2021-2025
Maschinelle Humandifferenzierung. Technisches Wissen und die Ethnosoziologie der Robotik / Machine human differentiation. Technical knowledge and the ethnosociology of robotics (SFB 1482: Human Differentiation; applicant of the subproject: Herbert Kalthoff)
The subproject of the SFB investigates the role of human-theoretical assumptions about ‘the human’, the informational and machinic implementation of these assumptions in the form of machine beings as well as the social encounter with these humanized machine beings as a techno-human interaction.
2021-2025
Universitäre Urteile. Die Bewertung studentischer Leistungen in den Ingenieurs- und Geschichtswissenschaften. / University judgements. The evaluation of student performance in engineering and history. (DFG research funding; applicant: Herbert Kalthoff)
The project uses the example of two university disciplines to examine the process of teaching, examining and evaluating and thus the categorization of students. Analytically, it examines the specific social, material and symbolic dimensions of university teaching and examining and understands the university process as an unschooling evaluation.
2017-2019
Von der Testphase zum Feldversuch. Die Verwendung didaktischer Objekte im schulischen Unterricht / From the test phase to the field test. The use of didactic objects in school lessons (DFG project funding; applicants: Herbert Kalthoff, Jutta Wiesemann)
The project investigated how didactic objects produced by the education industry are used in selected schools and how the experiences with these objects flow back to the manufacturers. It thus investigated the biography of these objects, their relevance for the acquisition of knowledge in schools and the recursiveness of the logic of production and use.
2016-2019
Entschulte Evaluation. Universitäten und Freie Schulen zwischen Differenzierungsanforderung und institutionalisierten Kontrasten / Unschooling evaluation. Universities and independent schools between differentiation requirements and institutionalized contrasts (DFG project funding; applicant: Herbert Kalthoff)
The research project focused on two institutions that question the concept of achievement in schools and differentiate between people on the basis of different principles and premises. It examined how people are treated and marked in independent schools and universities and how these are negotiated and appropriated between the actors.
2014-2016
Didaktische Objekte – ihre gewerbliche Entwicklung und Erprobung / Didactic objects – their commercial development and testing (DFG project funding; applicants: Herbert Kalthoff; Jutta Wiesemann)
The research project analyzed the development and testing of didactic objects in the commercial field of the teaching and learning materials industry. Exemplary development and testing processes of analog didactic and digital didactic objects were empirically observed.
2013-2015
Die Objektivierung von Urteilen in der institutionellen Kategorisierung von Schülern (DFG project funding; applicant: Herbert Kalthoff)
Using the example of school assessment practice, the research project examined the marking of individuals – good/bad, gifted/non-gifted students – as an institutional reinforcement of difference. It conceptualized this process as a social drama in which ‘performance’ and its evaluation are performed and presented, appropriated and undermined, calculated and justified.
2006-2009
Ökonomisches Rechnen. Die Erzeugung kalkulativer Wirklichkeiten in der Finanzwirtschaft / Economic calculation. The creation of calculative realities in finance (DFG project funding; applicants: Herbert Kalthoff; Karin Knorr Cetina)
Using the example of financial science, the project investigated the constitution of economic reality through the translation of empirical facts into financial mathematical formulas and their use in the context of calculative practices in operational business. Empirically, the research project examined the development of financial mathematical formulas and their implementation on international financial markets.
2006
Qualitative research and sociological theory building (DFG roundtable 2006; applicant: Herbert Kalthoff)
2002-2003
Bankwirtschaftliches Wissen und postsozialistische Ordnung / Banking knowledge and the post-socialist order (DFG research scholarship; applicant: Herbert Kalthoff)
Based on ethnographically generated material, the habilitation project examined the knowledge processes associated with the introduction and use of Western banking products in Central and Eastern Europe. Specifically, it involved, among other things, the analysis of practices of economic representation and calculation and thus the reconstitution of economic entities.
1999-2001
On the basis of ethnographically generated material, the habilitation project examined the knowledge processes associated with the introduction and use of Western banking products in Central and Eastern Europe. Specifically, the project analyzed practices of economic representation and calculation and thus the reconstitution of economic entities.
