Dienstboten der Nation: Ausbeutung informeller Laienpflege und die Revitalisierung eines totgeglaubten Klassikers

The decline of Marxist theory is best exemplified by the concept of “exploitation”. For decades now and not only in sociology, the former mainspring of the social critique has been carving out a niche existence. While the concept of exploitation has all but vanished from the social sciences together with its Marxist legacy, it seems like everyone is talking about exploitation. Moreover, the retrenchment of Marxist theory has left a gap that has not yet been filled. This article aims to show that exploitation can be a useful instrument for the theoretical and empirical study of society. The article proposes a sociological concept of exploitation that draws on the sociologies of work, inequality and gender in an empirical analysis of so-called “caring communities” currently garnering widespread societal and political support in the context of Germany’s eldercare crisis. In so doing, the article aims to end the presumed obsolescence of a classic sociological concept that is as relevant today as it ever was.     

Forschungsfeld geografische Kriminalstrukturanalyse

This paper introduces a research interface between urban sociology and criminology, which has experienced a tremendous development elsewhere, but has been neglected as an own scientific field of research in Austria. A ?Geographic crime-patterns analysis“ represents an interesting and germane discipline for both qualitative- and quantitative- oriented social scientists. With regard to comprehensive crime prevention the discussion about the ?future of crime control institutions“ does not only evolve around crime prevention techniques, but also and foremost addresses elaborated methods of crime analysis. A sociological analysis of crime builds on the grounds of criminalistics: Crime hot spots are correlated with socio-demographic and spatial data as social conditions of the lifeworld in order to elaborate a theory of crime-opportunities and finally to inform authorities concerned with public safety. Once the police has realised that they can only guarantee public safety in collaboration with social and housing authorities, they must also accept an approach for a comprehensive analysis of crime statistics with regard to social phenomena. This paper shall present the scientific potential of a geographic analysis of crime.     

Fuzzy-Logik für die Soziologie

This contribution introduces fuzzy-logic as a possibly new basis for sociology. After a general introduction to the basic principles of fuzzy-logic certain advantages are presented exemplarily, particularly for the empirical research considering as example the so called “qualitative-comparative analysis” (QCA), and for the sociological theory concerning Hartmut Esser’s theory of action. In sum, the application of fuzzy-logic promises sociology a more simple modelling of more complex facts than it has been possible so far.     

Simmels ‚Exkurs über die Soziologie der Sinne’ — Zentraltext einer anthropologischen Soziologie

The article reconstructs Simmel’s essay “Excursus on the Sociology of the Senses” as a central text of a sociology of the body, as a paradigmatic approach to an anthropological sociology. It re-systemizes Simmel’s partly implicit, partly explicit non-or pre-sociological aesthesiological premises on the senses as well as his twofold sociological perspective on the senses, i.e. the senses as a constituting factor of social relations on the one hand and the social regulation and construction of the senses on the other hand. Simmel’s phenomenological view on the structure and function of the senses (their immanence of abstraction, double perspective, difference and combination) is shown to be the aesthesiological foundation of his sociological approach, being perhaps part of a philosophical anthropology, that systematically reconstructs the basic significance of the senses or the body as prefiguring a person’s relation to him/herself, to the world and to others while at the same time saving him from biologistic reduction. The senses have their share in constituting the social world by which they are at the same time interpreted, modeled and constructed. Methodologically systemized in this way, Simmel’s essay in nuce reveals an aesthesiology of the senses that opens up the possibility of an anthropological sociology apt to rebalance the linguistic turn not only by an iconic turn but also by an acoustic turn (that can rediscover the sociological relevance of ‘parole’ against the dominance of ‘langue’).     

Bastler — Sammler — Spurensucher. Zum Verhältnis von Geschichte und Systematik der soziologischen Theorie nach Robert K. Merton

For the history of sociology not to lose its relevance to the discipline, it should not be understood as a biographically oriented parade of recognized and forgotten classics, but rather complement sociological theory. Writing upon these premises, the historian of sociology would cease to act as the discipline's identity engineer who, considering the competitive field of theories and subjects, conservatively serves sociology to find and stabilize its historical identity. Furthermore, s/he would no longer operate as collector of ideas in search in the history of sociology for concepts of sociological analysis that were abandoned at some point, and in doing so, would cease to pursue the objective of critically undermining the dominating paradigms in contemporary sociology. On the contrary, since the ‘historic turn’ in the philosophy of science, the historian of sociology has to take up a trace-tracking role. In contrast to Robert K. Merton's stance, the theory and history of sociology should not be understood as two separate ventures. Rather, the genealogical exploration will lead to a historical epistemology of disciplinary paradigms that emphasizes that theoretical paradigms must be analyzed within the social context of their genesis. Such an approach would enable us to systematically identify the prerequisites and range of contemporary theoretical paradigms. Beyond Merton's former analysis, theory construction in sociology requires that systematic and historical reconstructions go hand-in-hand.     

Paradigmenwechsel in der Sozialwirtschaft – Sozialmarketing als neue Steuerungsphilosophie?

