Research

  • Our key research topics

    Funded research projects

    #worldrelationship, property, sharing economy

    Making Things Available: Property as a specific form of world relation

    Direction:
    Prof. Dr. Hartmut Rosa, University of Jena, Chair of General and Theoretical Sociology
    Dr. Jörg Oberthür, University of Jena, Department of General and Theoretical Sociology

    Duration:
    01.01.2021-31.12.2024

    Funding:
    DFG, sub-project in Collaborative Research Center 294 “Structural Change of Property”

    Collaborators:
    PD Dr. Christoph Henning and Henrike Katzer M.A.

    Description:
    The project is based on the insight that ownership plays an important role in the establishment and reproduction of our understanding of things, society and ourselves. It applies qualitative and empirical methods to various practices of the sharing economy to examine whether new forms of ownership and alternative concepts alter that understanding. Assuming a hybrid field with ‘old’ and ‘new’ practices and following a sociology of our relationship to the world, the researchers aim to determine the transformational and reproductive potential inherent to forms of and alternatives to ownership.

    More info on the project at: https://sfb294-eigentum.de/en/subprojects/dinge-verfuegbar-machen/External link

     

    #Inequality, class and property relations

    Intellectual Property: Social embeddedness and functional equivalents

    Direction:
    Prof. Dr. Tilman Reitz, University of Jena, Chair of Sociology of Knowledge and Social Theory
    Dr. Sebastian Sevignani, University of Jena, Department of General and Theoretical Sociology

    Duration:
    01.01.2021-31.12.2024

    Funding:
    DFG, sub-project in special research area 294 “Structural Change of Property”

    Collaborators:
    Marlen van den Ecker

    Description:
    The project sets out to understand whether ownership of the public goods of knowledge and information needs to be reorganised in the post-industrial economy. Certain access restrictions have become problematic: how are they enforced and justified? What new structures are being developed to control and utilise knowledge and information, perhaps even without the need for exclusive ownership rights? What conflicts emerge when a small number of players profit from far-reaching processes of intellectual exchange? What solutions may be feasible? During the first round of funding, the researchers intend to examine the ecologies of internet companies and online communities to generate empirically grounded, theoretical answers to these questions.


    More info on the project at: https://sfb294-eigentum.de/en/subprojects/geistiges-eigentum/External link

    #Technological transformation, digitalization and information society

    The Measured Life: Productive and counterproductive consequence of quantification in the digitally optimizing society

    Director:
    Prof. Dr. Hartmut Rosa, University of Jena, Chair of General and Theoretical Sociology

    Duration: 01.02.2018-31.01.2021

    Funding:
    VW Foundation, funding line "Key Themes in Science and Society"

    Project participants:
    Prof. Dr. Vera King (spokesperson; Goethe University & Sigmund Freud Institute Frankfurt a.M.
    Prof. Dr. Benigna Gerisch, International Psychoanalytic University, Clinical Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Berlin.

    Collaborators:
    Dr. Diana Lindner

    Description:
    "The project focuses on the contradictory consequences of a logic of optimization based largely on quantitative growth, a logic that has acquired additional significance in the course of the digital transition. By means of a threefold project design, the productive and counter-productive dimensions of this 'numbers oriented' approach and of the measurement of life are examined both in the context of organizational and individual optimization processes and with regard to their intersubjective and psychological meanings.

    The project thus builds on its predecessor entitled “Aporias of the drive to perfection in accelerated modernity. The contemporary cultural transformation of self-projections, modes of mutual relation and bodily practices” (APAS), funded by the Volkswagen Foundation as part of its programme 'Key Themes in Science and Society'. APAS studied the significance and consequences of demands for the optimization of social practices in different areas of society and in terms of changes to cultural norms and constructs of 'normality' and 'pathology'.” (Source: https://www.sigmund-freud-institut.de/index.php/forschung/forschungsschwerpunkte/das-vermessene-leben-produktive-und-kontraproduktive-folgen-der-quantifizierung-in-der-digital-optimierenden-gesellschaft/External link)

    More Information: www.ipu-berlin.deExternal link and www.sigmund-freud-institut.deExternal link

     

  • Completed Projects

    #Socio-ecological transformation and (post-)growth societies

    DFG Centre for Advanced Studies – Post-Growth Societies research group: : "Land Take, Acceleration, Activation, Dynamics and the (De-)Stabilization of Modern Growth Societies"

    Applicants:
    Prof. Dr. Klaus Dörre, Prof. Dr. Stephan Lessenich, Prof. Dr. Hartmut Rosa

    Funding:
    DFG

    Duration:
    October 2011 – March 2021

    Description:
    see Dörre Section

    More Information:
    www.kolleg-postwachstum.de de 

     

    #Time, Subject and World Relations in Transformation

    Linguistic Apprehensions of the Material Experience of Time: The relationship between the aesthetics of things and social meaning in metaphors of time

    Director:
    Prof. Dr. Hartmut Rosa, University of Jena, Chair of General and Theoretical Sociology

    Duration: 01.02.2017-31.01.2020

    Funding:
    DFG, part of Priority Programme 1688 "Ästhetische Eigenzeiten" (Aesthetic Intrinsic Times)

    Project participants:
    Dr. Sabine Ziegler, Seminar for Indo-European Studies at the Institute for Oriental Studies, Indo-European Studies, Prehistoric and Early Historic Archaeology at Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

    Collaborators:
    Samuel Strehle

    Description:
    “The German proverb ‘Grass doesn't grow faster when you pull at it’ appears above a German garage. It evokes two different experiences: The act of tugging at blades of grass is almost directly, physically present within it as a quasi-material, aesthetic experience, even though the propositional sentence structure does not contain it. At the same time, we understand the sentence in its social context as a metaphorical critique: if we don't let things develop in their own time, we'll destroy them. The interdisciplinary project run jointly in Sociology and Linguistics examines the relationship between these two levels of temporality, guided by four mutually interwoven questions:

    • How are thing-aesthetic modes of experience, especially thing-aesthetic intrinsic times (dingästhetische Eigenzeiten), actualized pragmatically (in linguistic terms) and imbued with social meaning through the use of metaphors of time?
    • How are such temporal metaphors integrated into the cultural and institutional practices of contemporary societies?
    • What changes have acted upon metaphorical structures of language and linguistic practices since the 18th century?
    • What insights regarding the transformation of material (dinglich), temporal and social relationships in the world of contemporary Late Modernity can be acquired on the basis of the characteristic ‘double coding’ of metaphors of time (thing-aesthetic and social meaning) from the mode and extent of their dissemination?” (Source: https://www.aesthetische-eigenzeiten.de/projekt/zeitmetaphern/beschreibung/)

    More info on the project hereExternal link