocked and unsettled the western world but triggered public debates about arms control and school safety. Despite these broad debates, academic analyses of the phenomena are still in their early stages. Thus, the article discusses the current status of research and discusses problems as well as blind spots of previous approaches in the social sciences. Following this criticism, it suggests a new conceptual approach that conceives school shootings and attacks of lone offender terrorism phenomenologically as manifestations of “excessive individual violence”. Further, the article argues that the communicative meaning of this kind of violence is of utmost significance, it outlines the social embeddedness of the social phenomenon of excessive individual violence and describes crucial fields of further research.     

State Discourses, Police Violence and Democratisation in Argentina

Police violence is a persistent problem throughout Latin America despite the return of electoral democracy; it is pervasive and includes torture, murder and disappearances. Certainly institutional reforms aimed at changing police practice are important. However, it is equally important that state actors maintain a clear and relatively consistent discourse in favour of democratic policing. This article argues that, in the case of Argentina, state actors do not maintain a consistent position in favour of democratic policing and instead oscillate between denying the occurrence of police violence, justifying such police action and absolving themselves of responsibility.     

Wie entstehen Preise?

How are prices made? From the perspective of economic price theory prices are determined by supply and demand, while from an economic sociology point of view they result from the embeddedness of market transactions in institutions, networks or cultural frames of meaning. In order to build a price, the value of a good has to be transformed into economic value, i.e. a price. The paper analyses the process of transformation from value to price on the market for the rating of structured finance products. On this market, with the help of calculative practices, the abstract value of ??creditworthiness?? is converted into a concrete rating which determines credit costs. As the subprime crisis has shown, the credit bureaus and rating agencies responsible for this translation process have not been able to draw the price near to the value to which it refers. The article describes the divergence between value and price as the ??social space?? where price building is influenced by social factors that may distort prices and lead to a breakdown of the market.     

Jenseits von Zentrum und Peripherie

The central question for Karl Marx concerning the specific role of symbolic domination in capitalism challenges us down to the present day. We continue to improperly perceive the symbolic and immaterial structure subjacent to capitalism that is responsible for its peculiar ??symbolic violence.?? This article analyzes two interrelated issues: first, the racism implicated by concepts that articulate central and peripheral capitalism; and secondly, its principal consequence, which is the absence of broad and encompassing concepts in modern social theory. This eliminates a chance to articulate universal contexts??at least as universal as capitalism in its global expansion. The reach of contemporary critical theory is therefore limited in terms of central questions. Among the concepts that are abandoned by the fragmentation and contextualization is that of social class and that of the symbolic violence produced by structural changes that encompass capitalism as a whole. The following article draws on empirical studies concerning under class and the ??new?? middle class conducted in Brazil to illustrate its thesis.     

Die ?kognitive Exklusion�� junger Migranten im L?ndervergleich

The degree of ethnic educational inequality varies across countries, as international educational surveys have shown. Previous studies suggest that institutional and societal characteristics of destination countries partly account for this variance. The article builds upon these recent findings and upon hypotheses with regard to the relationship between welfare states and immigration and integration processes. It is assumed that two different societal dimensions, namely egality and diversity of the destination countries structure educational decisions of immigrants. Thus, at least partly, the individual control has its educational success revoked. This is why this article speaks of a process of cognitive exclusion. With data from PISA 2003 and 2006 we examine the effects of welfare state institutions and diversity of host countries on individual educational success by applying multilevel regressions. The results show that strong welfare states reduce the individual risk of cognitive exclusion, contradicting common ??moral hazard?? assumptions.