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This paper challenges widespread assumptions in trust research according to which trust and conflict are opposing terms or where trust is generally seen as a value. Rather, it argues that trust is only valuable if properly justified, and it places such justifications in contexts of social and political conflict. For these purposes, the paper suggests a distinction between a general concept and various conceptions of trust, and it defines the concept as a four-place one. With regard to the justification of trust, a distinction between internal and full justification is introduced, and the justification of trust is linked to relations of justification between trusters and trusted. Finally, trust in conflict(s) emerges were such relations exist among the parties of a conflict, often by way of institutional mediation.
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, social restrictions and social distancing policies forced large parts of social life to take place within the household. However, comparatively little is known about how private living situations shaped individuals experiences of this crisis. To investigate this issue, we analyze how experiences and concerns vary across living arrangements along two dimensions that may be associated with social disadvantage: loneliness and care. In doing so, we employ quantitative text analysis on open-ended questions from survey data on a sample of 1,073 individuals living in Germany. We focus our analyses on four different household structures: living alone, shared living without children, living with a partner and children, and single parents. We find that single parents (who are primarily single mothers) are at high risk of experiencing care-related worries, particularly regarding their financial situation, while individuals living alone are most likely to report feelings of loneliness. Those individuals living in shared houses, with or without children, had the lowest risk of experiencing both loneliness and care-related worries. These findings illustrate that the living situation at home substantially impacts how individuals experienced and coped with the pandemic situation during the first wave of the pandemic.
Zwei traditionelle Wirkungsbereiche von Intellektuellen, die politische Medienöffentlichkeit und das akademische Feld, unterliegen seit über drei Jahrzehnten anhaltenden strukturellen Veränderungen. Diese gelten vielfach als Ursache einer tiefen Krise oder sogar des Verschwindens der Intellektuellen. Doch um welche Veränderungen geht es dabei genau, und wie restrukturieren sie die gegenwärtige Rolle und Funktion von Intellektuellen? Zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen entwickelt der Beitrag einen Ansatz, der die struktur- und erfahrungsbezogenen Bedingungen intellektueller Praxis fokussiert und historisch vergleichend analysiert. Um eine Vergleichsfolie zu gewinnen, wird die intellektuelle Praxis Theodor W. Adornos analysiert. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Adorno die charakteristischen Widersprüche öffentlichen und akademischen intellektuellen Engagements methodisch aufrechterhielt, indem er eine Position des „Dazwischen“ reklamierte. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden seit den 1970er-Jahren forcierte strukturelle Veränderungen der Medienöffentlichkeit und des akademischen Feldes als Prozesse der „Vereindeutigung“ interpretiert, die eine widerspruchsaffine intellektuelle Praxis erschweren. In der Folge lassen sich eine ausgeweitete kommerzielle sowie eine eingeschränkte akademische Intellektuellenpraxis beobachten, die jeweils politisch wirksame Interventionen begrenzen.
Die Soziologin Carlotta Giustozzi hat sich in ihrer Dissertation mit den Folgen von Marginalisierung auf dem Arbeitsmarkt für soziale Teilhabe beschäftigt. Aus den Ergebnissen ihrer Arbeit hat sich unter anderem die Frage ergeben, inwiefern ein gesellschaftlicher Fokus auf Vollzeiterwerbsarbeit schädlich für Individuum und Gesellschaft sein können.
The intergenerational transmission of gender: paternal influences on children’s gender attitudes
(2022)
Objective: This study provides the first systematic longitudinal analysis of the influence of paternal involvement in family life—across childhood and adolescence—on the gender-role attitudes of children by the age of 14 or 15.
Background: Recent research suggests that, in post-industrial societies, paternal involvement in family life is increasing. Although previous studies of paternal involvement have considered paternal influences on children's cognitive or socio-emotional development, such studies have not yet addressed paternal influences on children's attitudes toward gender. Relatedly, previous studies on the intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes have analyzed maternal influences, but have neglected the significance of paternal influences. This study engages both strands of the research by analyzing the effects of paternal behaviors on children's attitudes toward gender roles.
Method: Multivariate linear regressions models were estimated on data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC); a survey with biannual observations over 10 years for 2796 children born between 1999 and 2000.
