Alle Publikationen
2018
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(2018): Die feinen Unterschiede. Kritik der gesellschaftlichen Urteilskraft. Unter Mitarbeit von Bernd Schwibs. 26. Auflage 2018. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp (Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft)Keywords: Bourdieu, Bourdieus Habitustheorie, Einkommen / Beruf, Familiengeschichte, Favoriten, feine Unterschiede, Feld, Geschmack, Gestik/Mimik, Good manners, Habitus, Klasse, Kleidung, Körperhaltung, Macht, Modelle/Theorien, Rollen, Soziale Angemessenheit, Soziologie, Sprache, Status / biologische Marker
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(2018): Spillover modes in multiplex games. Double-edged effects on cooperation and their coevolution. In: Scientific reports 8 (1). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-25025-3
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29720679 Abstract: In recent years, there has been growing interest in studying games on multiplex networks that account for interactions across linked social contexts. However, little is known about how potential cross-context interference, or spillover, of individual behavioural strategy impact overall cooperation. We consider three plausible spillover modes, quantifying and comparing their effects on the evolution of cooperation. In our model, social interactions take place on two network layers: repeated interactions with close neighbours in a lattice, and one-shot interactions with random individuals. Spillover can occur during the learning process with accidental cross-layer strategy transfer, or during social interactions with errors in implementation. Our analytical results, using extended pair approximation, are in good agreement with extensive simulations. We find double-edged effects of spillover: increasing the intensity of spillover can promote cooperation provided cooperation is favoured in one layer, but too much spillover is detrimental. We also discover a bistability phenomenon: spillover hinders or promotes cooperation depending on initial frequencies of cooperation in each layer. Furthermore, comparing strategy combinations emerging in each spillover mode provides good indication of their co-evolutionary dynamics with cooperation. Our results make testable predictions that inspire future research, and sheds light on human cooperation across social domains.
Keywords: COMMONS, Disziplin, EVOLUTIONARY GAMES, Favoriten, GRAPHS, Interaction, Interaktion, interference of social interaction, Kooperation, Mathematik, NETWORKS, Netzwerk, Observablen/Kriterien für sozial angemessenes Verhalten und dessen Bewertung, social interaction, Soziale Angemessenheit, Soziologie, spillover effects, Voraussetzungen für sozial angemessenes Verhalten -
(2018): Pervasive, hard-wired and male. Qualitative study of how UK adolescents view alcohol-related aggression. In: PLoS one 13 (2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0191269
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29408910 Abstract: Laboratory studies of alcohol-inexperienced adolescents show that aggression can be primed by alcohol-related stimuli, suggesting that alcohol-related aggression is partly socially learned. Script theory proposes that alcohol-related aggression 'scripts' for social behaviors are culturally-available and learned by individuals. The purpose of the study was to understand the content and origins of alcohol-related aggression scripts learned by adolescents. This qualitative focus group study of 40 adolescents (ages 14-16 years) examined alcohol-related aggression scripts. Participants believed aggression and severe injury to be pervasive when young people drink. Viewed through a biological lens, participants described aggression as an 'instinctive' and 'hard-wired' male trait facilitated by intoxication. As such, alcohol-related aggression was not seen as intended or personally controllable and participants did not see it in moral terms. Females were largely viewed as either bystanders of inter-male aggression or potential victims of male sexual aggression. Participants attributed their views on the frequency and nature of alcohol-related aggression to current affairs and reality television, which they felt portrayed a reality of which they had little experience. The origins of the explicitly biological frameworks that participants used seemed to lie in pre-existing beliefs about the nature of gender differences. Perceptions of the pervasiveness of male alcohol-related aggression, and the consequent failure to view alcohol-related aggression in moral terms, could dispose some young people to alcohol-related aggression. Interventions could target (1) the beliefs that alcohol-related aggression is pervasive and uncontrollable in males, and (2) participants' dysfunctional views of masculinity that underpin those beliefs.