Against the background of developments in society and in the light of the reform efforts in the social economy, the question arises which of the steering concepts successfully employed elsewhere can also be applied in social economic organizations. In particular, “marketing” has already proven to be a widely adaptable social technology. While management and consulting practice, however, mostly argue pragmatically with its usefulness and thereof derive their normative claims, theoretical analyses are rare. This contribution provides such a background analysis and investigates the causes of the paradigmatic connectivity of marketing as a management technique. On the grounds of basic social science theory, a genuinely sociological perspective on marketing is developed, though without reducing sociology to an instrumental supplying function for business administration.     

Verantwortliches Handeln als soziologischer Grundbegriff

As a critical modification of Parsons voluntaristic theory of action as well as of the theories of rational choice, this contribution suggests Max Weber’s concept of “responsibility” or “responsible action” as an enclosing model of action rationality, integrating both individual freedom of choice as well as over-individual categorical values. This systematical benefit of the concept of “responsibility” is especially due to the idea of a “value discussion”. This dialogical enlargement of rationality includes a modern theory of validity essentially needed to save the rationality of categorical values and to allow the equality of value-rational orientations next to questions of utility. This being said, responsibility can be presented as a basic concept of sociology, containing the key to an integrative social theory based on methodological individualism.     

The Żmiąca effect

Monographs of local communities are a genre of sociological craft which — along with analyses of personal documents — became a distinguishing mark of Polish empirical sociology. In 2003 turned exactly 100 years from publication of the first sociologically mature village monograph in Poland, e. g. “?mi?ca. Wie? powiatu limanowskiego. Stosunki gospodarcze i spo?eczne” [?mi?ca. A village of the Limanowa county. Economic and social relations] by one of the founding fathers of Polish social sciences, Franciszek Bujak. This paper describes and analyses the impacts of this study and develops a typology of monographs. Additionally, problems of representativeness of monographs are discussed.     

Consequences of Family Policies on Childbearing Behavior: Effects or Artifacts?

This article argues for a more careful consideration of theoretical and methodological approaches in studies of the effects of public policies, labeled here as family policies, on childbearing behavior. We employ elements of comparative welfare‐state research, of the sociology of “constructed categories,” and of “the new institutionalism” to demonstrate that investigations into policy effects need to contextualize policies and need to reduce their complexity by focusing on “critical junctures,”“space,” and “uptake.” We argue that the effects of family policies can only be assessed properly if we study their impact on individual behavior. Event‐history models applied to individual‐level data are the state‐of‐the‐art of such an approach. We use selected empirical studies from Sweden to demonstrate that the type of approach that we advocate prevents us from drawing misleading conclusions.     

Erzählung und „Bewältigung“

The topic of this paper is the change of perspective from the concept of “coping with illness” in a psychological sense to a concept of coping as “living with (chronic) illness” in a sociological sense. Whereas psychological and even some sociological research presupposes assumptions on causes and essentials of stress as well as on successful coping, we focused on the different ways, in which subjects define strain and their personal aim of coping. These subjective views might differ from the definitions of scientists as well. Furthermore we focus on the social constructions of illness and “normal living” and the social rules of coping with daily hassles, which underlay the subjective views. Assuming that the ways chronically ill resp. disabled persons look at stress and daily hassles is part of their coping, we conclude that stress and coping are mutually constituting each other. This dialectic process is influenced by the persons current situation, by the individual’s history and by cultural rules concerning appropriate coping resp. living with strain in general. Looking at these social rules and how they are modified under the conditions of illness and handicap was the topic of our research project “LIVE—Living and Defending Your Interests—Disabled Women”, financed by the German Fed. Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth and conducted 1996–1998. In this study a questionnaire was sent to 16 to 60 years old disabled women (return: N=987). Additionally a qualitative interview was conducted with N=60 of them. From a biographical approach the reconstruction of the main subjective patterns in their life histories led us to the social rules of appropriate “coping”. We can take this as a starting point for a sociological discussion of everyday living with chronic illness, that focuses on the social constitution of subjective meanings of stress resp. coping with illness, includes the social context and allows to integrate the gender perspective.     

35 Jahre ?ZS �� Eine quantitative Bestandsaufnahme

In this paper I provide an empirically based quantitative analysis of the last 35 years of the Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie (ÖZS). I ask if the shape of articles have changed, which patterns of co-authorship can be found, and what conclusions are to be drawn regarding to a cultural change within the sociology in Austria. The basis for the empirical analysis is a dataset of all original papers published between 1976 and 2010. The investigated variables are the institutional affiliation of the authors, article length, number of authors per article, the proportion of women, percentage of non-Austrian contributions, and the topics covered. The data suggests that articles reflect the increasing professionalism and academisation of sociology in Austria. Furthermore it shows that articles in the ÖZS are increasingly written by more than one author. It turns out that there are a few people to be particularly attractive as co-authors and therefore get key positions within the publication network.     

