Social Sciences (R0)

Trade copy:

Substantial contribution to popular culture research

Interdisciplinary and intermedial treatment of the topic

First volume on the subject

Seeds are at the heart of a transformation process that affects more than two billion people worldwide. This study on smallholder farmers in Tanzania examines how local seed systems are anchored in the socio-cultural structures of smallholder life worlds. Using the example of seeds, the close interweaving of agricultural and social practice is traced and it is worked out how individual processes of modernisation brought in from outside have far-reaching consequences for smallholder coexistence. The study provides a concrete, detailed and differentiated account of everyday farming life and of how smallholder households deal with seeds. A particular focus is on seed exchange relationships and how these provide both social security and social cohesion in the study region. The study is based on extensive field research and intensive interviews with farmers, who also have their own say in the work.

The title of the book derives from the theme of the 20th Conference on Applied Social Sciences of the Professional Association of German Sociologists, held in Munich in May 2019.

The question of what concrete contributions social innovations can make to the transition to forms of sustainable coexistence and economic activity is as much the focus of this book as the question of what contribution the social sciences can make. Thus, on the one hand, it is about concrete social innovations that help us to achieve the goal of living and doing business sustainably, but on the other hand, it is also about the way in which the social sciences - not least through appropriate theoretical and methodological training - can be made socially responsible for the success of such socially innovative processes.

This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.

Engineers represent the (industrial) modern age like no other profession. In the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, however, the enormous numerical expansion of the profession was contrasted by comparatively unfavorable working conditions and incomes. This was particularly true of the graduate engineers, whose academization failed to meet industrial requirements. Can the völkisch, right-wing political radicalization of many technical experts on the eve of the 'Third Reich' actually be fully explained by these professional-social frictions?

This study of (historical) professional, inequality, and political sociology is published in its third, fully revised edition.

This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.

The interconnections of economy, society and politics so obviously determine socio-economic and political structures and problem situations, current ways of thinking and acting as well as the collective perception of solution options that their still low attention in university teaching and school education is surprising. Phenomena such as pandemics, climate change, migration or authoritarianism make the close, complex and contradictory connections between economy, society and politics tangible. Against this background, socioeconomic research, teaching and education are urgently needed.

Since its existence in the 1950s, consumer policy in Germany has been understood and pursued primarily as a bundle of actions and measures initiated and institutionalised by the state. In many cases, the state has also issued corresponding mandates and set up support models, which has created the impression that we are basically dealing with a 'consumer policy from above' imposed by macro-politics. Not that there have not been repeated attempts in the past decades to give impetus to consumer policy from the middle of civil society - often in the form of small citizens' initiatives. And in recent years in particular, a number of new consumer organisations have emerged which operate much closer to the grass roots. Nevertheless, the impression seems to have taken root among the large, government-related 'players' in the field, who have been in the 'business' for decades, not to mention government-internal consumer policy, that consumer policy concerns a policy field that is essentiallyordered by a collaboration of the state on the one hand, and consumer protection organisations representing all consumers equally on the other, while the many small consumer initiatives, not even started by individual committed consumers, regularly fall behind in comparison. This perspective refers largely to the view of and from the centre of politics. This volume is intended to go some way towards countering the institutionally prevailing impression that, in principle, there is only 'consumer policy from above' that is really effective and assertive.

The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence. A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content.

In the current discourse field ‘clan crime’, the interpretation scheme, the terminology itself and the treatment of the phenomenon by interior departments, law enforcement and other authorities are controversial. There is an intense debate about issues ranging between overestimating and underestimating the phenomenon, between self-inflicted or ‘imported’ criminality and between zero-tolerance reactions by the constitutional state on the one hand and discrimination against entire population groups on the other. Put simply, there is a conflict between the antagonistic ideas of ‘hard’ and negating interpretations of the phenomenon. The anthology is intended to take a scientifically dominated, differentiated or ‘moderate’ path without ignoring the above-mentioned opposites. The aim is to close previous gaps in knowledge and to correct widespread discursive assumptions.

The book is aimed at an interested specialist audience from the criminal and social sciences as well as middle and higher management levels of the police and social work or crime prevention.

This book is a comprehensive analysis of the various social science approaches to explaining and interpreting war, peace and the military. Its central aim is to trace and reconstruct those basic assumptions constructed and 'thought processes' undertaken by modern social sciences in their research and conceptualization of military violence and the use of force. In addition to such reconstruction, the aim is also to enquire into the preconditions of such thought. This study therefore eschews the development of an explicit 'strategy' (in the sense of a research strategy), but instead is much more concerned with thinking about its subject matter by means of re-thinking and reflecting upon different theoretical approaches and problems. The investigation includes a critical reexamination of the tradition of military-sociological research from the beginning of modern sociology to late-twentieth century theoretical approaches regarding the security-focused and/or war-driven aspects ofmodern society.