Keywords: Adolescent, Adolescent Behavior, Aggression, Alcohol Drinking, Alkohol, Annahme, dass Alkoholisiertheit das Verhalten unsteuerbar macht, chemisch / neurologisch / medikamentös / durch Substanzen, Disziplin, Einfluss von Medien, Einfluss von Vorurteilen, Geschlechterrollen, Humans, Male, Psychologie, script, script theory, social behaviour, socially learned, sozial erlerntes Verhalten, sozial konstruiert, Soziologie, United Kingdom 2017
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(2017): Identität. Über die Entstehung des Gedankens, dass der Mensch ein Individuum ist, den nicht leicht zu verwirklichenden Anspruch auf Individualität und Kompetenzen, Identität in einer riskanten Moderne zu finden und zu wahren. 3., aktualisierte und erweiterte Auflage. Wiesbaden: Springer VS
Abstract: Individualität, Kampf um Aufmerksamkeit, Mode und Lebensstil -- Identität, sich mit den Augen der Anderen sehen, Außenleitung, dramatische Auftritte im Alltag und der Zwang der Verhältnisse -- Krise der Lebenswelt und der Identität in der Moderne, Kompetenzen, bewegliches Denken und Mut Das Lehrbuch stellt im ersten Teil die gesellschaftlichen und kulturellen Bedingungen dar, dass der Mensch sich bewusst wurde, ein Individuum zu sein, und es liefert soziologische Erklärungen, wie er seine Individualität zum Ausdruck bringt. Im zweiten Teil wird die Frage nach der Identität in der fortgeschrittenen Moderne nach folgenden Unterfragen behandelt: Wie sind wir geworden, was wir sind? Welcher Kompetenzen bedarf es, um eine Balance zwischen unseren individuellen Ansprüchen und sozialen Erwartungen zu finden? Für die dritte Auflage wurden alle Kapitel aktualisiert. Um die Lektüre zu erleichtern, wurde gleich am Anfang ein neues Kapitel „Überblick und Zusammenfassung“ eingefügt. Der zweite Teil des Lehrbuches wurde neu gegliedert und um ein Kapitel „Autonomie des Subjekts in und gegen Rollen, Ich-Identität“ erweitert. Der Inhalt • Individualität, Kampf um Aufmerksamkeit, Mode und Lebensstil • Identität, sich mit den Augen der Anderen sehen, Außenleitung, dramatische Auftritte im Alltag und der Zwang der Verhältnisse • Krise der Lebenswelt und der Identität in der Moderne, Kompetenzen, bewegliches Denken und Mut Die Zielgruppen • Studierende der Soziologie, der Pädagogik, der Psychologie und der Sozialarbeit • Studierende aus Studiengängen für das Lehramt und für erziehende Berufe • Alle, die schon immer an Antworten auf die oben genannten Fragen interessiert waren Der Autor Dr. Dr. Heinz Abels, em. Univ.-Professor am Institut für Soziologie an der FernUniversität in Hagen
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(2017): Explaining the Criteria of Designing Urban Furniture and Landscape, with a Cultural-social Design Approach. In: Journal of History Culture and Art Research 6 (4). DOI: 10.7596/taksad.v6i4.1034
Abstract: Attention to the deep relationship between human personality and the place in which he lives causes the place to play a crucial role in cultural transformations and prevalence of human life style and formation of values, connections and human activities. Cities are not just a place of transit, but they are also environments that must have mutual communications with the inhabitants in order to realize the meaning of citizen, as there is a distinction between the status of citizenship and urbanization. Urban furniture is one of the elements of urban space that its quantity, beauty and durability play a major role in achieving a healthy and favorable city and satisfies the needs of citizens in terms of performance and beauty. Accordingly, the present study, using descriptive-analytical method and with data collection tools including library and documentary studies, examines the concept of product ecology and answers to the questions whether urban furniture can start or support social interaction or positively affect the roles of citizens? In this paper, the relationship between social-cultural design in urban furniture and the disturbances regarding uneven distribution of elements are identified, and finally the criteria of designing urban furniture and landscape are expressed with a social-design approach.
