Author: Dr. Stephan Pflaum

Teaser Alcohol, gambling, social media, and other drugs promise relief—but they also collide with our values, identities, and plans. This essay uses cognitive dissonance as a bridge between craving and conduct, weaving together social psychology with leading models of addiction… read more / weiterlesen Addiction, Craving, and the Social Psychology of Cognitive Dissonance

Teaser I’m starting this project because I can’t stop asking a simple question with complicated answers: what does society have to do with addiction? This blog is my public lab—where I think aloud, test ideas, and build a book—drawing on… read more / weiterlesen Sociology of Addiction — Addicted to Sociology: Why I Do This Blog

Teaser I raise a metaphorical glass to Pierre Bourdieu and ask: What would he tell us about alcohol and other forms of addiction? I read addiction through Bourdieu’s core concepts—habitus, field, capital, doxa, illusio, symbolic violence—to show how tastes, coping… read more / weiterlesen A Glass of Bordeaux with Bourdieu — Alcohol, Addiction, and the Social Space of Habits

Teaser Before diving into fieldwork, I’m taking stock of Michel Foucault and the governmentality tradition to ask how “addiction” gets constituted as a problem, managed as a risk, and lived as a practice of the self. This reading pays special… read more / weiterlesen Foucault on Addiction as a Social Phenomenon — Government, Confession, Biopolitics

Teaser Alcohol is pharmacologically a central nervous system depressant—yet millions reach for it as if it were an antidepressant. This essay unpacks that paradox across neurobiology, psychology, sociology, and economics, and it honors the rational-choice lens that I learned from… read more / weiterlesen Alcohol as Depressant, Used as Antidepressant: Why This Teufelskreis Persists

Teaser I start this project with a book that influenced me deeply: Gabor Maté’s In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (Maté, 2010). It is an award‑winning, humane, and rigorously argued guide to addiction’s social roots and to more compassionate responses…. read more / weiterlesen Gabor Maté’s In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts — a sociological reading, with a salute to Jack London

Addiction is often framed as an individual pathology — a matter of brain chemistry, trauma, or personal weakness. Yet when I look closer, addiction reveals itself as a profoundly social phenomenon. It emerges in relationships, routines, and institutions; it reflects… read more / weiterlesen Introduction: Thinking Sociologically About Addiction

Don’t ask what AI is; watch what people do to make AI outputs accountable and reasonable in situ. The action lives in the micro-work—how users format prompts, gloss odd answers, repair breakdowns, and achieve “that’ll do” as a local social… read more / weiterlesen What would Harold Garfinkel say about AI & Society?

Let’s read AI with Butler as a machine for performing norms: labels and benchmarks don’t just find identities; they iteratively make some lives legible and leave others precarious. The task is not only to de-bias but to trouble the grids… read more / weiterlesen What would Judith Butler say about Sociology & AI?

AI with Foucault is like power/knowledge in motion: classification machines that help produce the very subjects they claim merely to detect. Governmentality shifts as optimization logics quietly govern bodies, cities, and selves. Foucault’s question is not “who has power?” but… read more / weiterlesen What would Michel Foucault say about AI & Society?

I hear bell hooks asking whether AI deepens domination—or helps us build a culture of love, justice, and learning. They would bring an ethic of freedom from the classroom to the platform, demanding that design and governance confront what she… read more / weiterlesen What would bell hooks say about Sociology, Society & AI?

I love the hyphenated power of sociology: sociology of work, technology, knowledge, cities, emotions, culture, organizations, risk, and time. Each hyphen broadens the view, reflecting all social issues and related disciplines. Sociology has become a compass in my life (see… read more / weiterlesen The “Hyphen Power” of Sociology

AI with Weber is a new chapter in rational-legal domination—efficient, calculable, and legitimated by technical expertise. The iron cage has received a software update; only counter-institutions that preserve discretion, ethics, and vocation can keep human purpose alive (Weber 1922/1978). Introduction… read more / weiterlesen What would Max Weber say about AI & Society?

Let’s ask with Durkheim how AI becomes a social fact—a way of acting and judging that is external to individuals yet exerts constraint. Gains in coordination can travel with anomie when innovation outruns collective rule-making (Durkheim 1895/1982; 1897/1951). Introduction Durkheim… read more / weiterlesen What would Émile Durkheim say about AI & Society?

Teaser AI in Tönnies’ eyes might be seen as a deepening of Gesellschaft—impersonal, calculative relations becoming the norm—while platforms simultaneously simulate Gemeinschaft through personalization, branding, and affective design. My guiding question is whether this synthetic intimacy can repair the social… read more / weiterlesen What would Ferdinand Tönnies say about AI & Society?

I read AI with Comte and Saint-Simon as a twin project: a new phase of positive science that promises prediction and coordination—and a political task to organize industry and knowledge for the common good. The hard question they force on… read more / weiterlesen What would Auguste Comte & Henri de Saint-Simon say about AI & Society?