The project examined the restructuring of banks in Central and Eastern Europe, in particular the coexistence of old and new products, procedures and Technics Departments. Using the example of concrete decision-making situations, the social and technological frameworks with which the banking industry creates a second-order visibility that allows it to make decisions under uncertainty were researched.
Summary of the dissertation project (completed)
Sacrotopes – The material dimension of religious practices
With the concept of the “sacrotop”, the dissertation project, completed in 2015, substitutes a view of religion as a materially constituted event. Following on from research on the material culture of religion and sociological theories of practice, the project examines the material dimension and constitution of religious practices. Using the example of Catholic religious practices, which are characterized by a diverse material culture – images of saints, ‘miraculous’ medals, figures of the Virgin Mary, healing water, prayer chains, crucifixes and much more – the project works out how such things are involved in the performance of religious practices, how they enable, contribute to and support these practices, what they achieve within the framework of these practices and how they are involved in their stabilization and transmission. How, for example, does a prayer chain facilitate the evocation of certain ideas and emotions? How do the elements of a church interior help a praying woman to focus and attune herself to her prayer? What role does the touch of a stone play in the transmission of religious memory and the constitution of a religious community? How does light contribute to the performance of a Marian procession, how does it assign meaning, how is it integrated into the structuring of religious experience? These and other questions are addressed in the study. The focus is on pilgrims’ religious practices, as can be observed at the Marian pilgrimage site of Lourdes and in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, as well as more everyday religious practices such as prayer and recitation of the rosary. The empirical material comes from participant observation, audio-visual recordings and interviews.
Religious practices are the exemplary case that will be used to gain fundamental insights into the material dimension of social practices in general. To this end, the study takes Theodore Schatzki’s theory of social practices, which it seeks to utilize as a tool for a detailed empirical analysis of social practices and their material dimension, as the starting and reference point for ethnographic research into practices. The study aims to contribute to the discussion of practice theory in three ways: Firstly, it is concerned with a systematic exploration and conceptual clause of the relationship between social practices and material entities. In doing so, she takes as her basis an expanded concept of materiality that encompasses not only artifacts but also substances, natural things and environments as well as more ephemeral phenomena such as light or darkness. Secondly, she takes up the insight that practices are not only realized through movements of the body, but also take place on the level of the thoughts, feelings and sensations of their participants. She therefore proposes an expansion of practice-theoretical research perspectives to include mental activities and states of life, which she understands as components of such practices and which she perspectives in their relation to the use of material entities. Thirdly, she discusses how Schatzki’s social-theoretical approach can be made fruitful for ethnographic research and how it can be methodically implemented.
Summary of the dissertation project (completed)
The Body of Knowledge: Fieldwork, Concepts and Theory in the Social Sciences
In the tradition of laboratory studies in the sociology of science, the project examines the cultural conditions of the production of scientific knowledge. Taking sociology as an example, it assumes that the research repertoire consists of a series of knowledge practices, each of which serves in a specific way to make articulations possible. Along these knowledge practices – such as spokesperson, writing, thinking – the doctoral dissertation examines how and through which academic and research-based methods the idea of the social world is practically transformed into a sociological representation of the world. Academic and practical are not to be understood as a pair of opposites, similar to a contrasting foil of theory and practice; rather, the academic production of knowledge is to be examined as an everyday practice.
The study does not focus on finished research products, but rather explores the situations in which sociological knowledge is produced and is in motion – for example, in the production and interpretation of empirical data or in the writing of a sociological essay. In these everyday situations, sociological knowledge articulates and reveals itself in a provisional and searching, tentative and creative way (for example in the context of data sessions, in which empirical material is interpreted, or in writing situations, in which suitable formulations are played through). Formulating and gesticulating, wrangling and struggling for sociological modes of expression provide instructions on observable methods and intensities of an articulation practice that uses oral and written, physical and cognitive repertoires in its production.