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(2017): Repacking ‘Privacy’ for a Networked World. In: Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 26 (4), S. 453-488. DOI: 10.1007/s10606-017-9276-y
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-017-9276-y Abstract: In this paper we examine the notion of privacy as promoted in the digital economy and how it has been taken up as a design challenge in the fields of CSCW, HCI and Ubiquitous Computing. Against these prevalent views we present an ethnomethodological study of digital privacy practices in 20 homes in the UK and France, concentrating in particular upon people’s use of passwords, their management of digital content, and the controls they exercise over the extent to which the online world at large can penetrate their everyday lives. In explicating digital privacy practices in the home we find an abiding methodological concern amongst members to manage the potential ‘attack surface’ of the digital on everyday life occasioned by interaction in and with the networked world. We also find, as a feature of this methodological preoccupation, that privacy dissolves into a heterogeneous array of relationship management practices. Accordingly we propose that ‘privacy’ has little utility as a focus for design, and suggest instead that a more productive way forward would be to concentrate on supporting people’s evident interest in managing their relationships in and with the networked world.
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(2017) : Strukturen der Lebenswelt - eine Hinführung In: Schütz, Alfred; Luckmann, Thomas (Hg.): Strukturen der Lebenswelt: 2., überarbeitete Auflage: Konstanz; München: UTB, UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, UVK/Lucius (UTB), S. 1-12
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(2017): Group Pleasures: Collaborative Commitments, Shared Narrative, and the Sociology of Fun. In: Sociological Theory 35 (1), S. 64-86. DOI: 10.1177/0735275117692836
Abstract: As a consequence of their size and fragility, small groups depend on cohesion. Central to group continuation are occasions of collective hedonic satisfaction that encourage attachment. These times are popularly labeled fun. While groupness can be the cause of fun, we emphasize the effects of fun, as understood by participants. Shared enjoyment, located in temporal and spatial affordances, creates conditions for communal identification. Such moments serve as commitment devices, building affiliation, modeling positive relations, and moderating interpersonal tension. Further, they encourage retrospective narration, providing an appealing past, an assumed future, and a sense of groupness. The rhetoric of fun supports interactional smoothness in the face of potential ruptures. Building on the authors' field observations and other ethnographies, we argue that both the experience and recall of fun bolster group stability. We conclude by suggesting that additional research must address the role of power and boundary building in the fun moment.
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(2017) : Vorwort In: Schütz, Alfred; Luckmann, Thomas (Hg.): Strukturen der Lebenswelt: 2., überarbeitete Auflage: Konstanz; München: UTB, UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, UVK/Lucius (UTB), S. 13-26
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(2017): Establishing norms with metanorms over interaction topologies. In: Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 31 (6), S. 1344-1376. DOI: 10.1007/s10458-017-9364-x
Abstract: Norms are a valuable means of establishing coherent cooperative behaviour in decentralised systems in which there is no central authority. Axelrod's seminal model of norm establishment in populations of self-interested individuals provides some insight into the mechanisms needed to support this through the use of metanorms, but considers only limited scenarios and domains. While further developments of Axelrod's model have addressed some of the limitations, there is still only limited consideration of such metanorm models with more realistic topological configurations. In response, this paper tries to address such limitation by considering its application to different topological structures. Our results suggest that norm establishment is achievable in lattices and small worlds, while such establishment is not achievable in scale-free networks, due to the problematic effects of hubs. The paper offers a solution, first by adjusting the model to more appropriately reflect the characteristics of the problem, and second by offering a new dynamic policy adaptation approach to learning the right behaviour. Experimental results demonstrate that this dynamic policy adaptation overcomes the difficulties posed by the asymmetric distribution of links in scale-free networks, leading to an absence of norm violation, and instead to norm emergence.
