FOR 5173:  Reconfiguration and Internalization of Social Structure (RISS)

Profound change in social structure has repercussions for social and political orientations. Social scientists have documented rising political alienation and polarization as well as the surfacing of new cleavages that challenge existing systems of resource allocation and representation. Relating these trends to underlying shifts in social structure poses a critical puzzle. How can we reconcile the notion of a dissolving ‘individualized’ social structure or the end of a ‘politicized’ social structure with humans’ propensity to attach themselves to groups and with current social and political conflicts? Social structural change and its connection to social and political orientations is more complex than research has commonly acknowledged. A classic notion holds that the social and political cohesion of a society is best served when its social structure is characterized by ‘cross-cutting cleavages’ where individuals hold multiple overlapping social positions. Yet, this notion fails to account for the fact that after decades of social mobility and diversification we see less, not more system-stabilizing orientations in advanced economies. The RISS research unit brings together scholars of social structure with political sociologists and proposes a fresh view. Whereas the social structure has changed dramatically, it retains its power to shape the life and orientations of individuals. What we witness is not a dissolution, but a reconfiguration of social structure and a corresponding internalization of newly emerging social positions and group memberships. As former socio-structural dimensions lose their orientating and conflictive force, new dimensions take their place. In order to grasp the social and political transformation of our times, we need to take a closer look at these new social structures and understand how they shape the views, beliefs and preferences of individuals. The key to this understanding is to view social structure as fundamentally multidimensional where numerous social positions combine in intricate ways. Scholars have focused on single dimensions including education, socio-economic status, gender relations as well as migration and ethnic diversity. What we lack, is an understanding of how changes in these dimensions combine to produce reconfigurations in the current social structure. We also need to grasp how individuals internalize and make sense of these reconfigurations, especially new combinations of formerly disconnected social positions. And we must learn how these changes affect individual and collective behaviors and outcomes. We aim to establish a multidimensional conceptualization of social-structural change and develop innovative empirical strategies to capture this complexity. The promise of our approach lies in the ability to build richer theories of how the social structure shapes individual and collective orientations and outcomes and, ultimately, in a better understanding of our troubled times.

DFG Programme Research Units

• Coordination Funds (Applicant Grunow, Daniela )
• Internalized Ethnic and Cultural Reconfiguration: Natives’ Reactions to Increasingly Heterogeneous Immigrant Populations (Applicant Schmidt-Catran, Alexander )
• Internalized Gender and Parenting Norms: Assessing Reconfigurations between Gender, Socio-Economic Status and Immigrant Background (Applicants Becker, Birgit ;  Grunow, Daniela )
• RISS 1: CoRE – Conceptualizing Reconfiguration for Empirical Research (Applicants Grunow, Daniela ;  Khoudja, Ph.D., Yassine ;  Traunmüller, Richard )
• RISS Project 3: Intergenerational Transmission of Work-Family Trajectories in Germany (Trajectories) (Applicant Hofmeister, Heather )
• The Impact of Social Structure, Discrimination and Violence on the German Muslim Community (Applicants Roßteutscher, Sigrid ;  Ruhe, Constantin ;  Traunmüller, Richard )
• The Role of Internalized Efficacy Beliefs for Participation in Education and Political Life (Applicants Becker, Birgit ;  Roßteutscher, Sigrid )

Spokesperson Professorin Dr. Daniela Grunow