The doctoral dissertation aims to show empirically how
– situated conversational discourses express themselves and become recognizable as methodological discussions;
– encourage researching subjects to think and use “cognitive devices” for this purpose;
– record data and findings as well as relevant literature references in research papers that are revised many times over
Summary of the habilitation project
Toxische Objekte. Eine Soziologie der Entsorgung radioaktiver Abfälle / Toxic objects. A Sociology of Radioactive Waste Management
In recent decades, modern industrialized societies have produced a large number of substances that have been identified and problematized by these same societies as toxic, harmful, dangerous and risky for human and non-human life. Accordingly, these substances require a high degree of regulation based on natural sciences research, legal and political procedures, media reporting and civil society engagement. The habilitation project, which is located in Sociology, develops a theoretically oriented and at the same time empirically based perspective on the relationships between societies and their fabrications of substances that have been identified as harmful. In an examination of materiality-theoretical approaches, among others, the habilitation project conceptualizes these fabrications as toxic objects in the sense of reifications that challenge societies in their activities and efficacies evaluated as risky. Toxic objects confront societies with questions of their controllability and force policies of security. Against the background of a relational argumentation, the ways of dealing with these objects consequently also move to the center of the investigation. These are formed not least in complex projects and processes of disposal, which can currently be observed as the interaction of technical and natural sciences knowledge, political and legal procedures and civil society participation.
Empirically, the habilitation project focuses on a case that is characterized by a conflict-ridden history, intensified natural sciences research and the establishment of legal procedures in Germany: the disposal of (highly) radioactive waste. This case is used to examine how societies produce ‘disposal-relevant’ knowledge and ignorance about the objects to be disposed of – in this case radioactive waste – and how they further legitimize and process this knowledge and ignorance. In the empirical analysis, questions about the relationships between society, Technics Department and nature emerge in particular. Thus, repository scenarios are not developed solely on the basis of technical solutions, but above all through the foundation of geological formations. In terms of a nature that is assumed to be stable in repository research, it is therefore underground rocks that are to house the radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years. Final disposal as a socio-technical project is therefore embedded in socio-geological processes in which the subsurface is systematically incorporated as an instance of disposal.
Using ethnographic approaches, combined with interview research and document analysis, the habilitation project proposes a qualitative-sociological design that follows the production sites and producers of ‘disposal-relevant’ knowledge and non-knowledge: Participant observation in natural sciences laboratories of geology and nuclear chemistry (national and international), interviews with members of leading research institutions, organizations and bodies in the context of final disposal and site selection, as well as participation in relevant scientific colloquiums and conferences of final disposal research become a resource for this sociological habilitation project on radioactive waste management.
Summary of the dissertation project (completed)
The dissertation project examined artistic work in the field of visual arts from an ethnographic perspective. In art academies and art colleges, studios and exhibitions, the study looked at how artists deal with materials, how artistic works are developed for exhibition projects and how the resulting artworks are assessed by artists. The study drew on practice-theoretical approaches, supplemented by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, with the aim of including not only practical knowledge but also perception in its execution in order to make artistic approaches spokespersons and open them up further for Sociology
Summary of the dissertation project (completed)
Geistesgegenwart. Sprechen in Metaphern in spirituellen Konversions- und Kommunikationskontexten / Presence of mind. Spokespersons in metaphors in spiritual conversion and communication contexts
The dissertation project is interested in the connection between the linguistic and various dimensions of the religious. In particular, it is concerned with various forms of alternative religiosity, as can currently be observed in the field of esotericism. The starting point is the assumption that language, or rather the practice of spokesperson, has a constitutive effect in the creation of alternative world views, concepts of reality and cosmologies. Against this background, various communication contexts with esoteric connotations are examined and the concrete forms of expression in which the contents and experiences of esoteric world views are articulated, communicated and legitimized are investigated. One methodological focus is on the systematic reconstruction of metaphors that are regarded as constitutive for esoteric linguistic jargon. The dissertation project is located at the interface between the sociology of religion and linguistics, drawing on concepts from conversion research and combining these with assumptions from the sociology of language and narrative theory.
