Sociological Knowledge and Ideology in the German Democratic Republic: The Institutionalization Processes of a Discipline

Grüning, Barbara

doi:10.14746/sr.2019.3.1.03

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…However, the fact that no further editions of the sociological dictionary were issued testifies to how the bureaucratic structure of the sociological field—the chain of control on the organization of scientific work and the production of scientific output—delayed the institutionalization of the discipline. Other indicators are meaningful to mention here, such as the long process needed to reform the teaching programs at Humboldt University, which was nevertheless possible thanks the enterprise of Artur Meier, and the setting-up of a sociological journal, which happened only just before German reunification, thanks to the efforts, among others, of Artur Meier, Manfred Lötsch and Hansgünter Meyer (see Grüning, 2019; Sparschuh and Koch, 1997). While these slow-paced transformations let us reflect upon how the interplay between the scientific/academic field and the bureaucratic field (the GDR-State) also depended on the position of a discipline in the disciplinary hierarchy, they also provide some insights on certain trends in the final years of the GDR-State.…”

Section: The Sociological Field In East Berlinmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, this perspective is mostly based on content analyses of published sociological works, though most research reports and projects were for "internal use" and belonged to the Graue Literatur ("grey literature") (cf. Grüning, 2019). 2 Thus, despite their similar ideological and theoretical premises, the two kinds of products differed with respect to their recipients, their scientific and political functions and, consequently, with respect to their linguistic styles and approach to theory and empirical research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Marxist sociology in East Berlin (1949–1989): A field-spatial analysis

Grüning

2023

Journal of Classical Sociology

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The main objective of the paper is to identify the logic of the sociological field in the GDR, looking at how it was spatialized in the city of East Berlin. In this regard, I am less interested in providing an overview of the different research streams of the main sociologists operating in the scientific and academic institutes located in Berlin than in reconstructing some crucial dynamics at work there and highlighting their effects at the social and symbolic levels. The underlying idea is that, especially in East Berlin, the sociological knowledge produced was less homogeneous than it has been represented in the existing literature. Without negating the existence of shared aspects characterizing Marxist-Leninist sociology, also superimposed on the political elite, a field analysis enables us to see how the different positions and trajectories of GDR-sociologists had an impact on their approaches to theoretical, epistemological, and methodological questions, and on their understanding and uses of concepts deriving from both Marxist-Leninist and “bourgeois” sociology. In the analysis, I will first compare the social trajectories of two of my interview-partners as paradigmatic of two different sociological habitus depending on their different academic/political socialization, networks, and positions in the field. As a second step, I will present a sketch of the sociological field drawn from 63 curricula of sociologists active in East Berlin in an attempt to pinpoint, on a larger scale, the homologies between the social and symbolic spaces of the field. Thus, the underlying idea is to examine the intersection of the “quasi-structural properties” of the field with its “phenomenological aspects” concerning the “feel for the game.” While the two understandings of field are interdependent, it is in the second one that the physical space as a localized social space played a crucial role in defining the material, social, and cultural constraints and opportunities actors faced which, in turn, influenced their practices and choices.

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Section: The Sociological Field In East Berlinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marxist sociology in East Berlin (1949–1989): A field-spatial analysis

Grüning

2023

Journal of Classical Sociology

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“…The role of Stasi officers within the fields of cultural production was less relevant than has usually been figured. In the musical field (but we can say the same for the academic field, see Grüning, 2019), they were the last ring of a control chain, but they did not directly determine the epistemological boundaries and symbolic structure of the field itself. What they shared with other State representatives was mostly a bureaucratic habitus, which highlights in turn their distance from the dynamics and struggles occurring in the field.…”

Section: Reframing the Gdr-state From A Field Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Spaces as Political Spaces: The Musical Field of the German Democratic Republic

Grüning

2022

Cultural Sociology

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This article examines the relationship between music and politics in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), departing from the crucial role the State played there in organizing, and controlling all fields of cultural production. Much of the literature on the subject either depicts the interaction between the State and artists as unidirectional or represents their relationship as highly conflictual due to contrasting understandings of culture and its functions. In both cases, this tendency to dichotomize makes it hard to explain, for instance, how music genres that had arisen in Western countries could flourish in the GDR despite the official understanding of ‘socialist music’ propagated by the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Conversely, by adopting a field perspective, this article aims to highlight how musicians, the State, and Party representatives competed to shape the symbolic space of the GDR musical field. Hence, instead of understanding Party and State decisions as merely applications of ideological principles, a field perspective enables us to consider them as resulting from strategies, depending on both the objective position occupied in the musical field and its spatial-material dimension, and as aimed at maintaining their own power within it. The political elite succeeded, then, in actualizing its strategy of legitimating emerging music genres which were potentially disrupting until it was able to provide musicians with physical cultural spaces for developing their careers and, at the same time, expressing criticisms. On the other hand, from the 1950s, localized music scenes were created which proposed an alternative understanding of music to the official one without, however, refusing the core principles which structured the GDR musical field. After the end of the 1970s, though, new music scenes were formed which positioned themselves outside the institutionalized music spaces and places, refusing in this way the rules of the GDR musical field and questioning its very existence.

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National Identity and Social Welfare: the Example of the German Minority in Opolskie Voivodeship

Lemańczyk

Baranowski

2020

rpn

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This article aims to characterise the positive and negative aspects of being a national minority, using the example of the German minority in the Opolskie Voivodeship and the category of social welfare in the sociological sense. In order to conceptualise and operationalise the idea of national identity, attention has been focused mainly on its cultural determinants, with particular emphasis on the role of language and organisational activity. The empirical exploration of the research questions was based on surveys, carried out by the authors of the article on behalf of the Social-Cultural Society of Germans in Opole Silesia (SCSG) in the summer of 2019, among members of the German minority organisation. [1] The research was carried out in the period from June to August 2019 as part of the SCSG's campaign entitled “The German minority has a value”, financed by the Polish Ministry of Interior and Administration.

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Sociological Knowledge and Ideology in the German Democratic Republic: The Institutionalization Processes of a Discipline

Cited by 3 publications

References 15 publications

Marxist sociology in East Berlin (1949–1989): A field-spatial analysis

Marxist sociology in East Berlin (1949–1989): A field-spatial analysis

Cultural Spaces as Political Spaces: The Musical Field of the German Democratic Republic

National Identity and Social Welfare: the Example of the German Minority in Opolskie Voivodeship

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