Soziologie
Call for Papers: “Community, Work and Family” Conference 2025 in Bielefeld
The call for papers for the 10th International Community, Work and Family Conference is now open and runs until 30 June 2024. Submissions can contribute to the topic of community, work and family in general or accepted sessions in particular. All details on the call for papers, available sessions and further information regarding the whole conference can be found on the ICWF website.
The ICWF Conference will take place at Bielefeld University on 25-28 March 2025 and hosts debates on changing structures, policies and practices of community, work and family. It is organized in collaboration with the journal Community, Work and Family published at Taylor & Francis. The Organizing Committee at Bielefeld University is formed by Anja-Kristin Abendroth, Sonja Blum, Mareike Reimann and Antje Schwarz.
[Weiterlesen]Professor Gil Eyal hält Niklas-Luhmann-Gastprofessur 2024
New Article published in European Policy Analysis
The introduction of the German mandatory lobbying register on the national level in March 2021 marks an unexpected and substantial policy change after a 16-year-long debate about stricter transparency measures. Maximilian Schiffers (University of Duisburg-Essen) and Sandra Plümer (Bielefeld University) explore this sudden policy change in their new article titled Identifying Causal Mechanisms of Unexpected Policy Change: Accumulated Punctuation in the Field of Lobbying Transparency in Germany published in European Policy Analysis (EPA).
Within their article, Schiffers and Plümer discover that policy change is triggered by the shift in influence among the actors involved. In this context, they identify a combination of three mechanisms including the end of a de-thematization of the policy issue, growing dominance of the issue network favoring stricter transparency regulations, and issue validation through the accumulation of scandals. These findings of this case study contribute to a refined theoretical understanding of the causal mechanisms of policy change.
Article: Schiffers, M. & Plümer, S. (2024). Identifying causal mechanisms of unexpected policy change: Accumulated punctuation in the field of lobbying transparency in Germany. European Policy Analysis, early view https://doi.org/10.1002/epa2.1205.
[Weiterlesen]New publication by Sebastian Sattler in Social Science & Medicine on a situational test of the Health Belief Model
Taflinger, S., Sattler, S.
(2024): A Situational Test of the Health Belief Model: How
Perceived Susceptibility Mediates the Effects of the Environment
on Behavioral Intentions. Social Science & Medicine
346: 116715 [Link]
Objective: Existing evidence regarding the role of perceived susceptibility in shaping preventative health behavior is mixed for the Health Belief Model (HBM). To clarify whether and under which conditions perceived susceptibility affects preventative behavior, this study aims to better understand how situational environmental factors affect perceived susceptibility, thereby shaping health decisions, and whether this mediation relationship is conditioned by other HBM cognitions, namely perceived benefits and severity.
Methods: Therefore, we employed a scenario-based experiment in a large, representative sample of the German population (N = 4,802) in April 2022. Respondents were presented with a fictional invitation to a social gathering, which mimicked a post in a messenger group chat. The invitation included five experimentally manipulated scenarios: no COVID-19 preventative measure implemented, a COVID-19 test is required; either testing negative, being vaccinated, or being recovered from COVID-19 is required (known as 3G in the German context); reduced number of attendees; or the social gathering occurred outside. Moreover, perceived susceptibility to contract COVID-19 at the social gathering and perceived severity and benefits (independent of the scenario) were measured.
Results: We found evidence that perceived susceptibility mediates the relationship between each implemented preventative measure and willingness to attend the social gathering. The effect of the preventative measures on perceived susceptibility and the indirect effect of the preventative measure on attendance via perceived susceptibility were moderated by perceived benefits. However, there is lack of robust evidence that perceived severity moderates the effect of perceived susceptibility on attendance.
Conclusion: In summary, our study provides evidence that individuals perceive and adapt their perceptions and behavior to preventive measures in a given situation, which speaks to the dynamic nature of the cognition perceived susceptibility. Moreover, our findings suggest a promising avenue forward for the HBM is to examine how the cognitions and the environment together shape preventative health behavior.
Workshop "Computational Social Science: Bridging Data and Methods with Theory and Applications"
Die Arbeitsgruppe Applied Social Data Science (Kühne) der Fakultät für Soziologie veranstaltet am 6. und 7. Mai 2024 an der Universität Bielefeld (ZiF) einen Workshop zum Thema Computational Social Science (CSS). Der zweitägige Workshop soll CSS-Wissenschaftler:innen aus ganz Deutschland zusammenbringen und eine Plattform für Networking, Austausch und die Diskussion von Forschung in diesem dynamischen Bereich bieten.
[Weiterlesen]Projektstart Infra4NextGen – Make it Digital
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Vortragsreihe "Gender-Care-Relations" im SoSe 2024
Im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung des Masters Gender Studies und in
Kooperation mit dem IZG findet im Sommersemester eine
Vortragsreihe zu "Gender-Care-Relations". Die Vorträge loten die
multidimensionalen Verschränkungen zwischen Gender und Care aus.
Weitere Informationen werden in Kürze auf den Seiten des IZGs zu
sehen sein.
The good life in late-socialist Asia: Aspirations, politics, and possibilities - publication announcement
We are pleased to announce the publication of the positions:asia critique special issue “The good life in late-socialist Asia: Aspirations, politics, and possibilities” guest edited by Minh T. N. Nguyen, Phill Wilcox and Jake Lin: https://read.dukeupress.edu/positions/issue. Below is the table of content of the issue.
