No Prestige, No Money, No Contribution? The German Social Sciences’ Didactics and the Omissions of Sociology: What it is All About

Abstract

1. Interdisciplinarity, the "Problem of Integration" and the Educational Values of Sociology The main task of sociology is the scientific observation of all phenomena due to social action. So basic questions of my sociological angle of view concerning the issue "Interdisciplinarity" in Social Sciences' Didactics will be: In which ways was and is sociology integrated in the discourse of Social Sciences' Didactics? Does the phenomenon called the "problem of integration" in the German discourse of didactics really exist? What is the function of the so- called "problem of integration" in the discourse of the scientific community? Is it really a methodological and epistemological problem? At the present time the analysis of social reality seems to be a division of labour between the disciplines Political Science, Economics and Sociology: Political Science is responsible for analysis and explanation of "politics", Economics for "economy" and Sociology for "society" (cf. Hedtke 2006a). Those topics for which Sociology is seen as re sponsible seem quite similar to the term "society" used in a rubric headline by the German news magazine Der Spiegel: "the colourful and the odd". In the didactics of the discipline this "division of labour" in analyzing the social world is treated as a "problem of integr ation" and only interdisciplinarity can solve this problem. While Political Science and Economics are dominating the discourse as "political education" and "economic education", sociology seems to be marginalized (Meuser 1997) or is suffering under a "value dilemma" (Claussen 1997). I would say - after a long time of research - that civic education/didactics of social science is still interdisciplinary and can't exist in other ways than in interdiscipli nary one's because of the objectives of civic education. The first problem is that sociology is invisibly integrated: most of the concepts use sociological topics, sociological studies and sociological theoretical approaches as Bernhard Claussen outlined (Claussen 1997). There is no way to ignore Sociology completely. It's quite the contrary: social sciences like Political Science, Education Science and even Economic education are more and more "sociologized". The main topics in the discourse of civic education and in Education science are genuine sociological topics: the research of poverty, labour division, globalization, ethnic conflicts, emancipation, diversity, tolerance, prejudice, deviant behaviour, violence, citizenship, social movement, live style, gender, family and so on. The problem for the discipline Sociology is that all these topics are researched as well by the other disciplines without referring directly to sociology as science - the "value dilemma" (Claussen) - and by transforming the sociological angle of vision in the frame of reference of their disciplines. The difference between the disciplines regarded is not the object of research - the "social action" - , but the way to reduce the indefinite complexity of social action due to interests of research, frames of references and paradigms of disciplines. Economic and political scientists in the field of social sciences' didactics often reduce the widespread sociological research and theory fancy-free. One well-known example is the topic "unemployment". The "sociological view" is r educed under aspects like "social marginalisation due to unemployment" instead of discussing the class society and questions of social justice. So the students know sociology as a science discussing the feelings of depressed unemployed, their deprivation and questions of prestige instead of thinking and searching about social inequality and social justice. The second problem is that sociologists don't take an active part in the German Social Science Didactics discourse since more than twenty years (cp. below). That's why the first problem exists. So German political scientists cry for "More civic education in Classroom", economists cry for "More Economics in Classroom" and sociologists themselves keep silent: "Sociology did not develop a didactics of its discipline. Even though Sociology is - next to the