Results: Fathers' time spent on childcare during childhood was associated with gender-egalitarian attitudes in children by the age of 14 or 15. The most powerful predictor of children's gender-role attitudes, however, was the amount of time fathers spent on housework during children's adolescence, both absolute and relative to the amount of time mothers spent on housework. Fathers' unpaid labor at home was as relevant for children's gender-role attitudes as mothers' paid labor in the workforce. These results held after controlling for maternal domestic behaviors and for the gender-role attitudes of both parents.
Conclusion: Father involvement in childcare and housework during childhood and adolescence play an important role in shaping children's gender-egalitarian attitudes.
Although scholars hypothesized early on that social belonging is an important predictor for voting behavior, its role for populist voting remains empirically ambiguous and underexplored. This contribution investigates how different aspects of social belonging, that is, quality, quantity, and perception of one's own social relationships, relate to electoral abstention and to populist voting on the left and right. Employing multilevel regression models using data from four waves of the European Social Survey, this study finds that all measures of social belonging foster turnout, but they exert an incoherent influence on populist voting depending on the party's ideological leaning. While social belonging plays a subordinate role for left populist support, strong social belonging reduces the probability to support populist parties on the right. With that, the study analysis offers a nuanced view on how different dimensions of social belonging relate to electoral behavior. By doing so, this study sheds light on what aspects of social belonging encourage, or inhibit, which form of “protest at the ballot box.”
In this article, we propose to develop a realist interpretation of political progress—that is, an analysis of what it means to achieve better conditions of life in society under political power according to realist standards. Specifically, we are interested in identifying the criteria according to which political realism defines a change in the status quo as a desirable change...
For some years, the German public has been debating the case of migrant workers receiving German benefits for children living abroad, which has been scandalised as a case of “benefit tourism.” This points to a failure to recognise a striking imbalance between the output of the German welfare state to migrants and the input it receives from migrant domestic workers. In this article I discuss how this input is being rendered invisible or at least underappreciated by sexist, racist, and classist practices of othering. To illustrate the point, I will use examples from two empirical research projects that looked into how families in Germany outsource various forms of reproductive work to both female and male migrants from Eastern Europe. Drawing on the concept of othering developed in feminist and postcolonial literature and their ideas of how privileges and disadvantages are interconnected, I will put this example into the context of literature on racism, gender, and care work migration. I show how migrant workers fail to live up to the normative standards of work, family life, and gender relations and norms set by a sedentary society. A complex interaction of supposedly “natural” and “objective” differences between “us” and “them” are at work to justify everyday discrimination against migrants and their institutional exclusion. These processes are also reflected in current political and public debates on the commodification and transnationalisation of care.
The sixth sanction package of the European Union in the context of the aggression against Ukraine excludes Sberbank, the largest Russian bank, from the SWIFT network. The increasing use of SWIFT as a tool for sanctions stimulates the rollout of alternative payment information systems by the governments of Russia and China. This policy white paper informs about the alternatives at hand, as well as their advantages and disadvantages. Careful reflection about these issues is particularly important, given the call for an “Economic Article 5” tabled for the next NATO meeting. Finally, the white paper highlights the need for institutional reforms, if policymakers decide to return SWIFT to the status of a global public good after the war.
Cryovalues beyond high expectations: endurance and the construction of value in cord blood banking
(2022)
Cryopreservation attracts attention as a practice grounded in high expectations: current life is suspended for future use—to generate life, to save life, and to resurrect life. But what happens when high expectations in cryobanking give way to looming uselessness and the risk of failure? Based on ethnographic insights into the case of umbilical cord blood (CB) banking in Germany, this contribution investigates the liminal state of “non-failure.” Averting failure amid a lack of success in this field requires putting effort into the construction of value. The resulting practices and dynamics overflow generic stories of commercialization and instrumentalization of biological material and are best grasped as an expanded version of the recently coined notion of “cryovalue.” The long-term availability of cryopreserved CB facilitates the steady yield of social and economic capital beyond and after promise. Moreover, the value construction is reoriented from CB itself toward the socio-technical cryo-arrangements in which it is embedded. In exemplifying how it expands the understanding of the diversity of valuation and valorization practices, continuities, and economic endurance in cryoeconomies and bioeconomies, the paper advocates the study of their ambivalent and allegedly uneventful sites.