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(2017): El habitus. Una revisión analítica. In: Revista Internacional de Sociología 75 (3). DOI: 10.3989/ris.2017.75.3.15.115
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical view of Pierre Bourdieu's habitus concept. For this definition the author is reviewed, then a look of both explanatory and hermeneutic possibilities of this concept, and finally the criticism he has received, to try to answer them from the more analytical approach proposed are reviewed. On one hand, it shows that you can take some of the criticisms made by authors such as analytical Boudon and Elster. On the other hand, the greater relevance of other authors noted, the lack of sensitivity to social contexts. The habitus allows an objectivist study of established social practices of meaning, through a combination of mechanisms and structuralist concepts to capture this meaning.
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(2017): Ein pleonastisches Oxymoron. Konstruktionsprobleme von Pierre Bourdieus Schlüsselkonzept der symbolischen Gewalt. In: Berliner Journal für Soziologie 27 (1), S. 7-33. DOI: 10.1007/s11609-017-0335-5
Abstract: According to Pierre Bourdieu, it is due to symbolic violence that social domination can be sustained without resorting to physical force. Because the dominated perceive their situation by means of categories which themselves are structured by power relations, they accept their own domination as legitimate, necessary, or functional. While the concept of symbolic violence takes center stage in Bourdieu's sociology, upon close analysis it turns out to be highly problematic. The paper shows that symbolic violence runs counter to the intentional and experiential structure of acts which are usually perceived as violent. As a result, the relation between symbolic and physical aspects of violence remains ambiguous in Bourdieu's writings. This, again, contributes to an inconsistent view on the history of violence and compromises the very normative grasp the extended notion of violence was actually intended to facilitate. Contrary to the prevailing interpretation, the article argues that the conceptual inconsistencies do not constitute a rhetorical artifice, but result from an unintended deviation from Bourdieu's fundamental terminological strategy to interlink the emic perspective of the actors and the etic perspective of sociology by means of seemingly contradictory phrases. Furthermore, Bourdieu's account of symbolic violence is not convincing with reference to the conceptualization of socialization and the (re)production of symbolic domination in concrete interaction. In a constructive vein the paper finally calls for the continuing analysis of the subtle and manifold modes of symbolic dominance by the use of more appropriate concepts.
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(2017): The Body, Technology and Translation. Mapping the Complexity of Online Embodiment. In: Sociological Research Online 22 (2), S. 1-13. DOI: 10.5153/sro.4322
Abstract: This theoretical article considers the potential for a revival of sociological interest in online embodiment by developing a conceptual alternative to the predominant framework of self-presentation, and showing how social theory may benefit from exploration of this field. It starts by critically reviewing the discussion on online embodiment, pointing out its theoretical shortcomings, and arguing that they result from the difficulty that social theory has with accounting for the increased ontological complexity of embodiment induced by the pervasiveness of digital technologies. Treating a theory of practice as an inspiring perspective, it then adapts the notion of translation as a general term capable of grasping the complex relationships between physical bodies, digital technologies, reflexive selves and the social aspects of online embodiment. An important advantage of this concept is that it makes it possible to see the role of technology as constitutive without losing the sociological perspective, and encompasses a wide range of contemporary body-technology interactions. Furthermore, it also has the potential to foster a sociological understanding of the relationships between bodily, technological, mindful and social elements, and to do so without slipping into reductionism.
