Soziologie und neurowissenschaften: über die komplementarität zweier beschreibungsebenen

In recent years, neuroscience has revealed a lot of interesting findings. These insights lead to many discussions in philosophy and also in public. Hitherto sociology hasn’t reached a consensus of specifying the relationship between biology and social science. Based on moderate naturalism in this article a meta-theoretical concept is introduced that allows a proper handling of the findings in neuroscience. Furthermore some examples are presented, which show that to deal with facts and theories of neuroscience can be of advantage for sociology.     

Abbau ethnischer Grenzen durch Nationensport. Eine Analyse von Internetforen über willkommene und unwillkommene Zuwanderer

Sport-stars of foreign descent are sometimes role-models for integration of immigrants in a wider sense. Those kind of sport-stars are perceived as representatives of a new kind of national we-image that no longer stresses the ideal of a constitutive ethnic group. However, it is not clear, yet, that sport-stars are role-models in this sense, at all. The paper argues that parts of the main population just perceive those athletes as one of them because they are helpful in increasing national pride and prestige. Thus, this paper will discuss the concept of the ‘topos of benefits’ that is related to the process of dismantling ethnic boundaries. The paper is based on an analysis of discourses about immigrants in sport and outside of sport in internet-fora.     

Kontaktgenerierung auf StudiVZ: Wie über Social Networking Platforms alte Freundschaften gepflegt und neue geschlossen werden

Virtual communication continuously gains importance in modern society, as the growing success of “social networking platforms”(SNPs) like Facebook, XING or StudiVZ indicates. In this article we compare such platforms in regard to their instrumental vs. expressive orientation. It is supposed, that amore expressive orientation of a platform like Facebook or StudiVZ is not only functional to manage contacts to friends already known outside the internet (“social searching”), like studies on user's reports on their own motivations have recently shown for Facebook, but also helps generating new contacts to people not already known before (“social browsing”). This more implicit function might be promoted by the trust-promising visuability of a person's network contacts, especially in the face of strangers. An online survey on StudiVZ with n = 1316 randomized participants confirms both hypotheses.     

„Social theory and the sociological discipline(s)“ Bericht über die Konferenz der Theoriesektion der European Sociological Association in Innsbruck, 11.–13. September 2008

Ohne Zusammenfassung