Das Anerkennungsdefizitsyndrom des Wohlfahrtsstaats

The contribution questions the conception of the welfare state as an institutional arrangement for social inclusion and integration underlying Günter Duxes book “Why justice at all” (“Warum denn Gerechtigkeit”). This concept is countered with a sociological analysis stressing the asymmetric structures of recognition that characterize the welfare state (particularly its German variant) and reconstructing the changing patterns of social inequality produced by recent “activation” policies. As a normative guideline for future reforms, the paper argues for a universalistic recognition regime that transcends the restrictions of the national-industrial model of welfare.     

当前我国打工族“搭伙夫妻”现象的社会学透视

“搭伙夫妻”不只是国外独有的社会现象，业已伴随社会转型在国内悄然兴起。其中。打工族“搭伙夫妻”现象尤为典型，理应成为一个值得深入研究的社会问题。这种新的群体性现象的产生到底是填充感情还是饮鸩止渴？是无奈还是无情？本文采用社会学理论，从其产生原因、社会影响以及应该如何正确看待等方面进行了深入分析和探讨，以期引起国内学者进一步关注。     

Taking time between g-string changes to educate ourselves: Sinéad O’Connor,Miley Cyrus,and celebrity feminism

This article examines the feminist response to a 2013 online “feud” between singers Miley Cyrus and Sinéad O’Connor that began when Cyrus connected the video for her single “Wrecking Ball” to O’Connor’s video for “Nothing Compares 2 U.” O’Connor’s response criticised Cyrus’ sexualised image, and the exchanges that followed sparked debate among feminists over the limits of sexual “agency,” and the sexual politics of feminism. This took place within a wider media context that has seen an apparent increase in female celebrities explicitly identifying themselves as feminist. Critics of this “celebrity feminism” argue that the sexualised star systems of its proponents are at odds with the aims of feminist politics. This article draws on post-structuralist feminist theory to question the positioning of celebrity feminism as exterior to an imagined “feminist movement.” Using the Cyrus/O’Connor feud, I argue that such a binary potentially reaffirms the structures of power that feminism seeks to oppose, and ignores the ways celebrity culture and contemporary media practice might combine to produce new understandings of the field of feminism.     

Edward Alsworth Ross on Western Civilization and the Birth Rate

A declining trend in fertility had taken hold in Western Europe, North America, and Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, attracting much social scientific interest and public policy concern. Explanations advanced at the time—for example, in the writings of John S. Billings, Lujo Brentano, Arsène Dumont, Adolphe Landry, and F.W. Taussig—mostly posited multiple causes and in many respects anticipated the arguments subsequently made by the theorists of “demographic transition” in the 1940s and 1950s. A prominent figure who should be added to the names just mentioned is the American sociologist Edward Alsworth Ross (1866–1951). Ross's account of fertility decline is best captured in his article, “Western civilization and the birth‐rate,” American Journal of Sociology, volume 12, no. 5 (March 1907), pp. 607–632, which is excerpted below. Writing in a vigorous and fluid style, he gives weight to the lessening of class divisions offered by democracy, the “newly awakened wants” that crowd out children, the emancipation of women, the decay of religious authority, and the numerous elements of modern life that “enthrone reason over impulse” and hence make for enlightened foresight. In the parts of the article not reprinted, Ross discusses the then widespread worries about the implications of differential fertility—the possible dysgenic effects within nations and the prospective demographic marginalization of the West as a whole (requiring “the bristling frontiers between peoples and races” to remain in place until the economic gaps are narrowed). In an acute and prescient comment on Ross's article, published in the same issue of AJS, the demographer Walter F. Willcox (1861–1964) remarked on the prospect of the fertility decline going too far, with individual interests diverging from the interests of society:

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Praktiken der Grenzüberschreitung und die Grenzen des Feldparadigmas

So far, the phenomenon of the so-called avant-garde has rarely been the subject of sociological scrutiny. In order to approach the historical avant-garde in sociological terms, Pierre Bourdieu??s field concept is applied. This sheds new light on the avant-garde, which traditionally has been subject to related disciplines. However, Bourdieu??s field theory fails to capture the empirical phenomenon of the historical avant-garde sufficiently. This suggests that sociology ought to regard the principle of the avant-garde as a distinct concept.     

Yea-saying and mood-of-the-day effects in self-reported quality of life

This paper focuses on some of the complications that may arise from errors of measurement in quality of life (QOL) scales based on self-report. It is argued that systematic errors as well as random errors (specifically in the shape of mood-of-the-day effects) will tend to suppress, mask or “wash out” statistical associations between “objective”, sociologically relevant, indicators of well-being and self-reported quality of life. Results from a Norwegian sample of middle-aged and old participants in a health screening operation (N=610) are reported. The findings indicate that response acquiescence (“yea-saying”) may be a source of systematic error even in balanced QOL-scales, and that this bias may lead one to underestimate QOL among the well-educated and overestimate it among older respondents. Utilizing over-time data we are able to show that self-reported QOL appears particularly vulnerable to mood-of-the-day effects among younger females. Implications for sociological research on subjective well-being are pointed out.