Strukturale Psychologie. Zum Verhältnis von Sozialraum,Habitus und Persönlichkeit

The article addresses Pierre Bourdieu’s occasional reflections on a “structural psychology” and suggests an approach to further develop this concept as part of his relational program. For this purpose, the paper first elaborates the psychoanalytical and psychological aspects of habitus-field theory. Based on data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) it then illustrates the empirical correspondence between Bourdieu’s social space and the big five personality factors as well as occupational interests on the basis of various indicators. The psychological information is transferred into empirical typologies, and the resulting classes are used for a psychologically informed reconstruction of the social space. The study and its results demonstrate the potential of a psychological interpretation of Bourdieu’s habitus concept and a socio-spatial, structural interpretation of psychological characteristics.     

Marktvermittelte Massenkunst

Zusammenfassung Der Artikel zeigt, dass Max Horkheimer und Theodor W. Adorno in ihrer Kulturindustriethese die empirischen Befunde von Alexis de Tocquevilles Kunstdiagnose demokratischer Gesellschaften ihrer eigenen Manipulationsperspektive subsumiert haben. Ihre Theorie der Kulturindustrie nahm in Tocquevilles Kunstsoziologie des zweiten Amerikabandes ihren Anfang. Mittelma?, Publikumsorientierung, unterhaltender Charakter und soziale Indifferenz sind sowohl den marktvermittelten künstlerischen Produkten der Demokratie Tocquevilles als auch den kulturindustriellen Produkten Horkheimers und Adornos gemein. Fordert der demokratische Mensch Tocquevilles inhaltliche Selbstbezüglichkeit seines Alltags in künstlerischen Produkten und verliert das Kunstwerk somit seinen sublimierenden Charakter, sind die kulturindustriellen Produkte bei den Frankfurtern analog durch eine Verdoppelung der Realit?t und den damit einhergehenden Verlust ihres gesellschaftstranszendierenden Gehalts gekennzeichnet. Da bei Tocqueville die Demokratie als Lebensform zutiefst mit individuellem Wirtschaftsstreben verknüpft ist, k?nnen die Sp?tkapitalisten Horkheimer und Adorno die empirischen Befunde seiner Analyse marktvermittelter Massenkunst zu ihrer Manipulationshypothese kapitalistischer Herrschaft ausbauen. Es ist von einer „integrativen Adaption“ von Tocquevilles Kunstdiagnose durch die Frankfurter die Rede, da das Identische der Kulturindustrie Horkheimers und Adornos der Integriertheit der demokratischen „h?fischen Gesellschaft“ Tocquevilles, das Nicht-Identische der Kunst in der bürgerlichen Sozialphilosophie der pers?nlichen Freiheit des franz?sischen Aristokraten entspricht.

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Summary Max Horkheimer’s and Theodor W. Adorno’s theory of culture-industry is based on the sociology of art in Alexis de Tocqueville’s second volume of Democracy in America. The article shows how Horkheimer and Adorno subsumed the empirical findings of Tocqueville’s art-diagnosis of democratic societies under their own culture-industrial manipulation perspective. Aiming at the average audience, mediocrity, public taste, entertaining interest and social indifference are characteristics of the market-mediated artistic products of Tocqueville’s democracy as well as of the products of Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s culture-industry. Tocqueville’s democratic person demands self-reference regarding the content of her or his everyday life in art and, as a result, the work of art loses its sublime character. Analogue to this, the culture-industrial products analyzed by the Frankfurt School theorists duplicate the reality and therefore lose their society transcending content. Since Tocqueville’s democracy is fundamentally connected to the economic effort of the individual, Horkheimer and Adorno can extend his empirical findings of commercial popular art within their own late-capitalistic manipulation hypothesis of capitalist power. The concept of the identical („Das Identische“) in Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s culture-industry corresponds to Tocqueville’s tyranny of unanimity in democratic societies; the concept of the non-identical of art in the bourgeois social philosophy to the personal freedom of the French aristocrat.

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Résumé L’article montre que dans leur thèse de l’industrie de la culture, Max Horkheimer et Theodor W. Adorno ont repris les résultats empiriques du diagnostic de l’art des sociétés démocratiques mené par Alexis de Tocqueville. Leur théorie de l’industrie de la culture a pris son origine dans la sociologie de l’art du deuxième tome de la Démocratie en Amérique de Tocqueville. Le juste milieu, l’orientation vers le public, le caractère divertissant et l’indifférence sociale se retrouvent aussi bien dans les produits de l’art dans la démocratie chez Tocqueville, que dans les produits de l’industrie de la culture chez Horkheimer et Adorno. L’homme démocratique de Tocqueville exige des produits artistiques une référence intrinsèque à son quotidien, ce qui fait perdre à l’œuvre d’art son caractère sublimatoire. Les produits de l’industriede la culture se caractérisent de manière analogue chez les Francfortois par un dédoublement de la réalité et par la perte concomitante de leur contenu par lequel la société se trouve transcendée. Comme la démocratieest chez Tocqueville intimement liée à une aspiration individuelle vers l’échange économique, les capitalistes tardifs Horkheimer et Adorno peuvent utiliser ces résultats empiriques pour l’esquisse de leur propre thèse de la manipulation capitaliste. Le caractère intégré de la „société courtoise“ démocratique chez Tocqueville (à savoir le caractère non identique de l’art dans la philosophie sociale bourgeoise) correspond alors au caractère identique de l’industrie de la culture chez Horkheimer et Adorno.