Studies of occupational sex segregation rely on the sociocultural model to explain why some occupations are numerically dominated by women and others by men. This model argues that occupational sex segregation is driven by norms about gender-appropriate work, which are frequently conceptualized as gender-typed skills: work-related tasks, abilities, and knowledge domains that society views as either feminine or masculine. The sociocultural model thus explains the primary patterns of occupational sex segregation, which conform to these norms: Requirements for feminine (masculine) skills increase with women’s (men’s) representation in the occupation. However, the model does not adequately explain cases of segregation that deviate from these norms or investigate the ways in which feminine and masculine skills co-occur in occupations. The present study fills these gaps by evaluating two previously untested explanations for deviations from the sociocultural model. The findings show that requirements for physical strength (a masculine skill) increase with women’s representation in professional occupations because physical strength skills co-occur with substantially higher requirements for feminine skills that involve helping and caring for others. These results indicate that the sociocultural model, and more generally explanations for how gender norms drive occupational sex segregation, can be improved by examining patterns of gender-typed skill co-occurrence.
By comparing two distinct governmental organizations (the US military and NASA) this paper unpacks two main issues. On the one hand, the paper examines the transcripts that are produced as part of work activities in these worksites and what the transcripts reveal about the organizations themselves. Additionally, the paper analyses what the transcripts disclose about the practices involved in their creation and use for practical purposes in these organizations. These organizations have been chosen as transcription forms a routine part of how they operate as worksites. Further, the everyday working environments in both organizations involve complex technological systems, as well as multi-party interactions in which speakers are frequently spatially and visually separated. In order to explicate these practices, the article draws on the transcription methods employed in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis research as a comparative resource. In these approaches audio-video data is transcribed in a fine-grained manner that captures temporal aspects of talk, as well as how speech is delivered. Using these approaches to transcription as an analytical device enables us to investigate when and why transcripts are produced by the US military and NASA in the specific ways that they are, as well as what exactly is being re-presented in the transcripts and thus what was treated as worth transcribing in the interactions they are intended to serve as documents of. By analysing these transcription practices it becomes clear that these organizations create huge amounts of audio-video “data” about their routine activities. One major difference between them is that the US military selectively transcribe this data (usually for the purposes of investigating incidents in which civilians might have been injured), whereas NASA’s “transcription machinery” aims to capture as much of their mission-related interactions as is organizationally possible (i.e., within the physical limits and capacities of their radio communications systems). As such the paper adds to our understanding of transcription practices and how this is related to the internal working, accounting and transparency practices within different kinds of organization. The article also examines how the original transcripts have been used by researchers (and others) outside of the organizations themselves for alternative purposes.
In ‘Justice and Natural Resources,’ Chris Armstrong offers a rich and sophisticated egalitarian theory of resource justice, according to which the benefits and burdens flowing from natural (and non-natural) resources are ideally distributed with a view to equalize people’s access to wellbeing, unless there are compelling reasons that justify departures from that egalitarian default. Armstrong discusses two such reasons: special claims from ‘improvement’ and ‘attachment.’ In this paper, I critically assess the account he gives of these potential constraints on global equality. I argue that his recognition of them has implications that Armstrong does not anticipate, and which challenge some important theses in his book. First, special claims from improvement will justify larger departures from the egalitarian default than Armstrong believes. Second, a consistent application of Armstrong’s life planfoundation for special claims from attachment implies that nation-states may move closer to justify ‘permanent sovereignty’ over the resources within their territories than what his analysis suggests.
In this paper, we discuss Armstrong’s account of attachment-based claims to natural resources, the kind of rights that follow from attachment-based claims, and the limits we should impose on such claims. We hope to clarify how and why attachment matters in the discourse on resource rights by presenting three challenges to Armstrong’s theory. First, we question the normative basis for certain attachment claims, by trying to distinguish more clearly between different kinds of attachment and other kinds of claims. Second, we highlight the need to supplement Armstrong’s account with a theory of how to weigh different attachment claims so as to establish the normative standing that different kinds of attachment claims should have. Third, we propose that sustainability must be a necessary requirement for making attachment claims to natural resources legitimate. Based on these three challenges and the solutions we propose, we argue that attachment claims are on the one hand narrower than Armstrong suggests, while on the other hand they can justify more far-reaching rights to control than Armstrong initially considers, because of the particular weight that certain attachment claims have.
