Der Schichtgradient von Morbidität und Mortalität

As in many other European countries a contradictory development can be observed in Austria, too: On the one hand, life expectancy increases continuously while incidence and prevalence rates of many groups of diagnoses decrease. On the other hand, differences in morbidity and mortality between the social classes are widening at the same time. This article’s aim is to develop a comprehensive theoretical model of explanation of this social class gradient including the current state of discussion on “health inequalities”. Aspects of material inequality as well as the socially unequal distribution of working and living conditions will be taken into account. In addition, the importance of cultural capital and class-specific lifestyles will be described in detail. Last but not least psychosocial and biological preconditions and potential selection processes will also be taken into consideration.     

Postdemokratie, Humankapital und politische Handlungsfähigkeit

Reconstructing the transformation of manpower into human capital this article shows the effects on individual and collective political agency. In booming societies of the 1960s and early 1970s which were based on mass consumption, the utopia of a revolutionary proletarian subject vanished. It was superseded by the idea of a dualistic society providing a growing sphere of autonomy from economic dependancy. The neoliberal transformation of society destroyed this belief. If there is a strong convergence between labor and human capital, labor tends to interfuse the whole life. Complex governmental and economic regulation restricts democracy and effects individualization. The critical examination of processes of individualization shows the mechanisms that produce social antagonism.     

Arbeitsmarktflexibilisierung und wachsende Niedriglohnbeschäftigung in Österreich

Western societies have experienced an increasing flexibilization and deregulation of their labour markets in the last decades. These developments led to an expansion of non-standard work as well as low-paid employment. Nevertheless, there has been little systematic research on flexibilization and low-paid employment in Austria. Against this background, we discuss the growth of low-wages in Austria and analyse which social groups are especially affected by lowpaid work, using data from EU-SILC as well as ECHP for the years 1996–2010. While we find that those with better qualification tend to be better protected against low-pay risks, our results underline that employees in personal services and hospitality industry as well as non-standard workers are increasingly exposed to low-pay risks in the last 15 years.     

Bewältigungs- und Aneignungsmuster staatlich geförderter Beschäftigung bei ehemaligen Langzeitarbeitslosen

The article analyses the experiences made in publicly subsidized employment by long-term-unemployed in theoretical and empirical perspectives. The heterogeneity of the investigated population requires a differentiation between various types of personal employment histories as well as the examination of patterns of coping with subsidized employment from a differential perspective: Only a subgroup of the target-group share the notions of normality on which its construction is based. Furthermore, the wage subsidy can fulfill different functions with regard to the recipient’s personal employment history. Finally, problematic employment situations can result in the termination of a subsidized employment relationship. Since heterogeneous groups of persons can be affected by a permanent exclusion from the labour market, it seems problematic to tackle the problems connected with this situation by applying a single labour market measure.     

Paul Lazarsfelds typologische Methode und die Grounded Theory. Generierung und Qualität von Typologien

The following article deals with the connections between the typological method proposed by Paul Lazarsfeld and the Grounded Theory. The question how good typologies in qualitative social research can be constructed will be raised. It will be argued that formal criteria are necessary but not sufficient in judging whether a typology is good. The typology also needs to be relevant in its contents. The article will show that the Grounded Theory can help to solve this problem by creating attributes for typology construction analogous to the Grounded Theory's process that is used to generate theory. On the other hand, Lazarsfeld's concept of “attribute space” can be of assistance for the process of “theoretical sampling” proposed by the Grounded Theory by providing a systematic scheme for selecting the cases to be studied. The article will conclude with an empirical example illustrating the issues mentioned above.     

Grenzenlose Karrieren? — Hochqualifiziertes Personal und Top-Führungskräfte in Ökonomie und Medizin

The aim of the article is to prove the hypothesis of “bondless mobility” of the highly qualified. It says, that there evolved international distribution and trans-national structures of recruiting of the highly qualified personnel as part of the globalisation. We take our focus on managers and physicians, and based on our own and secondary analyses of other studies we find that this “strong” hypotheses of globalisation does not appear tenable. We prefer the term “Internationalisierung light” and locate the reasons for that in organisations’ career-mechanisms.     

