Author: Dr. Stephan Pflaum

Morgen ist deine Chance: Das Karriereforum an der LMU! 🎯 Morgen findet das Karriereforum des LMU Career Service statt – und du solltest unbedingt dabei sein! Warum? Weil Networking keine Theorie ist, sondern gelebte Praxis. Und genau diese Übung macht… read more / weiterlesen Netzwerke live & local, gleich Morgen!

Teaser (90 words) When commentators describe soccer as “going to war,” when coaches demand players “execute the game plan,” and when fans cheer for their team to “destroy the opposition”—what social reality are we constructing? Norbert Elias argued that modern… read more / weiterlesen “Fire the Cannon!”: Military Language in Soccer and the Ambivalence of Performative Violence

Viele Studierende nutzen LinkedIn erst nach der Bewerbung. Dabei kannst du die Plattform viel strategischer einsetzen: Nimm VOR deiner Bewerbung gezielt Kontakt zu Unternehmensvertreterinnen auf – etwa zu Recruiterinnen oder Alumni deiner Uni, die dort arbeiten. Warum ist das wertvoll?… read more / weiterlesen Kontakt aufnehmen BEVOR du dich bewirbst – warum das smart ist 💡

Teaser Two proverbs haunt modern consumer society: “Twenty seconds on your lips, twenty years on your hips” and “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Both condense centuries of economic wisdom into bite-sized warnings about hidden costs, delayed consequences,… read more / weiterlesen Twenty Seconds on Your Lips, Twenty Years on Your Hips: The Sociological Economics of ‘Free Lunch’ Illusions

Opening Hook The email arrives: “Free pizza for all students attending tonight’s career talk!” You’re broke, hungry, and the library closes in an hour. Obviously you go. But as you bite into that slice, a recruiter sits down beside you…. read more / weiterlesen There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch: The Sociology of Hidden Costs and Reciprocity

Opening Hook You’re in the university cafeteria at 2 PM. You skipped breakfast because of an 8 AM lecture. Lunch was a hurried sandwich between seminars. Now you stand before the dessert counter: fresh chocolate cake glistening under the lights,… read more / weiterlesen Twenty Seconds on Your Lips, Twenty Years on Your Hips: The Sociology of Short-Run vs. Long-Run Decisions

Viele Bewerbungsratgeber sprechen vom „Lebenslauf”, als wäre dein Leben einfach nur vor sich hinplätschert. Dabei ist das Gegenteil der Fall: Du gestaltest dein Leben aktiv und entwickelst dich dabei. Deshalb bevorzuge ich den Begriff „Persönlicher Werdegang”. Dieser kleine Unterschied macht… read more / weiterlesen Dein CV ist kein “Lebenslauf” – er ist dein “Persönlicher Werdegang” 🎯

Teaser The deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse at age 27 have cemented a haunting legend in popular culture: the Club 27. But is 27 truly a dangerous age for musicians, or is… read more / weiterlesen The Club 27 Myth: A Sociological Autopsy of Celebrity Death, Addiction, and Cultural Memory

Teaser When Berger and Luckmann argued that societies construct reality through habitualization and legitimation, they provided tools for understanding how shared meanings stabilize into institutions. Von Glasersfeld radicalized this insight: knowledge never mirrors reality but constructs viable fits within experience…. read more / weiterlesen From Social Construction to Synthetic Realities: How Deepfakes Challenge Epistemic Institutions

Teaser When a facial recognition system fails to identify Black faces, when a translation algorithm defaults to male pronouns for professions, when recommendation systems amplify Western cultural norms—these are not mere technical glitches. They are symptoms of what Boaventura de… read more / weiterlesen When Algorithms Become Colonizers: Boaventura de Sousa Santos and the Fight for Cognitive Justice in AI

Viele Studierende planen ihre Karriere von Praktikum zu Praktikum, von Semester zu Semester. Doch wann hast Du Dein Ziel eigentlich erreicht? Die Antwort auf diese Frage ist Dein persönliches Karriere-Leitbild. Nimm Dir heute ein paar Minuten Zeit und vervollständige diesen… read more / weiterlesen Dein Karriere-Leitbild: Woran erkennst Du, dass Du etwas geschafft hast?”

Teaser The European Union’s AI Act represents the world’s first comprehensive regulatory framework for artificial intelligence—a massive bureaucratic apparatus designed to manage technological risk. But what would Max Weber, sociology’s theorist of bureaucracy and rationalization, make of this regulatory machinery?… read more / weiterlesen Max Weber and the EU AI Act: Bureaucratic Governance Between Rationalization and the Iron Cage

A sociological investigation into why contemporary stratification feels different from class struggle Opening Hook Have you ever tried to discuss politics with someone from “the other side” and felt like you were speaking different languages (Habermas, 1984)? Or scrolled through… read more / weiterlesen Are Bubbles the New Classes? When Social Worlds Stop Colliding

Opening Hook: The Perfect Post You’re scrolling through Instagram at 2 AM, procrastinating on that sociology paper. You notice something strange: the “aesthetic” posts from travel influencers all look… identical. Same color grading. Same caption structure (“Can’t believe I get… read more / weiterlesen Influencers and Structuration: You Shape the Algorithm, the Algorithm Shapes You

Opening Hook Have you ever noticed how engineering labs feel different from psychology seminars? How legal theory discussions have different gender dynamics than economics lectures? Last semester, a female computer science student is one of three women out of 20… read more / weiterlesen Why Is Your Discipline Still Gendered? Mapping Gender Studies Across Academic Boundaries

Teaser We curate our online selves for recommendation algorithms, not just human eyes. Goffman’s 1959 dramaturgical theory assumed human audiences with shared cultural knowledge—but what happens when your “backstage” gets leaked to your professional network by Facebook’s algorithm, or when… read more / weiterlesen When the Audience Is an Algorithm: Erving Goffman Meets AI-Mediated Impression Management