Introduction
(2021)
Objective: The study investigates the relationship between perceived loneliness and the individuals' attitude whether voting is a civic duty. With that, it is the first study to shed light on the mechanism linking perceived loneliness to voting behavior.
Methods: Two independent, cross-sectional, and representative datasets from Germany (n = 1641) and the Netherlands (n = 1431) are analyzed.
Results: The regression results and effect decomposition techniques show that loneliness is associated with reduced intention to vote as well as a lower sense of duty to vote. The effect of loneliness on voting behavior is partially mediated through a reduced sense of duty.
Conclusion: Loneliness is associated with political disengagement. The study provides empirical evidence that the relationship between loneliness and turnout is partially mediated through sense of duty. This showcases that lonely individuals tend to feel detached from society and are less likely to feel obligated to participate in the electoral process.
This article seeks to build a bridge between the empirical scholarship rooted in the traditional theory of political representation and constructivist theory on representation by focusing on the authorization of claims. It seeks to answer how claims can be authorized beyond elections - selecting three democratic innovations and tracing claims through the claim-making process. Different participatory democratic innovations are selected - providing various claims and taking place in different institutional contexts, i.e., (elected) members of the Council of Foreigners Frankfurt; individual citizens in participatory budgeting procedures in Münster; and citizen’s associations elected politicians in the referendum campaign in Hamburg. We first analyze the claims raised by the different claim-makers to identify their claimed constituency eligible to authorize claims. In the second step, we focus on the authorization by the claimed constituency and the relevant decision-making authority. The article finds that claim-making in democratic innovations is fractured and incomplete. Nevertheless, this is not the reason to dismiss democratic innovations as possible loci of representation; on the contrary, seen through the prism of claim-making, all representation – electoral and nonelectoral – is partial. Focusing on the authorization of claims in democratic innovations provides novel inferences about the potential and limits of democratic innovations for broadening democratic representation.
In Justice and Natural Resources: An Egalitarian Theory (2017), Chris Armstrong proposes a version of global egalitarianism that – contra the default renderings of this approach – takes individual attachment to specific resources into account. By doing this, his theory has the potential for greening global egalitarianism both in terms of procedure and scope. In terms of procedure, its broad account of attachment and its focus on individuals rather than groups connects with participatory governance and management and, ultimately, participatory democracy – an essential ingredient in the toolkit of green politics and policy-making. In terms of scope, because it does not commit itself to any particular moral framework, Armstrong’s theory leaves the door open for non-human animals to become subjects of justice, thus extending the realm of the latter beyond its traditionally anthropocentric borders. I conclude that these greenings are promising, but not trouble-free.
Das illusionäre Moment des »ewigen Aufbruchs« ist durch Corona phasenweise unübersehbar geworden. Doch es mangelt, auch mit Blick auf die ökologische Krise, nach wie vor an nachhaltigem Umsteuern. Ohne ein massives Umdenken ist zu befürchten, dass deren Bedrohungen durch ähnliche Mechanismen verdrängt werden, wie es schon in früheren Krisen der Fall war. Folgenreiche Muster der Bagatellisierung und Verleugnung sind auch literarisch verarbeitet worden am Beispiel des »Schwarzen Todes«.
This paper uses a novel account of non-ideal political action that can justify radical responses to severe climate injustice, including and especially deliberate attempts to engineer the climate system in order reflect sunlight into space and cooling the planet. In particular, it discusses the question of what those suffering from climate injustice may do in order to secure their fundamental rights and interests in the face of severe climate change impacts. Using the example of risky geoengineering strategies such as sulfate aerosol injections, I argue that peoples that are innocently subject to severely negative climate change impacts may have a special permission to engage in large-scale yet risky climate interventions to prevent them. Furthermore, this can be true even if those interventions wrongly harm innocent people.
