PD Dr. Andreas Pettenkofer

Die lokale Politisierung globaler Normen | The local politicization of global norms

Subproject: “Evidential situations. Basic features of a sociological theory of local evidence"

This sub-project aims to develop a systematic sociological approach to the problem of local evidence, which plays a decisive role in explaining the success and failure of local politicization of global norms. At the same time, the project aims to work out some general social theoretical consequences that become apparent when dealing with this empirical subject, but whose relevance extends beyond it.

The aim is to develop a perspective that neither explains social order solely in terms of the assumed inherent dynamics of social macrostructures, nor focuses on given individuals and their supposedly stable orientations ('preferences', 'habitus forms'), but instead emphasizes the role of situations and also understands all 'macro' effects as mediated by situations. At the center is a concept of situations through which an existing order sees its evidence confirmed or loses it, which thus - even where this evidence is not reflexively sought and tested, but initially has an affective character - act as situations of proof. Social order then proves to be the precarious product of a concatenation of situations that consolidate or destabilize existing patterns of interpretation and that can also lend evidence to new patterns of interpretation. The 'actor' with his 'preferences' can also be reconstructed in this way as a variable product of a concatenation of situations. This also helps to grasp more precisely the social mechanisms that drive the kind of profound cultural change that the emergence of new normative ties entails.

The project thus initially ties in with the new moral sociologies (Boltanski/Thévenot, J. Alexander, Joas). It reconstructs these approaches from this reference problem: What different types of local evidence do they describe? Which model situations do they start from? Which social mechanisms do they identify? How is a link established with statements about macrostructures? For this reconstruction, it also uses the theoretical references shared between these approaches: First, they can be read as partly competing, partly complementary links to Durkheim's book on religion, from which different theories emerge about what is or is not confirmed in such proof situations, and through which social mechanisms this happens in each case. A second common point of reference is a reception of pragmatism, some of which is intensive, some of which has only just begun.

These means can also be used to reconstruct the currently much-discussed concept of 'social practices'. This concept is initially very relevant to the question of the conditions of a local politicization of global norms: It sheds light on some of the mechanisms that slow down the initiation of a process of reflection that could lead to the consideration of local processes in the light of more general norms. The basic pragmatist idea that reflexivity is only triggered by specific situations can link theories of 'practices' (as partial theories of the avoidance of reflexivity) and the new moral sociological concepts (as partial theories of the emergence of reflexivity). It also helps to understand in a more differentiated way why the success of new norms, which is based on the reflective comprehension of rational justifications, represents a special case that is full of preconditions. This is because a considerable proportion of the explanations presented under the heading of 'practices' actually refer to the effects of the situation. If this is taken into account, then these explanations can be reconstructed in such a way that the concept of habitus defended by Bourdieu, with its exaggerated assumptions of stability, is no longer needed.

Overall - in order to explain the effectiveness or non-effectiveness of new norms more precisely - not only norm-supporting evidence effects should be recorded, but also opposing evidence effects: Mechanisms that remove present circumstances from scrutiny; mechanisms that deprive the very values by which norm commitments are stabilized of their evidence (Goffman); mechanisms that make morality-free coordination permanent, in part because they promote the impression that any attempt to enforce norms is futile (Gambetta). Thus, this theoretical reconstruction can also help to relate models of norm-oriented action and models of norm-free cooperation to each other in a differentiated way; this also helps to explain the limits and the failure of a local politicization of global norms.

More information about the project "Die lokale Politisierung globaler Normen"

ICAS:MP "Metamorphoses of the Political"

Subproject: "The Moral World of the Indian ‘New Middle Class’"

How can the relationship between economic change and normative change be understood when simple basic superstructure models have lost their plausibility? My project - which is part of the module “Normative Conflicts and Transformations” of the Indo-German project “Metamorphoses of the Political” (ICAS: MP) - addresses this problem through a case study of the Indian so-called new middle class, a social category that emerged in the course of the economic liberalization process in India in the 1990s. Using life history interviews with people who identify themselves as middle class and document analysis, I try to understand how and to what extent the experiences of economic change translate into new moral perceptions. In doing so, I compare narratives of individuals who have lived through the entire process since the early 1990s with narratives of individuals who were already born into a changed economic world; my focus is on Delhi. 

While most research on the Indian 'middle class', like most research on the 'middle class' in general, takes Bourdieu's habitus theory (probably the most sophisticated basic superstructure model currently available) as a conceptual starting point, my project is inspired by the theoretical alternatives offered by the so-called new sociology of morality (Luc Boltanski, Laurent Thévenot, Hans Joas, etc.). 

Therefore, my project attempts to take the self-understanding of people of the “middle class” seriously and to ask through which social experiences certain moral attitudes have become plausible and attractive to them.

More information about the project ICAS: MP "Metamorphoses of the Political"

Kritik und Gewalt. Zur Genealogie der westdeutschen Umweltbewegung | Criticism and violence. On the genealogy of the West German environmental movement

funded by the Jutta Heidemann Foundation | Link