Global Sociology of Elite Conflict

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Daniel Bultmann
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 532724419

The planned research project links topics in peace and conflict research with a global sociology of the elite, using examples from Asia (Cambodia), Africa (Ghana), Latin America (Argentina), and Spain. The goal is to conduct an analysis of "power elites" (according to Charles Wright Mills) as a social field in the sense of Pierre Bourdieu. On the one hand, the project examines the effects of societal upheavals, conflicts, and violent events on the structure of the field. On the other hand, the project examines different social groups in the field, differences in their habitus, and their socio-historical origins. However, the focus of the field analysis is not purely on a national level. Rather, the fields of power and the processes affecting them are also analyzed as transregional and global configurations. The fields of power are not congruent with the national "container" (Ulrich Beck) for various reasons. The project develops 1) the socio-historical origins of power elites, 2) the current social structure of the power elite, 3) a discourse analysis of the imagination of power in the field of power, and 4) an analysis of the habitus types within the elite and their conflict patterns. Various methods such as historical studies, social network analyses on social media, participant observations at elite events, habitus-hermeneutical interviews, and discourse material produced by the actors under investigation are used to generate data. The study explicitly focuses not on political, cultural, or economic functional elites, but on the power elite of each country, which exercises control over the state apparatus, the economy, and dominant cultural and religious institutions through the occupation of positions of power.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants