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The article explores the origins of trade unions in the nineteenth-century industrializing German economy. In German territories—in contrast to the United Kingdom and the United States—the labour movement emerged as a political movement, from which trade unions developed relatively late, under the auspices of Social Democratic Party initiatives, remaining under threat throughout the 1870s. We therefore have particular reason to examine the sociological foundations that account for the development of German trade unions in general, which is done here with a broad comparative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a re-contextualization of the Positivism Dispute between the Frankfurt School and advocates of empirical sociology in the German sociological profession between 1954 and 1970. Investigating the reasons why the German Sociological Association convened in Tübingen in October 1961, it assigns a more peripheral role to Karl Popper and this now famous seminar. Focusing instead on the debate among German sociologists from the mid-1950s which prompted the convention of the seminar and the invitation for Popper to speak, the article maintains that philosophy of history was the central concern of the Positivism Dispute. In this debate, members of the Frankfurt School emphasized contingency in history and society, while sociologists such as René König, Helmut Schelsky, Ralf Dahrendorf, and Arnold Gehlen advocated sociology as the empirical study of ‘given’ social facts. By doing so the article questions the narrative of the Positivism Dispute advanced by Karl Popper and some of his followers, as well as interpretations which have focused on debates during the aftermath of the Tübingen seminar in the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do sociologists know what they know? Although sociology around the world is deeply shaped by processes of internationalization, strong regional, linguistic, and cultural differences persist. This concerns general production of knowledge, applied theories, methods as well as questions posed. In the present contribution, we discuss the development of and differences inherent to epistemic cultures in qualitative and interpretive research in French and German Sociology since the 1960s. In doing so, we refer to a document and interview based research project we directed in 2012-2014. Epistemic cultures are conceived of as the forms, ways, and practices of producing and legitimizing scientific (sociological) "output" involved in sociological knowledge-making. The production of knowledge is the core "action problem" that sociological inquiry is confronted with. This problem is addressed in rather different ways. French qualitative sociology trusts in researchers' skills, competencies, and inspirations in order to establish new knowledge. German qualitative and interpretive sociology prefers establishing "legitimacy through procedure" (procedural legitimation). We illustrate the unfolding of this difference between French and German based qualitative sociology in the early 1960s and discuss how it shapes their further development. In doing so, we intend to contribute to a current reflexive movement in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a theory of interdisciplinarity and examines relations between historians and sociologists in Germany and France over the course of the twentieth century, focusing in on several key moments of interdisciplinary activity. Interdisciplinary engagements are motivated by scholarly problems, field-specific interests and battles, and pressures and inducements coming from states, businesses, and scientific institutions. Analysis of the most productive moments of cross-disciplinary interaction suggests that they occur when disciplines are equal in power and when scholars are motivated by scholarly problems and disciplinary conflicts to move beyond their disciplines. More generative forms of interdisciplinarity are dialogic and processual, characterized by a fusion of perspectives; less productive forms are externally induced, involve asymmetrical partners, and are organized around division of disciplinary labor rather than an interpenetration of perspectives. The most productive interdisciplinary conjunctures result from serendipitous resonances and contingent synchronicities between subfields of semi-autonomous disciplines. It is thus impossible to produce the most fruitful forms of interdisciplinarity deliberately. The article examines three cases of symmetrical, processual interdisciplinarity involving sociology and history. Two of these cases were located in the French academic field, first between the wars, and then again after 1980. The other case of dialogic collaboration between historians and sociologists begins in Nazi Germany and continues after 1945 into the 1960s, leading to the formation of West German Historische Sozialwissenschaft. Examples of unbalanced interdisciplinarity include German “History-Sociology” during the Weimar Republic, in which sociologists’ opening to history was not reciprocated by professional historians and Historische Sozialwissenschaft after 1970. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a report on a conference about German sociologist Helmut Schelsky, held in Chemnitz, Germany, from October 25-26, 2012. Topics of discussion included Schelsky's place within the broader history of German sociology in the twentieth century, his reception of the works of sociologist Max Weber, and Schelsky's writings on such subjects as English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, institutionalism, and the sociology of sexuality.

The development of post-war German social sciences is marked by a series of disputes about the nature and implications of positivist methodology. Two of these are selected for consideration here; the ‘positivist dispute’ in German sociology associated with Adorno and Popper, and the more diffuse assault on positivism in the legal sciences. In both cases, self-avowed positivists were in fact hard to find but the debates were important polemical disputes about the past—notably the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich—and the future of the young Federal Republic. It is suggested below that these disputes should be seen in this context and that the polemical claim in both disputes that certain methodological standpoints mandated specific moral and political commitments is more questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a report on a conference about German sociologist Dieter Claessens, held in Dresden, Germany, from February 3-5, 2011. Topics discussed included Claessens' attempt to link sociology and philosophical anthropology, his ideas about social evolution, and the influence on him of German sociologist Arnold Gehlen.

