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One of the byproducts of World War II of which society is hardly aware is the new stage of development which the social sciences have reached. This development indeed may prove to be as revolutionary at the atom bomb. Applying cultural anthropology to modern rather than "primitive" cultures, experimentation with groups inside and outside the laboratory, the measurement of sociopsychological aspects of large social bodies, the combination of economic, cultural, and psychological fact-finding, all of these developments started before the war. But, by providing unprecedented facilities and by demanding realistic and workable solutions to scientific problems, the war has accelerated greatly the change of social sciences to a new development level. The scientific aspects of this development center around three objectives: (1) Integrating social sciences. (2) Moving from the description of social bodies to dynamic problems of changing group life. (3) Developing new instruments and techniques of· social research. Theoretical progress has hardly kept pace with the development of techniques. It is, however, as true for the social as for the physical and biological sciences that without adequate conceptual development, science cannot proceed beyond a certain stage. It is an important step forward that the hostility to theorizing which dominated a number of social sciences ten years ago has all but vanished. It has been replaced by a relatively wide-spread recognition of the necessity for developing better concepts and higher levels of theory. The theoretical development will have to proceed rather rapidly if social science is to reach that level of practical usefulness which society needs for winning the race against the destructive capacities set free by man's use of the llatural sciences. I should like to survey certain concepts and theories which have emerged mainly from experimental research. They concern: (a) Quasi-stationary social equilibria and social changes. (b) Locomotion through social channels. (c) Social feedback processes and social management. The last two of these will be dealt with in a later article. A cursory introductory discussion of certain aspects of the present state of affairs in social science is included here for those readers who are interested in the general background of these concepts and in the problems from which they have sprung.
This article is concerned with the specification and estimation of relationships whose dependent variable is qualitative in nature (such as "yes" or "no"). It discusses logit equations with and without interaction, and the estimation procedure is generalized least squares. Part I deals with dependent variables that take only two values, part II with variables taking more than two values, and part III describes informational measures for the explanatory power of the determining factors. The discussion of more advanced technical matters is contained in various appendixes.
The present essay is the revised version of a talk given at the meeting of the German Sociological Association (DGS) on 'Social Theory and Social Practice', which was held on 16-18 February 1989 in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Bielefeld. The original German version of that talk was published in Jenseits der Utopie : Theoriekritik der Gegenwart / ed. by Stefan Müller-Doohm. - Frankfurt : Suhrkamp, 1991, S. 15-47: "Soziologie und Zeitdiagnose: oder: Die Moderne im Selbstbezug" s.a. http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/volltexte/2007/3906/
Depth hermeneutics—as developed by LORENZER within the framework of the Frankfort School's program of critical social research—represents a methodological and systematic approach to psychoanalytic research. The new ways and means by which a neo-Nazi utilises his visit to the Auschwitz Memorial to arouse further anti-Semitism are to be investigated by means of a scene-by-scene interpretation of his filmed appearances—first as a good-mooded tourist, then as a volatile right-wing extremist, as competent expert, and as rebellious adolescent. The aim is to demonstrate how the meaning of these role plays develops within the tension between a manifest and a latent significance. The results of this process of interpretations form the basis for clarifying the question: what patterns of socialisation are used by this "yuppie-neo-Nazi" to fascinate particularly adolescents?? In conclusion, the way in which through his post-modern film-production the producer turns Auschwitz into a test-ground where the neo-Nazi can do "a merry dance on the volcano", is analysed.
Quest and query: interpreting a biographical interview with a turkish woman laborer in Germany
(2003)
Hülya, a young woman who came to Germany from Turkey at the age of 17 in pursuit of a better life looks back at the age of 31. In her biographical query she relates her experiences to a social commentary on the hard and inhuman conditions of contract labor. At the same time she is critical of the common sense notions that suffering and social problems are the main consequences of labor migration. In our analytical query of "doing biographical analysis" we discuss how we interpreted Hülya's narrative and commentary in socio-historical context and also in relation to the discourse on migration from Turkey. We looked for terms to analyze agency and suffering within biographical accounts without giving priority to either of them. Referring to the analysis of another case and to the concept of "twofold perspectivity" we describe how both suffering and also pursuing one's potential are negotiated in biographical quests and queries.