Full Professor of General Sociology

General sociology deals with the fundamental categories of sociological analysis (such as social action and social norms), classical and contemporary theories of sociology and related disciplines, the history of the discipline, epistemology, scientific theory and, especially, cultural or—to use Heinrich Popitz’s term—elementary sociological questions.

Culture refers to the totality of constructively created and institutionalized forms of life, in which people regulate their dealings with each other, with the external world and with their inner psychological world. These forms of life are specific and historically malleable responses to fundamental social challenges, such as the distribution of power, the organization of material (re)production and the resolution of conflicts. From a sociological point of view, culture is therefore not a social subdomain alongside politics, economics or law, but an expression of a socially specific approach to universal problems.

The preferred method used at the chair is historical and intercultural comparison. The goal is to carry out a historically and ethnographically saturated theoretical analysis of and reflection on socialization in general—the key question here is: “How is social order possible?”—and, more specifically, on socio-cultural evolution, in which the central question concerns which structural features and developmental tendencies characterize particular societies.

In research and teaching, the tension between universality and diversity, between the continuity and the changeability of human forms of life, are addressed. In this way, students have the opportunity to interpret and evaluate descriptions and diagnoses of contemporary society in light of a historical-cultural field of comparison and forces. In this way, they are sensitized to influences and long-term trends in social development that are often neglected by problem-oriented approaches to social research that are focused purely on the present.