Summary of the dissertation project (completed)
Substanzen, Elemente, Vermischungen. (Außer-)Schulische Chemieexperimente und ihre Zeichenrepräsentation (Arbeitstitel) / Substances, elements, mixtures. (Extra-)school chemistry experiments and their symbolic representation (working title)
In recent years, various research projects have demonstrated the importance of technical artifacts in very different areas: in private life, in professional contexts and in Technics Department and scientific research itself. The focus on these artifacts has pushed other materialities (such as substances, organisms, nature) into the background. With the new materiality research, this doctoral dissertation takes a broader concept of materiality as its starting point and examines the role of substances and elements in (non-)educational chemistry experiments and their translation into the writing of the chemical equation. The doctoral dissertation empirically examines how the staff of the organization (teachers) and the occupants of the organization (students) deal with substances, elements, objects and signs, what meanings are attributed to them, how they are recognized in their interaction and how they are discursively accompanied.
The sometimes very complex (extracurricular) chemistry experiments represent a conglomerate of actions, specialist knowledge, technical things as well as substances and elements. The doctoral dissertation examines this interplay and aims to explicate the tense relationship between acting and reacting with and through substances. This also includes observing substances as production through representation (Rheinberger), because through changes in color and smell they reveal certain information that is experienced by the participants’ senses. However, generalization through symbols is also of particular importance for chemistry experiments: The reaction equation transforms the fleeting experiment into something hardened, verifiable and capable of discourse. The substances and their reactions are transformed into signs and symbols that can be used in further experiments. The doctoral dissertation is theoretically linked to the social science of teaching and education as well as to recent materiality research and its concept of practice.
Summary of the dissertation project (completed)
Sorgebeziehungen als Grenzen der menschlichen Welt (Arbeitstitel) / Care relationshipsas boundaries of the human world (working title)
Characteristic of human life is the relationship to oneself and to others, to the artifacts and things that surround us and to the world (nature, environment, cosmos) in which we live and exist. The dissertation project generally understands these relationships as self-world relationships. The overcoming of dualistic, conflictual boundaries between the self and the world, which are considered outdated, appear in a new harmony, particularly in specifically utopian charges of post- and transhumanist as well as in modern socio-political debates on sustainability. In the humanities and social sciences, a discourse (cf. Latour, Haraway, Bennett, Braidotti) has emerged in recent years around a category of hybridity that is characterized by an underlying concept of radical relationality that permeates and unites all areas (self, environment, things, etc.). In the course of this general decentering of the human, the concept of care is also currently being rehabilitated: In the context of care debates, particularly in the STS, posthumanist debates are drafting a concept of care of the world and things, which includes an extension of the understanding of care to animals, Technics Department, things as well as the (environment) world and thus not only conceives of these as objects of (human) care, but makes them appear as ‘caregivers’ themselves.
The aim of the dissertation project is to take an analytical look at the phenomenon of care and to undertake a dialectical redefinition of the concept of care along its boundaries, conflicts and distances – in the sense of a re-specification of the human (Plessner) – and not its relationality, connectedness and dissolution. In this way, a homogenization of the category of the human and a concealment of specific power relations, which resonate with the focus on the posthuman, can be critically countered. The doctoral dissertation pays particular attention to care relationships, care practices and the objects/things of care. The following questions guide the project: Which scientific and social discourses on care can be reconstructed and how are they related to each other? What relationship between self/human and world/environment/things crystallizes in discourses and practices? How are interferences or boundaries formed between the different forms of care (self-care, care for others, care of the world, care of things)?
On a theoretical-conceptual level, the project draws on posthuman theories and approaches from philosophical anthropology.
Summary of the dissertation project
Die Zeichen und die Dinge der theoretischen Physik (Arbeitstitel) / The signs and things of theoretical physics (working title)
Contemporary physics is often confronted with the empirical unavailability of its objects. Particularly in the areas that deal with the theoretical problem of the unified description of quantum physics and gravity (quantum gravity), the theoretically assumed entities are often beyond possible experiments. Mathematics as the central modeling and cognitive instrument of theoretical physics is given an additional boost here: not only do the objects of physical interest first emerge from mathematically formulated theories, but mathematical theories and signs represent the only access to these objects.
The empirical-theoretical doctoral dissertation examines the cognitive practice of theoretical physics in line with sociological laboratory studies. Theoretical work is thus not understood here as a purely “intellectual” activity; instead, the social character of research practice and the constitutive significance of sign systems and cultural techniques (representations, simulations, etc.) are taken into account empirically and analytically. At the same time, the work does not make theoretical-physical thinking disappear as an object through its complete dissolution into social and symbolic practices, but takes it seriously in terms of the sociology of knowledge against the background of its mediated nature.
