FSP 1: Research projects

Funding body: FWF 
Duration: 1.9.2024-31.8.2027
Project management: Frithjof Nungesser

Project description: Despite the momentous and controversial nature of livestock production, sociology has not yet developed a convincing perspective on the public controversies surrounding this topic. Against this background, the project breaks new theoretical and empirical ground. Theoretically, it combines the sociology of critique with concepts from historical sociology and framing theory. In this way, debates on utility production can be conceptualised not only in their normative plurality as conflicts between different culturally shaped value systems, but also in their historical development. Conflicts over livestock production in Germany over the last 50 years are analysed empirically on the basis of three key legislative changes (1972: amendment of the Animal Welfare Act; 2002: inclusion of animal welfare in the Basic Law; 2023: Introduction of a state animal husbandry label). With regard to these debates, the project team asks 1) which justification arguments are put forward in each of the three debates and by whom (synchronic perspective), 2) how the range and significance of different justifications has changed over time (diachronic perspective) and 3) how the debates have been influenced by broader socio-cultural developments (contextual perspective). The research material originates on the one hand from the parliamentary processes in which the respective legislative amendments are debated and adopted (draft laws, parliamentary minutes, committee statements), and on the other hand from the extra-parliamentary debates in which, for example, business associations, experts, NGOs or social movements position themselves (minutes of public hearings, press releases, open letters, contributions in social media, articles in member magazines). LINK

Funding organisation: ÖAW
Duration: 2019-2025
Project management: Karl Acham and Stephan Moebius

Project description: The interwar period, i.e. the period from 1918 to 1939, is of particular importance for sociology in German-speaking countries, as for the social sciences in general, both on an institutional level and with regard to the history of ideas and methods. At this time, the first chairs for social studies were created in Austria and for sociology in Germany (much earlier in Switzerland), sociological institutes were established and sociological journals were founded. These institutionalisation processes took place against the backdrop of the recently experienced First World War, major economic crises and political conflicts and in an intellectual climate that was also perceived as a crisis in the humanities. It was hoped that sociology, as a new and promising academic discipline, would provide solutions to the crisis.

The project is being carried out within the framework of the Commission for Philosophy and History of Science (KPGW), History of Sociology Working Group, as part of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). It consists of symposia at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), workshop discussions and the publication of a five-volume series under the title Soziologie der Zwischenkriegszeit. Its main currents and central themes in the German-speaking world. Volume 1 was published in 2021, the fifth concluding volume in 2025.

For more information see: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/kgpw/arbeitsgruppen/geschichte-der-soziologie

Fritz Thyssen Foundation (July 2014-July 2017; project sum €120,000)

Project manager: Stephan Moebius
Project collaborator: Martin Griesbacher

Project description: Alongside the representatives of the "Frankfurt School", Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, and Helmut Schelsky from Münster, René König is indisputably one of the central players in the sociological field of post-war West Germany. In view of König's importance for the overall direction, development and consolidation of sociology in the Federal Republic of Germany, particularly with regard to empirical social research, it is all the more astonishing that - in comparison to the Frankfurt School, for example, which has been analysed in many different ways, and despite the ongoing edition of König's 20-volume "Schriften aus letzter Hand" - there is still unprocessed material on his work and teaching.

The research project funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation aims to transcribe and edit René König's Zurich lectures, which were both constitutive for his further teaching at the University of Cologne, which shaped entire generations of sociologists, and thus also for the formation of the "Cologne School", as well as for his academic works.

European Commission (March 2013 to February 2017; project amount: € 300,618)

Project leader: Christian Fleck
Project staff: Rafael Schögler, MA (full-time), Matthias Duller (full-time)
Website: http: //www.interco-ssh.eu/

Project description: The INTERCO-SSH project sets out to assess the state of the Social Sciences & Humanities (SSH) in Europe and to understand the factors that facilitate or hinder international exchanges. It aims to outline potential future pathways that could promote cooperation across disciplinary and national boundaries.

The project uses the tools of the SSH to study the SSH in their socio-historical context, including their relationship with the political and economic powers. It compares the process of institutionalisation of seven academic disciplines in order to identify the sociological factors that have shaped the "academic unconscious" of scholars. Furthermore, it investigates the transfer of knowledge between countries and disciplines, the geographical mobility of scholars and the circulation of ideas.