     

The credibility of monetary reform – New evidence

The history of monetary policy is characterised by crisis and reform. The paper is dedicated to an explanation of what makes monetary reforms successful. A cross-sectional econometric analysis is chosen to deal with this problem. It is based on a standard macroeconomic model of commitment and credibility. As the dependent variable, we calculate a post-reform inflation rate. The exogenous variables are the degree of legal commitment, the constraining influence of institutions and a new variable for ex-ante credibility of the reform. The paper allows for the conclusion that monetary commitment, the consideration of institutional constraints and abstinence from the money press are crucial for the success of a monetary reform.     

Transnationale Diskurse in der europäischen Medienöffentlichkeit: Die Debatte zum EU-Beitritt der Türkei

In December 2004, the European Council decided unanimously to initiate accession talks with Turkey. Although Turkey’s definite membership depends on successful negotiations and will be decided upon later, the Council will hardly be able to revise this offer and it seems reasonable to assume that Turkey will join the EU sooner or later. This article presents a comparative analysis on whether and how intensively this decision was accompanied by a transnational discourse in the public sphere of the mass media. The study is based on leading quality newspapers from the EU member states France, Germany, and Great Britain.     

Moment of Stasis: The Successful Failure of a Constitution for Europe

The 2005 French and Dutch negative votes on the Constitution open up a space of conceptualisation, not only of Europe's relation to its demos, but significantly to its failures. Through a critical analysis of mainly Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, the article proposes taking a distance from traditional constitutional dogmatics that are no longer capable of dealing with the paradox of contemporary society, and more specifically with the eventual resurgence of the European project as one of absence and stasis: the two terms are used to explain the need, on the one hand, to maintain the 'absent community' of Europe, and, on the other, to start realising that any conceptualisation of the European project will now have to take place in that space of instability and contingency revealed by the constitutional failure. The relation between law and politics, the location of a constitution, the distinction between social and normative legitimacy, the connection between European identity and demos, and the concept of continuity between constitutional text and context are revisited in an attempt to trace the constitutional failure as the constitutional moment par excellence.     

Symptom Validity Testing in Claimants with Alleged Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Comparing the Morel Emotional Numbing Test, the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology, and the Word Memory Test

In independent medical examinations, unjustified claims of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are to be expected at an increased rate. In a prospective study, consecutive cases of patients claiming PTSD who underwent independent neuropsychiatric evaluation were analyzed. For 61 adult patients, results of three symptom validity tests (Morel Emotional Numbing Test, Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology, and Word Memory Test) were available. Seventy percent of all claimants showed probable negative response bias in at least one of the three tests, 25% in all three tests. High probability of negative response bias was associated with symptom overreporting and demonstration of cognitive deficits in performance tests. The results indicate that high rates of uncooperativeness must be expected in civil forensic patients with claimed PTSD. A multi-method approach to the assessment of response distortion in PTSD claimants is indicated.     

Gender equality in Swedish AI policies. What's the problem represented to be?

Over the past few decades, Sweden has established itself as a “world leader” in gender equality. Alongside this development, Swedish politicians have also initiated ambitious plans that aim to establish the country as “world class” in terms of digitalization. International research shows that women and racialized groups are in a minority in the design processes, that AI facial recognition systems are built with white male faces as the norm, and that digital tools replicate racial injustices. In this paper, we are interested in if, and if so how, gender equality is articulated and thus filled with meaning in national policies on AI and digitalization. The overall aim is to discuss the potential of gender (equality) mainstreaming to challenge systems of privilege in the implementation of AI systems in the public sector. The paper analyses how gender equality is filled with meaning in national policy documents on AI and gender equality. The main findings show that gender equality is turned into a question of lack of knowledge and information, which in turn blocks out an understanding of gender equality as something that is related to gendered power relations.     

Forensic science standards in fast-changing environments

Regulatory trends in forensic science point strongly to the need for exhaustive testing of all findings and tools. At the same time a number of jurisdictions suggest a judicial test for the admissibility of novel scientific evidence. But in fields such as computers and cellphones, the rate of change is faster than the normal times required for peer-reviewed publication. One route to admitting less-than-perfect findings from forensic science is via a re-evaluation of the role of expert evidence and in particular pre-trial meetings between experts.