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(2017): Autonomie, Souveränität und Entfremdung. In: Philosophische Rundschau 64 (2), S. 122-133. DOI: 10.1628/003181517X15004614386196
Abstract: Der Entfremdungsbegriff ist als sozialwissenschaftliche Zeitdiagnose wieder zunehmend nachgefragt. Dabei werden allerdings sehr unterschiedliche Phänomene wie die Zunahme psychosomatischer Erkrankungen, die >Entfremdung< von Bevölkerung und Eliten oder der Strukturwandel der Arbeitswelt adressiert. Die Sammelrezension diskutiert vier aktuelle Beiträge zum Thema: Die beiden Einführungswerke von Christoph Henning sowie Peter V. Zima, ein Essay von Hartmut Rosa und eine Essaysammlung von Sean Sayers. Die Heterogenität dieser Werke zeigt die Schwierigkeit der analytisch scharfen Bestimmung der Entfremdungsdiagnose auf. Die geteilte Bedeutung des Begriffs betrifft grundlegende Fragen: Inwieweit stehen Menschen authentisch hinter dem, was sie tun? Sind sie in der Lage, ihre Freiheit produktiv selbst zu begrenzen und ihre allgemeinen menschlichen Potentiale durch sinnstiftende Tätigkeiten zu entwickeln? Der Beitrag zeigt, dass Entfremdung wesentlich der Entwicklung von Autonomie und Souveränität gegenübersteht. UTB. 212 S.
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Schütz, Alfred; Luckmann, Thomas (Hg.) (2017): Strukturen der Lebenswelt. 2., überarbeitete Auflage. Konstanz; München: UTB, UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, UVK/Lucius (UTB). Online verfügbar unter http://www.utb-studi-e-book.de/9783838548333
Abstract: Ein Klassiker der verstehenden Soziologie Die von Thomas Luckmann nach dem Tod von Alfred Schütz vollendeten Strukturen der Lebenswelt gelten als Grundlegung der phänomenologischen Soziologie. Alfred Schütz deckt hier schrittweise jene elementaren Strukturen des Alltagslebens auf, die sozialer Erfahrung, Sprache, sozialem Handeln und somit auch der komplexen historischen Welt des menschlichen Lebens zugrunde liegen.Alfred Schütz (*1899 in Wien) lehrte bis zu seinem Tod 1959 an der New School of Social Research in New York. Sein Schüler Thomas Luckmann (1927-2016) war Professor für Soziologie an der Universität Konstanz und der bedeutendste Vertreter der Wissenssoziologie und Religionssoziologie
Keywords: Disziplin, E-Book, Lebenswelt, Phänomenologische Soziologie, Soziale Angemessenheit, Soziologie, Struktur, UTB -
(2017): Beeinflussen Sanktionsrisikoeinschätzungen das delinquente Handeln junger Menschen oder ist es umgekehrt? Befunde einer deutschen Längsschnittuntersuchung. In: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 69 (2), S. 259-282
Abstract: Zusammenfassung Bei der Erforschung der Abschreckungswirkung von Strafe sind querschnittlich angelegte Fragebogenuntersuchungen nicht in der Lage, Erfahrungseffekte (Wirkungen früherer Delinquenz auf die Sanktionsrisikowahrnehmung) effizient von Abschreckungseffekten (Wirkungen der Sanktionsrisikowahrnehmung auf spätere Delinquenz) zu trennen. In den wenigen vorhandenen Längsschnittstudien, die eine Separierung der beiden Effektarten ermöglichen, wird regelmäßig das Vorhandensein von …
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(2017): The Network Dynamics of Status. Assimilation and Selection. In: Social Forces 96 (1), S. 389-422. DOI: 10.1093/sf/sox040
Abstract: Using longitudinal data that we have collected on friendship and advice relations in a cohort of MBA students, we examine how status affects the dynamics of network ties among peers. Estimates of Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models (SAOMs) suggest that status is a consequence of network ties because over time the level of status attributed to individual students by other students tends to the average level of status attributed to their network partners-a phenomenon we call status assimilation. Status is also an antecedent to network ties because it affects partner selection decisions, giving rise to distinct forms of social attachment. We find that both network-based processes of status assimilation, as well as status-based processes of social selection, are present, but they vary subtly yet significantly across network domains. Students tend to the average level of status of their friends, but not to that of their advisors. High-status students are more active in the friendship network, but more popular in the advice network. We find evidence of performance homophily rather than status homophily: students with similar grades are more likely to exchange friendship and advice ties. High-status students tend to be more central in the advice network, but status attributions spill over through friendship, rather than advice relations. The study documents how the relation between social status and social networks varies both over time, as well as across network domains. The study also demonstrates the importance of accounting for multiplexity-the tendency of a network to operate through another.
