Media Sociology working group (Prof. Dr. Sascha Dickel)

The research project (2017-2021) uses the case of (technical) prototypes to explore the question of how societies express their future through artifacts. What practices are used to enroll and read ideas about the future in objects? How do prototypes give a possible future a tangible and verifiable form? Two third-party funded projects (funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and the BMBF) form the funding framework of the study. The VW project is dedicated to an exploration of prototyping as a social practice. It develops the thesis that prototyping technologizes the space of the future in advance. The BMBF project focuses in particular on questions of the digitality and intermediality of prototypes. It is part of a more extensive research association on prototypes as communication media: What does communication through prototypical artifacts achieve in contrast to – and in interaction with – image and text? How, for example, does the design of a self-driving car simultaneously convey a vision of the traffic of the day after tomorrow? The results of the project will be incorporated into an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum.

Working group Network Research and Family Sociology (Prof. Dr. Marina Hennig)

In the context of social network research, we dealt with the methodological challenges of surveying the spectrum of interaction contexts in which individuals are involved at different stages of their biographical careers. As part of a project funded by the Center for School, Education and Higher Education Research (ZSBH) at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) on the impact of social networks on academic careers, we investigated the effects of social relationships on the development of professors academic careers. The ten qualitative interviews conducted with professors from the social and natural sciences at various universities now provide the basis for current research into professors self-image as academics, which is constituted in interactions and negotiation processes between representatives of hierarchical university positions. Also of interest are the emerging university-disciplinary understandings of science.

Social Structure Analysis working group (Prof. Dr. Gunnar Otte)

Compared to many other Western countries, Germany lacks regular reporting on the population’s participation in culture. In the first funding phase from 2016 to 2019, the project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) aimed to establish a comprehensive baseline study on this topic in Germany that would also set international standards. Based on a standardized face-to-face survey, patterns of cultural participation among the German-speaking population aged 15 and over were analyzed: Who uses which artistic products from the visual and performing arts, music, literature and Film and to what extent? Who participates in non-professional cultural production in these fields, e.g. by making music or painting? And how can the patterns found be explained theoretically? To this end, the influences of socialization, resources, spatial offerings and cultural education will be investigated. In the second funding phase from 2019 to 2023, the basic study will be expanded into a panel study with the help of reinterviews. On the one hand, the aim is to expand the theoretical explanatory approaches, in particular to include a network perspective. On the other hand, stability and change in cultural participation at the individual level will be examined over time. The project claims to provide basic knowledge for science, politics and the culturally interested public.

Sociological Theory and Gender Studies working group (Prof. Dr. Stefan Hirschauer)

The study was conducted over a period of 10 years (from 2009-2019) in three consecutive DFG projects. It first developed a social-theoretical foundation of pregnancy and the unborn as communicatively and practically constituted phenomena. She then asked about the gender differentiation (or de-differentiation) of prenatal parenthood. How is the postnatal differentiation of roles into “mother” and “father” created during pregnancy? Under what conditions are doing gender and doing parenting linked or decoupled? The study examined traditional and post-traditional, lesbian and gay couples on the basis of couple interviews and diaries. Through this gender-variant research design, it found new explanations for the retraditionalization of the gender division of labor in family formation on the one hand, and mechanisms for the locking in or suspension of gender assignments on the other: When do they become relevant for parenting, when are they overridden by gender-indifferent parental commitment?

Working Group Sociology of Technics and Innovation (Prof. Dr. Petra Ahrweiler)

AI FORA is a research project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation that investigates the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the distribution of state social benefits. Although different in terms of type and extent, the delegation of such decisions to machines practiced in many countries nevertheless raises similar questions about ethics, justice, quality, responsibility, accountability and transparency of the basis for decision-making everywhere. In addition to the perception, evaluation and acceptance of such practices, the respective contexts also vary as a result of different norms and values, technological statuses as well as economic, civil society and institutional-formal framework conditions. The aim of AI FORA is to understand the current status quo as well as future options for AI-based social evaluation in the field of public service distribution in order to design better AI technology for social welfare systems. The inter- and transdisciplinary project includes data from six empirical country case studies on Germany, Estonia, Spain, India, China and the USA.

Sociology of Knowledge and Education working group (Prof. Dr. Herbert Kalthoff)

One research unit [im Rahmen der Forschungsinitiative 2008-11] of the working group is the organized evaluation of people (human evaluation); the case in which this is researched is the practice of school evaluation. With this research, which is part of a DFG research unit, the working group ties in with ‘E/Valuation Studies’, which deals with processes of evaluation and assessment in various fields. The central feature of the research in Mainz is, firstly, its empirical foundation, i.e. that we have carried out extensive empirical studies over a period of six years in various types of schools and in various federal states (participant observations in schools, interviews with teachers and pupils and document analyses). Secondly, we pursue a theoretical conceptualization of the empirical findings and thus tie in with the concept of “theoretical empiricism” (Kalthoff et al. 2008), i.e. a strong and reciprocal link between empirical analysis and theoretical conceptualization. Some of the findings of our research: The school organization assumes that all students have seen, heard and learned the same things in class. They are assumed to be equal in order to mark them as unequal through the examination and assessment procedures. Students are asked to accept that they have been evaluated objectively (factuality), that it is they who have been evaluated (attribution) and that they are what they have been evaluated as (identification). Teachers, for their part, carry out a contingent evaluation that constitutes the students’ performance and at the same time reflects on their teaching (i.e. their own performance). The evaluation obtained in this way is hardened in the school organization: As an objectified grade, it appears on the school’s documents.