Copyright of Soziologie is the property of Campus Verlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Modern sociology emerged in part out of the milieu of ‘state socialists’ in imperial Germany. An exploration of the milieu and its discourses provides insights as to the sense of the founding work of German sociology, Ferdinand Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, the political context in which historicist economics were transformed into sociology, explicit and implicit influences behind sociology in the writings of von Stein, Rodbertus, Wagner and Schmoller, the response of the ‘socialists of the lectern’ to Tönnies’ sociology, and differing responses to the debate between the historicist human sciences and rational theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Historical Social Research - Supplement is the property of GESIS - Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Soziologie is the property of Campus Verlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Soziologie is the property of Campus Verlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paternal relationship of Theodor Storm to Ferdinand Tönnies gave rise to a remarkable symbiosis of literature and social theory. While Tönnies' social philosophy was enriched by Storm's Geisteswelt of romanticism, realism, and such currents as the cultural pessimism of Schopenhauer, whose acquaintance Tönnies made through Storm, Storm's last works drew on Tönnies' earliest reflections on intellectual history. From under the shadow of the naturalist norms of Social Darwinism, their elective affinity falsified naturalist premises in Tönnies' sociology when Tönnies' theory of Gemeinschaft is contemplated against the backdrop of the communion he chose with Storm as a substitute father. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Alfred Schutz Memorial Lecture discusses the relationship between the phenomenological life-world analysis and the methodology of the social sciences, which was the central motive of Schutz's work. I have set two major goals in this lecture. The first is to scrutinize the postulate of adequacy, as this postulate is the most crucial of Schutz's methodological postulates. Max Weber devised the postulate 'adequacy of meaning' in analogy to the postulate of 'causal adequacy' (a concept used in jurisprudence) and regarded both as complementary and, in the context of sociological analysis, critical. Schutz extracted the two postulates from the Neokantian epistemology, dismissed the concept of causality, and reduced Weber's two postulates of adequacy into one, namely, the adequacy of meaning. I discuss the benefits and shortcomings of this reduction. A major problem, in my view, is that Schutz's reformulation lost the empirical concern that was inherent in Weber's 'causal adequacy'. As a result, the models of economics (which shaped Schutz's conception of social science) are considered to be adequate if they are 'understandable' to an everyday actor, even when they are based on the most unrealistic assumptions. To recapture Weber's empirical orientation I recommend a more restrictive interpretation of the postulate of adequacy that links it to qualitative research and unfolds the critical potential of Schutz's phenomenological life-world analysis. My second goal is to report on some current developments in German sociology in which a number of approaches explicitly refer to Schutz's analysis of the life-world and attempt to pursue 'adequate' empirical research. This lecture focuses on three approaches: ethnophenomenology, life-world analytic ethnography, and social scientific hermeneutics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Sociology / Sosyoloji Dergisi is the property of Istanbul Universitesi Edebiyat Fakultesi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Bodemann addresses the problem of how classical German sociology in the early twentieth century dealt with the question of the Other, as well as with the questions of ethno-national solidarities and race. In contemporary debates the Jews constituted a central trope. Bodemann focuses in particular on Werner Sombart, one of the three central figures in sociology at the time, but he also looks at the early meetings of the German Sociological Society and writings by Georg Simmel, Max Weber and Ferdinand Tonnies. Despite the fact that, even in 1910, Germany was a multi-ethnic state replete with discussions of race and the role of the Jews in society—and in sharp contrast to early American sociology—German sociology (with the principal and important exception of Sombart, and some minor reflections by Weber, Simmel and Tonnies) took little interest in the social positioning of Jews and the disputes on antisemitism, and even the classics were concerned with these issues mostly in relation to contemporary race theories. This lack of interest, Bodemann argues, left sociology theoretically unprepared for the nationalist frenzy that was about to be unleashed with the outbreak of the First World War, or for the intensifying antisemitism and the rise of fascism that followed it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the methodological and philosophical developments in the field of sociology that resulted from the discipline's study of suicide or self-destruction. The article describes the rise of Rationalism, empiricism, and positivism in relation to the sociological study of the rise of suicide in the modern world, exploring how the irrationality of suicide affected sociologists who believed in the progressive and positivist power of the social sciences. Subjects under discussion include the sociologist Emile Durkheim, the physician Henry Morselli and his book "Suicide: An Essay on Comparative Moral Statistics," and the concept of anomie.

The article discusses the influence of 19th century German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies on Western European positivism. The articles describes how Tönnies reinterpreted the sociological tradition of philosophers such as August Comte, Herbert Spencer, and John Stuart Mill, consequentially producing an original creative synthesis in the field of positivism and sociology. Subjects under discussion include the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, the economic aspects of Tönnies' philosophy, and the disciplines of rationalism and historicism.

Copyright of Leviathan: Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft (Springer Science & Business Media B.V.) is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the membership and ideology of the so-called Leipzig School of sociology during the years of National Socialist Party (Nazi) rule in Germany from 1933-1945. The author claims that the principals were involved less with a scientific school of sociology than with pseudo-scientific apologetics for the Nazi regime and its worldview. The role of these professors during World War II and their subsequent postwar de-Nazification is examined. National Socialist political leanings and roles played by the sociologists Hans Freyer, Arnold Gehlen, and Helmut Schelsky are reviewed.

