Dreamwork and its grades of sociality

• Applicant: Dr. Björn Krey
• Subject Area: Sociological Theory
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 503719065

This project turns dreaming into an object of sociological research. It contributes to the disciplinary discourse in three aspects: First, because dreaming has not been investigated appropriately yet it addresses a gap in the research literature. The project focusses on different social fields and investigates the frameworks for dreaming within these fields. Secondly, the project contributes to a sociology that investigates the sociocultural qualities of cognition and emotion. Dreaming is conceived as an experience enabled by socialized bodies and an ritual, spatial and temporal organization. Thirdly, the project contributes to the theoretical discourse of the discipline. The investigation of the empirical phenomenon of dreaming is the starting point of an analysis of grades of sociality. To do so, it examines levels of activity of the dreaming experience, of the physicalness of snoozing and sleeping as well as of the communication and reflection of the dreamt alone and in relations to others. To achieve its objects, the project focusses on two fields: the educational field of dream forums and dream courses via digital media as well as in physical presence and the scientific field of sleep and dream research where dreaming is turned into an object of analysis, diagnostics and therapy. In this fields, dreaming is explicated as an experience as well as a social behavior which is made accessible to the sociological research as well. The project investigates both fields with methods of sociological ethnography, autoethnography and qualitative interviewing. It relates to the professions of sociology, sociology of cognition, sociology of emotion, sociological theory and qualitative research.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants