Abstract
AbstractWhile far-reaching intellectual influences changed the face of sociology in the 1980s, the development of sociology in the 1990s was first and foremost shaped by a concrete social and political transformation, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Soon after the German reunification, East German sociology almost entirely disappeared and West German sociology extended to the East. The triumph of capitalist society fostered a brief comeback of modernization theory. As the system change came along with severe social problems, theories and research projects focusing on social exclusion, precarious work, and xenophobia moved to the center stage of sociological thinking. The first decade of this century again brought about major changes for society and sociology. Market logic increasingly dominated social and education policy; economic thinking and its involvement in political affairs was on the rise and may have contributed to a marginalization of the influence of sociology on policy making. Characteristic is a further specialization and differentiation, visible through the multiplication of special sociologies. The landscape of sociological theory in Germany continued to change: Earlier, grand theories were dominant, whereas nowadays a trend toward sociological diagnoses of contemporary society can be observed. Overall, contemporary sociology in Germany can be characterized by the following features: (1) historically and philosophically informed sociological theory has always been and still is important, (2) German sociology lacks self-confidence compared to US-American sociology, (3) German sociology has a critical attitude and a strong tradition of public sociology, (4) self-critical debates and internal controversies have always existed and still persist in the field of German sociology. Most recently, this could be observed in the splitting off of the Academy of Sociology from the German Sociological Association and the accompanying debates.
Highlights
Thousands headed for the border crossings and to West Berlin
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the social problems of the Federal Republic, which became increasingly apparent in the 1980s, faded into the background for a short time
For a few months there was a mood of “collective effervescence” (Durkheim). This situation of transformation in part corresponded to a “liminal phase”, which, according to Victor Turner (1969), is characterized by a great sense of community (“communitas”)
Summary
Nobody thought that the GDR would collapse. In a project that I am conducting together with my colleagues Karl-Siegbert Rehberg (*1943) and Joachim Fischer (*1951) from Dresden, we interview older sociologists from German-speaking countries. Neuen Bundesländern (KSPW, Commission for the Study of Social and Political Change in the New Federal States) This commission was to reorganize the East German research system. The spectrum ranged from modernization theory (represented for example by Wolfgang Zapf (1937–2018)),[3] systems theory (Detlef Pollack (*1955)), sociology of institutions (Wolfgang Schluchter), sociology of law (Bernhard Schäfers (*1939)), sociology of gender (Hildegard Nickel), sociology of social movements (Dieter Rucht (*1946)) to rational choice (Karl-Dieter Opp). Such as Detlef Pollack (1990), a sociologist of religion originally from East Germany, the collapse of the GDR was the result of a contradiction. In contrast to previous theories, these diagnoses were characterized by the fact that they often made a very radical distinction between a before and after of the state of society and only emphasized individual aspects of society (cf. Osrecki 2011)
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