Research

What do gender orders in the social world look like and how do they change? How are powerful distinctions created between 'We' and 'Others' in social institutions and organizations? How do identities and affiliations develop in the context of globalized societies and what role do migration processes play? What influence do biotechnologies have on gender relations and social diversity and how do handed down ideas of physicality and gender dualism change as a result? Our division deals with theories, concepts and empirical research which relate these questions to each other.

At the same time, a differentiation must be made between several specialized research fields, such as gender research, studies on the social production of difference(s) (i.e. 'diversity') and migration research, sociology of the body, technoscience and gender. The division brings these fields together and reconstructs the joint mechanisms of social differentiation. Intersectionality research, queer studies, theories of  transnationalization, social epistemology, science and technology research as well as the resulting modern methodological approaches, such as 'queer methodologies', for example, form the central frame of reference for this task. The objective of this work is to understand marginalized, migrant and/or queer lifeworlds, uncover discursive hegemonies, symbolic violence and forms of definitional power and their effects as well as to examine specific performativities on the basis of empirical studies. The division's empirical research predominantly follows the premises of qualitative social research.

Courses

Courses in the BA in Sociology comprise introductions to gender research, queer studies, migration research, theories of racism and transnationalization research as well as the history and theory of the women's movement, sociology of the body and feminist science and technology research. Courses in the MA in Sociology offer in-depth study in gender and intersectionality research, theories of migration, queer studies, cultural studies, ethnicity and racism research as well as recent developments in feminist technoscience studies and social movement research. Alongside the theory-based courses, extensive insight is provided into the methodologies and methods of intersectionality research and transnationally-oriented migration research. Courses are also offered within the teaching degree programmes which address the topic of difference and diversity in the institution “school". Courses are held in German and English.

The department is dedicated to research and teaching in the field of empirical social research methods. Thanks to its size, all major paradigmatic trends in empirical sociology are represented at the Institute of Sociology. The department therefore consciously sees itself as a place of pluralistic empirical social research committed to high professional standards, with a range of methods extending from reconstructive and hermeneutic-qualitative to deductive-nomological and statistical-quantitative approaches.

Within the department, a wide range of empirical research projects are carried out using various techniques such as open and standardized surveys, content analysis, participatory observation, experiments, and process-generated data. The lecture series organized by department members, InFER Colloquium , offers interested parties regular insights into our current work.

In terms of teaching, the department centrally oversees the undergraduate courses in qualitative and quantitative methods in the bachelor's program in sociology, as well as the research-oriented methods courses in the master's programs in sociology and economic and financial sociology.

In line with its profile, the department offers a wide range of basic and research-oriented courses designed to enable students to familiarize themselves with different empirical approaches, survey techniques, and analytical methods. The department also promotes an interdisciplinary approach to training in empirical social research methods and therefore contributes to the political science programs offered by the department. The department also works closely with the Center for Social Science Methods at Goethe University.

How does society become a subject? How are sociocultural orders practically produced, stabilized, and changed? How do collective horizons of meaning become self-evident? How can we explain the paradox that actors and groups first produce what later appears to them to be without alternative?

The common concern of the members of this research focus is the analysis of the microfoundations and psychosocial effects of socialization. This brings social situations, interaction orders, and institutional practices, as well as processes of subjectivation, identity formation, and socialization, into focus. We do not reduce social reproduction to intentional, purposeful, or calculated action. Rather, we take into account a whole range of forms of knowledge and involvement, including the unconscious, implicit, physical knowledge, and reflexive know-how. Microsociology and social psychology combine conceptual, theoretical, and methodological foundations that include interpretive, praxeological, and structural approaches as well as postcolonial, cultural, and ideology-critical analyses.

The department aims to relate the diverse dimensions of observable and experiential sociality to the horizons of social conditions and upheavals in both research and teaching. The discursive context of microsociology and social psychology is thus capable of challenging the grand narratives of social and cultural theories, as well as their diagnoses of the present. It is no coincidence that the important social-theoretical innovations of recent decades—keywords here are the “linguistic turn,” the “interpretative turn,” and the “praxeological turn”—have emerged primarily from microsociology and microanalysis.

Sociologically, we examine the relationships between actors and their social positions in society. Belonging to certain social groups is often associated with different resources and life chances, i.e., with social inequality. We investigate how social institutions such as the economic system, the labor market, social policy, and the education system create social inequalities and what consequences these inequalities have for the life situations, attitudes, and behavior of actors, households, and social groups.

Some of the questions we address are:

Why do children of workers and children with a migrant background study less often than children of academics and children of parents born in Germany? To what extent are social advancement or decline and membership of classes and strata dependent on the political and social conditions of a country? How do social positions change as a result of migration and transnationalization processes? In what ways and with what consequences do social groups distinguish themselves from one another? How do hierarchies between individual groups arise, and how are these hierarchies perceived and interpreted? How is social inequality justified, and what role does the principle of meritocracy play in particular? How are gender inequalities in the labor market related to family and education policy?

The Department of Theory and History of Sociology deals with sociological-theoretical research in its entirety: with historical approaches and paradigmatic foundations, scientific and epistemological issues, and current developments in sociological theory. Due to the scientific heritage of Frankfurt sociology, research focuses on the tradition of critical theory and social psychology. Other areas of focus include the historical development and controversies of sociology, sociological diagnostics, and (feminist) scientific and epistemological theory.

In teaching, the department fulfills central functions for the BA program by coordinating and further developing the propaedeutic course in sociology and the introductory lecture in sociological theory. In addition, the members of the department regularly offer courses in both the BA and MA programs in the field of sociological theory and its history, as well as on methodological questions concerning the relationship between empirical research and theory formation.

In addition, the department organizes the “AK Kritische Soziologie” (Critical Sociology Working Group), an inter-institutional forum for fundamental debates in the field of social theory and the philosophy of science and epistemology.

The Department of Economics, Labor, and Organization addresses fundamental and current social science issues in the context of a globalized economy. The department's research and teaching are accordingly located in the complementary fields of economic, labor, and organizational sociology. This includes social theory concepts relating to the social and institutional foundations of economic processes, the economic sociological examination of institutional and social dynamics of market processes – especially financial and labor markets, but also processes of sustainable economic activity – as well as their cultural, moral, and political conditions, the investigation of technical and social innovation processes, entrepreneurship, and consumption. Questions of work sociology relate to the changing nature of work, changing production conditions, gender-specific division of labor, diversity and precariousness, connections between work and private life, work and career from an international comparative life course perspective, social inequality, as well as professionalization and career. In addition, there are organizational and network sociological questions about the management and change of private and public companies as well as the dynamics of social networks.

From a theoretical perspective, a pluralistic approach is pursued that reflects a range of economic, labor, and organizational sociological approaches. This includes structuralist market and network theories, practice-theoretical concepts for explaining economic action, institutionalist approaches to comparative capitalism and innovation systems research, social constructivist market and technology analyses, as well as sociological theories of subjectification, recognition, and criticism. The correspondingly broad methodological spectrum ranges from quantitative empirical social research and network analysis to qualitative methods of reconstructive social research.