Genetische Diskriminierung und soziale Ungleichheit. Hierarchiebildungen am Beispiel der Erkrankung Hereditäre Hämochromatose

This article discusses possible interconnections between the analysis of genetic discrimination and the analysis of social inequalities. Findings from a survey focussing on individuals affected by hemochromatosis are presented; the survey was carried out as part of Germany’s first systematic study of genetic discrimination. The experiences and apprehensions described are discussed with reference to Bourdieu’s forms of capital interlinking with structures of social inequality. In conclusion, the analysis shows that genetic discrimination and the workings of social/symbolic, economic and cultural capital are mutually constitutive for the corresponding hierarchy formation.     

Videoüberwachung von Demonstrationen und die Definitionsmacht der Polizei. Zwischen Objektivitätsfiktion und selektiver Sanktionierung

The paper examines the use of video surveillance in the context of protest policing, drawing on group discussions and expert interviews with the riot police as well as ethnographic fieldwork. The use of video surveillance is legitimised by the police through a promise of objectivity and stringent compliance to the law. The author analyses the use of video surveillance as a contingent process of actively constructing evidence. It consists of a series of decisions in three phases: starting with the determination of the potential to use surveillance to the police oriented application, and finally, the follow up phase, focusing on the developments of results and prosecution. The variety of courses of action to make use of surveillance right up to manipulation of results is considered to be an expression of sociological discretion, in which the police definitional power rests. Especially, the involved technology allows for existing contingencies apparent in every substep to become invisible through material objectifications and abstractions. In this process, the law proves to be only one motive for agency among others. The idea of the police being determined by law becomes visible as a necessary fiction.     

Two-Way Street. Moderne(n), Verwobenheit und Kolonialität

By reducing the multiplicity of paths to modernity to the cultural level and attributing Western Europe a key role in generating it, “multiple modernities” authors reinforced the modernizationist notion of an autonomous Western modernity that they themselves criticized. In turn, the post- and decolonial approaches of entangled modernities and modernity/coloniality make colonial ties an important factor in the explanation of global processes. The article first examines these approaches’ relationship to the model of multiple modernities in order to assess conceptual and theoretical similarities and differences between them. Second, the two approaches are considered against the background of their respective empirical reference—India for entangled modernities and Latin America for modernity/coloniality—and possibilities of a theoretical synthesis between them as a potential for South-South dialogue are explored.     

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.     

Mobile Ungleichheiten. Eine sozial- und infrastrukturelle Differenzierung des Mobilitätstheorems

The core claim of the Mobilities Paradigm which understands the social as constituted through movement also implies, that mobility emerges from socially and spatially structured situations and therefore, mobility cannot be derived from individual properties alone. With the aim of translating the stratifying dimension adequately into methods, the contribution presents an international comparative correspondence analysis searching for specific patterns of residential migration and commuting distances of couple households.     

Der Beitrag der Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung zur Modernisierung der Universität

The paper reflects on the contribution of women’s and gender studies to modernizing the university. By giving an overview of the socio-political and institutional conditions of the contemporary reform processes in higher education and the university system in Europe, the author shows that universities nowadays are influenced by tensions between economization and democratization: In this tension they are forced to change their organization and their scientific “products”, namely research and teaching. Based on these explications, the author analyses the potentials of women’s and gender studies to modernize science and the humanities, teaching, learning and the organization of the university.     

Macht Kultur glücklich? Überlegungen und Befunde zum Verhältnis von kultureller Partizipation und Lebenszufriedenheit

The article focuses on the relationship between life satisfaction and participation in “high culture” activities (attendance of opera, theater, classical concerts, and museums). The empirical basis is made up by four mail surveys of the adult population in three German cities. It is shown that life satisfaction is correlated with cultural participation and this also holds when the social background of the respondent—sex, age and education—is taken into consideration. However, when anomie and social contacts are brought into the analysis, the relationship diminishes. Life satisfaction is not result of the aesthetic experience that is tied up with cultural participation, but at best a result of the social involvement linked to the respective life style.     

Soziologie und Geschlechterforschung in entsicherten Verhältnissen — Plädoyer für eine praxeologische Öffnung

Starting point of the article are the upheavals in post-Fordist societies. The author argues that the sometimes paradoxical social dynamics of these radical changes produce situations of social uncertainty. This is a great challenge for the analytic abilities of sociology and gender studies which are both strongly influenced by the thought patterns of ?organized modernity“. On the (empirical) example of a praxeological sociology of gender, the author tries to show what gender studies and sociology can contribute mutually to an opening of their own terms and categories.