Keywords: ADVICE, Bekanntheitsgrad, CENTRALITY, decision-making, Disziplin, EXCHANGE, Favoriten, friendship, Gruppenverhalten / Joint Action, INEQUALITY, MARKET, Modelle/Theorien, Netzwerk, Netzwerktheorien, ORGANIZATIONAL CHOICE, POWER, social importance dynamics, social networks, Soziale Angemessenheit, Soziologie, Status, Status-zentriert 2016
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(2016): Normality and Trust in Goffman's Theory of Interaction Order. In: Sociological Theory 19 (3), S. 312-324. DOI: 10.1111/0735-2751.00143
Abstract: The article asserts that Goffman's concept of normality comes close to the notion of trust as a protective mechanism that prevents chaos and disorder by providing us with feelings of safety, certainty, and familiarity. Arguing that to account for the tendency of social order to be seen as normal we need to conceptualize trust as the routine background of everyday interaction, the article analyzes Goffmans concepts of normal appearances, stigma, and frames as devices for endowing social order with predictability, reliability, and legibility. For Goffman, normality is a collective achievement, which is possible because of the orderliness of interactional activities, which is-in turn-predicated "on a large base of shared cognitive presuppositions, if not normative ones, and self-sustained restraints".
Keywords: Anerkennung und kollektive Intentionalität, Disziplin, Erwartungen, erwartungen und Erwartungserwartungen, familiarity, Frame theory, Frameanalysis Rahmenanalyse Framing, Goffman, Interaktion, kollektive Intentionalität, Natur & Genese von Normen, Soziale Ordnung, Soziologie, Theorie der Normen und Kollektive Repräsentationen (Durkheim), Theory of interaction (Goffman), Vertrauen -
(2016): Sozialisation. Über die Vermittlung von Gesellschaft und Individuum und die Bedingungen von Identität. 2. Aufl. 2016. Wiesbaden: Springer VS (Studientexte zur Soziologie)
Abstract: Wie ist soziale Ordnung möglich und wie kommt sie zustande? -- Wie erfolgt die Vermittlung von Gesellschaft und Individuum? -- Wie werden wir, was wir sind, und wie gewinnen wir Identität? -- Welcher Kompetenzen bedarf es, um uns in den Interaktionen des Alltags zu behaupten? Sozialisation ist eine Antwort auf die soziologische Grundfrage nach der Vermittlung von Gesellschaft und Individuum. Die drei Fragen, wie wir werden, was wir sind, wie wir durch unser Denken und Handeln gesellschaftliche Ordnung reproduzieren, aber auch gestalten, und wie wir unsere Identität in der Interaktion mit Anderen herstellen und wahren, standen schon am Anfang der Soziologie. Sie sind in der fortgeschrittenen Moderne noch drängender geworden. Das Lehrbuch stellt die breite soziologische Diskussion von ihren Anfängen bis in die allerjüngste Zeit vor. Für die zweite Auflage wurden alle Kapitel überarbeitet und aktualisiert und die theoretische Diskussion erheblich erweitert. Der Inhalt Wie ist soziale Ordnung möglich und wie kommt sie zustande? Wie erfolgt die Vermittlung von Gesellschaft und Individuum? Wie werden wir, was wir sind, und wie gewinnen wir Identität? Welcher Kompetenzen bedarf es, um uns in den Interaktionen des Alltags zu behaupten? Die Zielgruppen Studierende der Soziologie, der Pädagogik, der Psychologie und der Sozialarbeit Studierende aus Studiengängen für das Lehramt und für erziehende Berufe Alle, die schon immer an Antworten auf die oben genannten Fragen interessiert waren Die Autoren Dr. Dr. Heinz Abels, em. Univ.-Prof. am Institut für Soziologie der FernUniversität in Hagen. Dr. Alexandra König, Akademische Rätin in der Fachgruppe Soziologie der Bergischen Universität Wuppertal
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(2016): Sociological theory in the contemporary era. Text and readings. 3 edition. New york; London: Sage
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(2016): Etiquette Books, Discourse and the Deployment of an Order of Things. In: Theory, Culture & Society 16 (4), S. 25-48. DOI: 10.1177/02632769922050700