Summary of the dissertation project
‚Menschlichkeit‘ und ‚der Mensch‘. Implikationen des Humanen in der Sozialrobotik. (Arbeitstitel) / ‘Humanity’ and ‘the human’. Implications of the human in social robotics (working title)
Under the auspices of post-humanism and practice theories, the extent to which non-humans can be integrated into sociological studies is currently being discussed. While the founding fathers of Sociology used the human subject as the starting point and focus of their analysis, it is now a matter of adjusting the sociological view: Material artifacts, animals and ecological processes are just as suspected of being the starting point of an action as humans. In this way, humans and non-humans are symmetrized and described either as interconnected or as opposing actors. In this context, the dissertation project asks how the ‘human’ is constituted as such in everyday practice. The leading assumption is that neither ‘the human’ nor the ‘non-human’ is subject to natural, irrefutable facts, but is to be understood as a product of social order. The subject of the doctoral dissertation is the empirical analysis of the differentiation between humans and non-humans in the case of robotics. The focus is on human-theoretical assumptions about ‘the human’ and the informational and mechanical implementation of these assumptions in the form of humanoid robots. The guiding question is how exactly the distinctions between humans and machines are made in manufacturing and in what way robots are induced with this knowledge of distinction. The dissertation project follows on from programs of study in the sociology of knowledge and differentiation theory and contributes to a theory of the human.
Summary of the dissertation project (completed)
Digitale Choreografie. Praxis- und Zeitentwurf in Online-Welten / Digital choreography. Practice and time design in online worlds
Every user of the Internet inevitably leaves traces about themselves (Who?), their location (Where?), the time (When?) and the period of use (How long?). Generating these traces – i.e. written minutes -, condensing them into data and presenting them in a readable form is the task of automated analysis tools. They make it possible to observe how people use web pages. Analytical tools are products enriched with theoretical considerations or materialized theorems that enable this observation and at the same time frame its results. From the perspective of a sociology of socio-materiality, the design and production of the analysis tool as well as its use and effect come into focus.
The subject of the doctoral dissertation is the virtual observation of Internet usage practices mediated by analysis tools. Based on theoretical and empirical considerations from the sociology of science and finance on the production and representation of expert knowledge, the study examines, firstly, how the ‘Weiteraum’ (Lindemann) of the Internet is designed and used in everyday life, secondly, how this everyday use is observed and, thirdly, how the observation results flow back into the design of the Internet pages with the aim of increasing the time users spend on the respective pages. In other words, how is the flow of users to the respective website controlled over time? How is usage pre-designed so that the site’s affordance can frame the practice of Internet usage over time without being noticed? What role do algorithms play and how are they constructed? The study draws on media-sociological and materiality-theoretical approaches in Sociology and thus contributes to the analysis of the use and time management of online practices.
„Materialität und Sozialität in Kultur und Gesellschaft” / “Materiality and sociality in culture and society”
The minigraduate program is dedicated to the most important characteristic of modern societies, the relevance of non-human actors: (technical) artifacts, texts, substances and organisms are important components of everyday professional and private life. They are (omnipresent), enable human action and are the subject of a wide range of processes and discourses. This is where the Mini-GRK projects come in, exploring the connection between materiality and sociality, social (human) action and the effects of non-humans in culture and society.
The doctoral dissertations in this RTG are case studies on three different fields: substances and organisms in education(Anna Dorn), writing in accounting(Janina Lea Gutmann) and picture frames using the example of Paul Klee(Caroline Heise). The programs of study are intended to generate exemplary knowledge about the role of non-human entities in these fields.
The Research Training Group “Materiality and Sociality in Culture and Society” is one of six so-called mini-graduate programs that were approved for two years at the beginning of 2015 for the promotion and mentoring of young research talents in the humanities and social sciences. It is an interdisciplinary research project of the Institute of Sociology (Prof. Dr. Herbert Kalthoff, spokesperson SoCuM), the Research Unit on Historical Cultural Sciences (Prof. Dr. Jörg Rogge) and the Institute of Art History and Musicology (Prof. Dr. Gregor Wedekind).