This special issue emerged from a conference under the same title in Bielefeld in 2019 from which another special issue has been published by the European Journal of East Asian Studies, under the title “Rural Life in Late Socialism: Politics of Development and Imaginaries of the Future”: https://brill.com/view/journals/ejea/20/1/ejea.20.issue-1.xml, which later became an open-access book in updated form with Brill: https://brill.com/display/title/63621?rskey=s2AkuQ&result=4
Best regards,
The good life in late-socialist Asia: aspirations, politics, and possibilities
Guest Editors’ Introduction
Minh T. N. Nguyen; Phill Wilcox; Jake Lin
Articles
Plugged into the Good Life: Living Electrically through the Ages in Urban Vietnam
Dancing and Rapping the Good Life: Sharing Aspirations and Values in Vietnamese Hip-Hop
Philanthropy Fever from Below: On the Possibilities of a Good Life in Late-Socialist China
The Good Life as the Green Life: Digital Environmentalism and Ecological Consciousness in China
Protecting the Body, Living the Good Life: Negotiating Health in Rural Lowland Laos
Summer Happiness: Performing the Good Life in a Tibetan Town
Michael Kleinod-Freudenberg; Sypha Chanthavong
Afterword: What Good Life, and Why Now?
Neue Westfälische berichtet über Forschung von Cristóbal Moya, Sebastian Sattler, Carsten Sauer und Shannon Taflinger zu sozialen Normen bei COVID-19 Impfungen
Ethics Policy Advice and Adhocracy - New blog entry as part of the German-British joint project on “Ethics and Expertise”
In a recent blog entry for the research project "Ethics
and Expertise beyond Times of Crisis: Learning from international varieties of
ethics advice", Lars Wenzel (University
Bielefeld) delves into the concept of “Ethical Adhocracy”, developed during the
preceding pilot project. The article discusses how ethics advice in Germany and
the UK evolved in an ad hoc way during the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting a
shift away from traditional demands on decision-making structures.
Ausschreibung wiss. Hilfskraft mit BA Abschluss
In der Arbeitsgruppe Politische Soziologie (Prof. Dr. Holger Straßheim, Dr. Alejandro Esguerra) wird zum nächstmöglichen Termin eine studentische Hilfskraft (WHK / BA) im Umfang von 7 Stunden pro Woche für 6 Monate gesucht.
[Weiterlesen]Stellenausschreibung 1 studentische Hilfskraftstelle oder 1. wiss. Hilfskraftstelle mit BA Abschluss
Zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt ist eine studentische Hilfskraftstelle (ohne Abschluss), bzw. bei Vorliegen eines BA Abschlusses eine wissenschaftliche Hilfskraftstelle, mit 9,5 bis 14 Stunden/Woche im DFG-Projekt TwinLife im Team Datenmanagement zu besetzen. Die Stelle ist zunächst befristet bis Ende Juni 2024, mit Option auf Verlängerung.
[Weiterlesen]Job advertisement 1 student research assistants (WHF), up to 9h/week for 6 months
We are looking for a research assistant (with BA degree), to support Dr John Berten in the preparation of a third-party grant proposal on “Global Governance by Gaps”. The position is funded through the Faculty of Sociology’s research funding scheme (fakultätsinterne Forschungsförderung). Working hours are up to 9h/week; for the period of six months. You will be linked to the working group “German and Transnational Social Policy”, Prof. Dr. Alexandra Kaasch, Faculty of Sociology. Start date: as soon as possible (between 1 April and 1 May 2024).
[Weiterlesen]Studie zu Wissenschaftskulturen erschienen
Im Auftrag der VolkswagenStiftung ist soeben eine Studie zu Wissenschaftskulturen in Deutschland erschienen. Die Studie verweist auf signifikante kulturelle Differenzen innerhalb des Wissenschaftssystems und zeigt, dass das Verhältnis zwischen Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft in den untersuchten Feldern (Soziologie, Environmental Humanities, KI-Forschung und synthetische Biologie) sehr unterschiedlich definiert wird. Die Studie kann hier heruntergeladen werden.
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Contribution to the “International Workshop on Policy Theories in Europe”
Sandra Plümer and Tim Paulsen represented the working group of Sonja Blum at the latest “International Workshop on Policy Theories in Europe” at the KPM Center for Public Management in Bern. One of the event’s main purposes was to prepare a special issue for the journal European Policy Analysis (EPA) through presentations of papers and subsequent discussions.
Thematically, the workshop aimed towards working on the status quo and future development of policy process theories along leading researchers and workshop participants from 21 countries. Researchers from Europe and North America talked about topics like the status of current policy process research, missing ideas in the theories and cross-cutting concepts.
Sandra Plümer was invited to present her paper on “Strategies for contributing to policy process theory development from the perspective of junior scholars”, co-authored with Hilda Broqvist (Mid-Sweden University) and Malte Möck (Humboldt University).
Sandra Plümer and Tim Paulsen want to thank the organizers of the workshop, Johanna Hornung and Christopher M. Weible. Sandra and Tim gained a deeper understanding of policy process theories as such and much inspiration for future research in this field.
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