Author: Dr. Stephan Pflaum

Teaser What happens when the social fabric tears apart? When laws cease to matter, institutions crumble, and yesterday’s neighbor becomes today’s threat? Zombie narratives—from George Romero’s groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead (1968) to the sprawling epic of The Walking… read more / weiterlesen When the Dead Walk: Zombie Narratives as Mirrors of Societal Breakdown and Reconstruction

Du hast stundenlang an deinem CV gefeilt. Die Formatierung sitzt, die Rechtschreibung stimmt, und du denkst, es sieht gut aus. Aber hast du dir mal überlegt, wie ein Personalerin deinen CV tatsächlich liest? Spoiler: Nicht so, wie du vielleicht denkst…. read more / weiterlesen Wie Personaler:innen deinen CV lesen – Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen

Teaser Why does a piece of paper or a digital entry command such power over human relationships, social hierarchies, and even our sense of self-worth? Money appears neutral—a mere tool for exchanging goods—yet it shapes our deepest social bonds, structures… read more / weiterlesen The Sociology of Money: From Simmel’s Philosophy to Contemporary Monetary Orders

Master, Promotion, MBA oder LLM? Wann macht welcher Abschluss Sinn? Viele Studierende fragen mich: „Soll ich nach dem Bachelor direkt den Master dranhängen? Brauche ich eine Promotion? Oder ist ein MBA das Richtige für mich?” Aus meiner Beratungs- und eigenen… read more / weiterlesen Was willst Du eigentlich?

“As long as I write and draw, my brain doesn’t turn against me.” This raw confession captures something fundamental about creative expression that sociology has long recognized but rarely examined through the lens of everyday practice: we cannot see ourselves… read more / weiterlesen Socialfriction.com 2025/12/01: Writing and Drawing Against the Self.

Teaser “As long as I write and draw, my brain doesn’t turn against me.” This raw confession captures something fundamental about creative expression that sociology has long recognized but rarely examined through the lens of everyday practice: we cannot see… read more / weiterlesen Writing and Drawing Against the Self: Creative Expression as Social Practice in an Opaque World

24.11. – 30.11. Seven days. Seven blogs. Twelve explorations into why society works the way it does. What do narcissistic validation loops, failed utopian architecture, and algorithmic border controls have in common? They’re all windows into the structural forces shaping… read more / weiterlesen When Likes Become Needs, Brutalist Dreams Crumble, and AI Reshapes Power: A Week in Sociology

Teaser In an era where “likes” function as social currency and follower counts shape self-worth, the boundary between healthy self-presentation and pathological validation-seeking has become increasingly blurred. This post examines how sociological frameworks—from Cooley’s looking-glass self to Bourdieu’s symbolic capital—illuminate… read more / weiterlesen Narcissism and the Addiction to Recognition: A Sociological Analysis of Validation-Seeking in the Digital Age

What does it mean when a notification triggers a neurochemical cascade indistinguishable from substance anticipation? This analysis investigates social media likes as a sociological phenomenon where Skinnerian reinforcement schedules meet Goffmanian impression management, and where Mertonian strain collides with surveillance… read more / weiterlesen Addicted to the Like: A Sociology of Social Media Validation

Teaser Artificial intelligence appears as computational innovation, but its development depends on a global network of dependencies more complex than any previous technology: Taiwanese semiconductors fabricated with Dutch lithography machines, trained on American cloud infrastructure, powered by data from billions… read more / weiterlesen The Geopolitics of Intelligence: AI Dependencies, Alliances, and Europe’s Struggle for Technological Sovereignty

Teaser Imagine walking into your family home and acting like a polite guest—ignoring your parents’ familiar greetings, asking “where should I sit?” at your own dinner table, treating your childhood bedroom like a hotel room. This uncomfortable experiment, designed by… read more / weiterlesen Acting Like a Stranger at Home: What First-Generation Students Teach Us About Class, Identity, and Belonging

Teaser First-generation students from non-academic households face a painful paradox: university promises opportunity but demands you sometimes become someone unrecognizable to the people who raised you. The conflict between educational advancement and working-class loyalty is framed as inevitable—climb the ladder… read more / weiterlesen Between Two Worlds: Educational Upward Mobility and the False Choice of Class Betrayal

Du denkst, Stipendien sind nur etwas für die Überflieger:innen mit 1,0-Schnitt? Falsch gedacht. Die deutsche Stipendienlandschaft ist deutlich vielfältiger, als die meisten glauben. Tatsächlich gibt es hunderte von Förderprogrammen, die sich nicht primär an den Noten orientieren. Manche fördern spezifische… read more / weiterlesen Stipendien: Nicht nur für Einser-Kandidat:innen

Teaser Germany’s population pyramid reads like a condensed social history: two World Wars, a euphoric baby boom, the “Pillenknick”, large migration waves – and now the steep retirement of the Baby Boomer generation. In the 2020s and 2030s, the largest… read more / weiterlesen Echoes in the Population Pyramid: Germany’s Demographic Shocks from 1914 to 2040

Teaser Who decides who can move, when, and on what terms? John Urry’s mobilities paradigm reveals that movement is never merely technical—it is deeply political. As AI systems increasingly orchestrate the flows of code, carbon, people, and packages, they encode… read more / weiterlesen Algorithmic Mobilities: John Urry’s Paradigm and the Governance of Movement in the Age of AI

Teaser In 1972, the controlled demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis was broadcast on national television—a spectacle that architectural historian Charles Jencks famously declared “the day Modern architecture died.” But was it really architecture that failed, or… read more / weiterlesen Machines for Living, Monuments to Failure: The Sociology of Brutalist Social Housing