A reply to my critics
(2021)
It is a real pleasure to reply to so many thoughtful and probing responses to my book. In what follows, I will focus on six key themes that emerge across the various pieces. Some of them call into question core commitments of my theory, and in those cases I will try to show what might be said in its defence. Quite a number of the critics, however, present what we might call expansionist arguments: though they endorse some of the arguments I make, that is – or pick up some of its key concepts – they seek to push them in new and interesting directions. I will suggest that many of those arguments look likely to be successful, though I will also express caution about one or two of them. I doubt, however, that I will be the final judge of their success. Early on in the book I express the hope that it might provide a set of conceptual tools capable of advancing discussions about resource justice more broadly, even for scholars who reject my own idiosyncratic approach. Having made that gambit, I cannot now claim to have a monopoly on the use of the tools in question. Witnessing the use that others have already made of them has been a refreshing and rewarding experience.
This paper argues that land and resource rights are often essential in overcoming colonial inequality and devaluation of indigenous populations and cultures. It thereby criticizes global welfare egalitarians that promote the abolition of national sovereignty over resources in the name of increased equality. The paper discusses two ways in which land and resource rights contribute to decolonization and the eradication of the associated inequality. First, it proposes that land and resource rights have acquired a status-conferring function for (formerly) colonized peoples so that possession of full personhood and relational equality is partially expressed through the possession of land and resource rights. Second, it suggests that successful internal decolonization depends on access to and control over land and resources, especially for indigenous peoples.
This paper argues first that Armstrong is led to see natural resources primarily as objects of consumption. But many natural resources are better seen as objects of enjoyment, where one person’s access to a resource need not prevent others from enjoying equal access, or as objects of production, where granting control of a resource to one person may produce collateral benefits to others. Second, Armstrong’s approach to resource distribution, which requires that everyone must have equal access to welfare, conceals an ambiguity as to whether this means equal opportunity for welfare, or simply equal welfare – the underlying issue being how far individuals (or countries) should be held responsible for the use they make of the resources they are allocated. Third, when Armstrong attacks arguments that appeal to ‘improvement’ as a basis for claims to natural resources, he treats them as making comparative desert claims: if country A makes a claim to the improved resources on its territory, it must show that their comparative value accurately reflects the productive deserts of its members compared to those of countries B. But in fact, A needs only to make the much weaker claim that its members have done more than others to enhance the value of its resources. Overall, Armstrong’s welfarist approach fails to appreciate the dynamic advantages of allocating resources to those best able to use them productively.
Chris Armstrong argues that attempts at justifying special claims over natural resources generally take one of two forms: arguments from improvement and arguments from attachment. We argue that Armstrong fails to establish that the distinction between natural resources and improved resources has no normative significance. He succeeds only in showing that ‘improvers’ (whoever they may be) are not necessarily entitled to the full exchange value of the improvement. It can still be argued that the value of natural and improved resources should be distributed on different grounds, but that the value of improvements should be conceived differently.
The paper analyses the interrelationship between Armstrong’s egalitarian theory and his treatment of the ‘attachment theory’ of resources, which is the dominant rival theory of resources that his theory is pitched against. On Armstrong’s theory, egalitarianism operates as a default position, from which special claims would need to be justified, but he also claims to be able to incorporate ‘attachment’ into his theory. The general question explored in the paper is the extent to which ‘attachment’ claims can be ‘married’ to an egalitarian theory. The more specific argument is that a properly constrained attachment theory is more plausible than Armstrong’s egalitarian theory. Armstrong’s paper also criticizes attachment and improvement accounts as justifying permanent sovereignty over resources. This paper argues that neither of those arguments aim to justify the international doctrine of permanent sovereignty.
Die diesjährige Inhaberin der Alfred-Grosser-Gastprofessur des Fachbereichs Gesellschaftswissenschaften, eine Kooperation mit der Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft Frankfurt am Main, ist Prof. Dr. Astrid von Busekist, seit 2001 Professorin für Politische Theorie an der Sciences Po in Paris. Ihr stadtöffentlicher Vortrag mit dem Titel »Träume von Räumen. Exkurs über die Grenze« findet digital am Dienstag, 23. Februar 2021, um 19.00 Uhr c.t. statt.