Abstract: Grounded on Foucault's suggestion that discourses are not just referential or representational systems, but part of the infrastructure ordering practices in a society, this article analyzes transformations in the etiquette literature in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century. It claims that the transformations undergone by etiquette books at the time involved not only a change in the substance of manners but also in their format, and it shows how this change in format embodied and helped deploy an infrastructure of social relations constituted by a logic of decenteredness, as opposed to a logic of centeredness. The article discusses both the theoretical issues raised by the concept of an infrastructure of social relations and methodological points concerning the use of etiquette books for social research, and raises some analytical questions regarding our understanding of American history at the time, as well as our more general conceptions of modernity and postmodernity. In order to reinforce its general argument concerning the embeddedness of an infrastructure of social relations in discourse, and to help clarify the idea of a logic of decenteredness, the article also illustrates how etiquette books from a much earlier period embodied and deployed a logic of centeredness.
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(2016): `Space - The Final Frontier'. In: Sociology 33 (3), S. 535-553. DOI: 10.1177/S0038038599000346
Abstract: For too long the built working environment has been excluded from the analysis of work organisations. Buildings, like other cultural artefacts, encapsulate social and economic priorities and values, and represent prevailing power structures. Work buildings, such as offices and factories, both make possible the organisation of the labour process and also serve as structures of non-verbal communication, providing cues on hierarchy, status and appropriate behaviour. Control over the working environment can be seen as a constituent part of the control of the labour process, displaying similar cyclical movements. Human resource management and information technology are currently combining to encourage a reappraisal of the working environment, but one that is not without its own contradictions.
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(2016): Self-Identification and Alienation. In: The Sociological Quarterly 7 (3), S. 255-264. DOI: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.1966.tb01692.x
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(2016): The Habitus and the Critique of the Present. In: Sociological Theory 33 (4), S. 327-346. DOI: 10.1177/0735275115617801
Abstract: I tackle some major criticisms addressed to Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus by foregrounding its affinities with Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of rule-following. To this end, I first clarify the character of the habitus as a theoretical device, and then elucidate what features of Wittgenstein's analysis Bourdieu found of interest from a methodological viewpoint. To vindicate this reading, I contend that Wittgenstein's discussion of rule-following was meant to unearth the internal connection between rules and the performative activities whereby rules are brought into life. By portraying rules as tools that allow agents to stabilize and renegotiate practices, I illustrate the active role social agents play in the production of shared accounts of practices. I conclude by showing that, if viewed through this prism, the habitus proves to be meant to provide guidance on how social theory helps historicize and denaturalize the social world.
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(2016): Toward Spatially Integrated Social Science. In: International Regional Science Review 23 (2), S. 139-159. DOI: 10.1177/016001760002300201
Abstract: This article outlines the motivation for a spatial approach as a novel focus for cross-disciplinary interaction and research in the social and behavioral sciences. The authors review the emerging interest in space and place in the recent social science literature and develop a vision for a spatially integrated social science. This vision provides the conceptual basis for a program of six activities designed to promote a spatial perspective: learning resources, workshops, best-practice examples, place-based search, software tools, and a virtual community The sin programs will be informed by advances in the methods, technologies and principles underlying spatial information science.