Copyright of Soziologie is the property of Campus Verlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents a speech given by German sociologist Hans-Georg Soeffner at the 34th conference of the German sociologists' association on October 6, 2008 in Jena, Germany, in which he discusses the history of German sociology, the relations between sociological and economic reasoning, and the impact of religious doubt on culture.

The article presents information about the 34th congress of the German sociological society Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, held on October 6-10 in Jena, Germany. Subjects under discussion at the conference included the social and sociological aspects of uncertainty in 21st century culture, the history of sociological studies in Germany, and social aspects of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. Participants included German sociologists Dirk Kaesler, Ulrich Beck, and Claus Offe.

The article discusses scientific autonomy, neo-Bourdieusian social theory, and the connections between imperial politics and sociology with a focus on German sociologists from the 1890s to the 1940s. The issue of historical socioanalysis, the concepts of Pierre Bourdieu concerning habitus and symbolic capital, and the interpretation of social process in relation to scientific autonomy and heteronomy are discussed. The work of two German sociologists, Max Weber and Richard Thurnwald, who focused on empire and scientific independence are also discussed.

Copyright of Historical Social Research - Supplement is the property of GESIS - Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the publication of the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA - Complete Edition of Marx and Engels' Works) and the "Max-Weber-Gesamtausgabe" (MWG - Complete Works of Max Weber). Both editions by German authors are said to monumentalize two German thinkers whose reputations have undergone reversals since the fall of the Berlin Wall. A history of the respective publication projects is provided.

In this paper, we discuss the relations between reification and modernity en the sociological theories of Georg Simmel and Alfred Schütz. German history and Lukács' work, History and class conscience, are important references in this discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's reflection on the challenges to a unified sociological theory presented by the singularity of sociological developments in each particular country and context. The author discusses the contextual aspects of sociological developments and describes some of the particularities of sociological theorizing in the United States compared to that in Germany. He comments on how such particularities create intercultural obstacles to the creation of a unified international body of sociological theory.

The article presents information from a 2006 report by the German sociological study group for sociology and ecology. The study group's founding in 1996 at a sociology congress in Dresden, Germany is described. An overview is given of the historical relationship between German sociology and the environment, and the first German sociological environmental movement is dated to the 1980s. Publications by sociologists Ulrich Beck and Niklas Luhmann are also described as influential to the movement.

In this article six crucial historical phases of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS) are sketched out: (1) 1909-19, the end of the German Kaiserreich, the foundation phase of the DGS; (2) 1919-33, the Weimar Republic, the phase of academic institutionalization of German sociology; (3) 1933-45, during which National Socialism dominated the German academic system; (4) 1946-68, the postwar period during which different academic systems were established in the two German states; (5) 1968-89, when sociology in West Germany had its greatest quantitative expansion, while in East Germany Soziologie was slowly re-emerging; (6) the period since reunification, with the expansion of a West German conception of sociology to East German universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a history of German sociology. The 1961 Tagung der deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie (Conference of the German Society of Sociology) in Tübingen, Germany became the venue for the popular sociological and philosophical debate known as the Positivist Dispute between Critical Rationalists and the Frankfurt school.

The article reports on Gustav Freytag analysis on the assimilation of the German middle class. In a small valuable study of 1923, Werner Wittich analyzed the social content of Goethe's novel "Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship." The significance of Wittich's article rests not only on its contribution to certain aspects of German eighteenth-century social history, but on the use of fiction by the author as a source for social history. Within seventy-five years this outlook which denigrates the middle classes and a middle-class way of life undergoes a radical transformation. Gustav Freytag in "Debit and Credit," one of the most widely read nineteenth- century novels, viewed the middle class as the most valuable social group of the nation and middle-class, routinized work as the only proper form of human activity. The importance of Debit and Credit as a path-breaking statement of the new dominance of the middle class and of the transvaluation of aristocratic to bourgeois values was almost immediately recognized by contemporaries. Freytag's work was correctly interpreted as a portrayal of the German middle class in heroic proportions.

Abstracts of the articles "Die Zukunft der Soziologie", by Hans-Gerog Soeffner, and "Fundamentale Erkentnisse der Soziologie?", by Norman Braun and Christian Ganser are presented.

The article discusses the 35th conference of the Gesellschaft für Soziologie (German Society for Sociology), titled "Transnationale Vergesellschaftungen" ("Transnational Socialization"), that was held in Frankfurt am Main, Germany from October 11-15, 2010. Topics discussed included global economy, global technology, and global knowledge, the history of scientific research in Frankfurt am Main, and the diversity of the fields of study within sociology.

The article introduces the issue by describing its reports on the history of sociology in Germany, the self-evaluation of sociology, and sociological conference reports.