Profile

In research and teaching, the Chair addresses the methodological challenges of mediatisation and globalisation processes for qualitative social research. In addition, it is dedicated to empirical, theoretical and methodological questions of comparative cultural analysis. In doing so, we assume that the concept of culture represents two values, which in the analysis of cultural phenomena create a productive tension. In the sense of sociology of knowledge, culture describes a repertoire of socially divided practical and cognitive knowledge that offers orientation and confidence in interactions and thus stabilises social order.

Secondly, culture refers to a social form of the observation of differences, that leads to historical or regional comparisons between different but equally possible ways of doing, thinking or believing. Recognising something as one's own culture therefore presupposes knowledge of the existence of other cultures. We understand encounters with other cultures and the resulting comparison of the 'own' with the 'other' as unavoidable elements of socialisation - they are a driving force of global social development and social differentiation.

Empirically, the Chair therefore focuses not only on the comparison between different cultural ways of acting. It also asks how a social practice becomes culture in comparison with others, and how global social developments and differentiations are shaped by demarcation and/or rapprochement to a practice different to its own.

You can find more information on the research page.