The project lead to the establishment of a new book series Socio-historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences which publishes as its first three volumes the findings of this collaborative research project. LINK

FWF - Austrian Science Fund (October 2012 to May 2015; project amount: € 269,362)

Project leader: Christian Fleck
Project staff: Dr Christian Daye (full-time), Matthias Duller MA (full-time)

Project description: The project deals with the history of social sciences at the RAND Corporation during the Cold War. The RAND Corporation is a think tank headquartered in Santa Monica, California, that has been closely associated with the U.S. Air Force since its inception. During the 1950s and 60s, the RAND Corporation was the base for many talented young researchers (and a few female researchers) in the fields of mathematics, natural and social sciences. It played an important role in US foreign policy, with its staff providing scientific expertise to government and military decision-makers. Nevertheless, RAND's social science research has received little attention in the history of science.

The project will achieve its goal by analysing three social science methods in the history of science, all of which were developed, if not invented, at RAND: (1) political gaming (an early form of today's simulation game); (2) the Delphi method; and (3) systems analysis. It establishes a conceptual framework that links historical research methods with approaches to the sociology of scientific knowledge, and examines the initial formations of these methods and the transformations and reshapings they underwent in the process of their diffusion to other fields of knowledge and other sites of scientific research.

Funding: Province of Styria, since April 2013
Project manager: Stephan Moebius

Project description: The research project, which is thematically related to the project of the audio-visual source fund on German sociology after 1945, consists of an audio-visual contemporary witness survey of important representatives of Austrian sociology after 1945, funded by the Province of Styria.

Anniversary Fund of the Austrian National Bank and Future Fund of the Republic of Austria (February 2013 to January 2015; project amount: € 115,000)

Project manager: Christian Fleck
Project staff: Claudia Zimmermann (part-time), Carl Neumayr, MA (part-time), Martin Griesbacher, MA (part-time)

Project description: Oskar Morgenstern (1902-1977) is best known in the history of social and economic sciences as co-author of the Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour (1944). His other scientific activities have attracted less attention to date, even though some of them were certainly noteworthy: From 1931 Morgenstern, as successor to F.A. Hayek, headed the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research. He taught at Princeton University from 1938, but returned to Vienna temporarily in the 1960s as Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies. On both continents, Morgenstern trained a considerable number of students and during his almost half-century of academic activity, he wrote a large number of scientific works, which, however, did not find a resonance comparable to Theory of Games. However, what particularly distinguishes Morgenstern from his peers and contemporaries and makes him a unique case is the fact that he wrote diary entries throughout his life. Morgenstern's diary makes it possible to reconstruct his intellectual development step by step. In addition, thanks to the reflections, observations and the mention and description of many of his contemporaries contained in it, the diary represents a source material that can be used for the history of the social sciences. The fact that the diary was handwritten and kept in German and is now part of Morgenstern's academic estate at Duke University in Durham, N.C., has so far limited its use to a very small circle. An edition of the diaries is intended to make this source (more) easily accessible to international researchers.

Research project with Karl-Siegbert Rehberg and Joachim Fischer, funded by the Thyssen Foundation, since April 2009

Project manager: Stephan Moebius

Project description: The research project, which was developed together with Karl-Siegbert Rehberg and Joachim Fischer, initially consists of an audio-visual survey of the oldest and most outstanding representatives of sociology in the Federal Republic of Germany (1945/49 - 1975/1990), funded by the Thyssen Foundation. The project is intended to make an important contribution to reflection on the role of the discipline since 1945 and thus a general contribution to the history of sociology in Germany.

DFG-funded research assistant position (½ TVL 13) on "Marcel Mauss and the elementary discourses of the gift" (October 2007-2010)

Project leader: Stephan Moebius

Project collaborator: Frithjof Nungesser M.A.

DFG-funding of the "Eigene Stelle als Projektleiter" (full Bat IIa) on the "Wirkungsgeschichte des Denkens von Marcel Mauss" at the Institute of Sociology, University of Freiburg i.B. (February 2005-2010)

Project leader: Stephan Moebius