Die neue “LTI” der Mamma Italiana? Klemperers Erbe im Zeitalter des “neuen” Nationalkonservatismus
Die neue “LTI” der Mamma Italiana? Klemperers Erbe im Zeitalter des “neuen” Nationalkonservatismus <h2><b>Mein soziologisches Tagebuch [EN below]</b></h2> Heute habe ich die Schlagzeile „<a href=”https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/neue-rechte-in-italien-giorgia-meloni-la-mamma-italiana-100.html”>Neue Rechte in Italien: Giorgia Meloni – La Mamma Italiana“ (DLF – Essay & Diskurs vom 25.01.26)</a> ausgewählt. Der Kern der Meldung liegt in der Analyse der politischen Bewegung in Italien, […]
Der Anomische Käfig der 40-Jährigen: Émile Durkheim und die Sinnkrise der Optimierungs-Generation
Der Anomische Käfig der 40-Jährigen: Émile Durkheim und die Sinnkrise der Optimierungs-Generation <h2><b>Mein soziologisches Tagebuch [EN below]</b></h2> <h2>Heute habe ich die Schlagzeile „Millennials in der Midlife-Crisis: Der Marathon der Selbstoptimierung“ (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Essay, 26.01.2026) ausgewählt. Der Kern der Meldung liegt in der Analyse der existenziellen Erschöpfung einer Generation (geboren ca. 1980–1995), die trotz permanenter Anstrengung, […]
Dialectics as a Fundamental Principle of Sociological Thinking
Teaser Why do sociological theories often contradict each other? Because contradiction isn’t the problem—it’s the solution. Dialectical thinking teaches us to make oppositions productive rather than resolve them. Overview / Content Quick Navigation: Total Reading Time: 35-60 minutes (modular – choose your sections) A. Sociological Snippet for Quick Readers Reading time: 5-10 minutes What Is […]
When LinkedIn Became Facebook: The Sociological Anatomy of Professional Self-Display
Teaser LinkedIn was supposed to be different. The platform promised a refuge from Facebook’s performative chaos—a space where credentials spoke louder than vacation photos, where expertise mattered more than aesthetics. Yet scroll through your feed today and you’ll find the same theatrical dynamics: selfies garnering thousands of likes while dense industry analyses languish with double-digit […]
The Social Construction of Laughter: How Power Dynamics Shape Satire, Irony & Humor
Teaser When is a joke funny—and when does it cross the line into cruelty? This question haunts every comedian, satirist, and social critic who wields humor as a weapon. From Dadaist provocations against war to contemporary debates about “punching up” versus “punching down,” the boundaries of acceptable humor are constantly negotiated through social interaction. What […]
When the Self Can No Longer Cope: A Sociological Reading of Dissociative Identity
A Sociological Perspective on Multiple Personality Parts Teaser When social demands become unbearable, the self may fragment to survive. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)—formerly known as multiple personality disorder—is typically understood as a psychiatric condition rooted in severe childhood trauma. But what if we read it sociologically? Through the lenses of Goffman’s dramaturgical self, Mead’s social […]
Writing and Drawing Against the Self: Creative Expression as Social Practice in an Opaque World
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 ourselves with our own eyes, and others cannot truly know what we think. Social situations […]
Between Two Worlds: Educational Upward Mobility and the False Choice of Class Betrayal
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 or stay loyal, but never both. Yet this binary is a trap. Sociological analysis reveals […]
Between Waking and Dreaming: The Social Construction of Sleep in the Age of 24/7 Capitalism
Teaser Sleep represents “the last bastion of non-capitalistic society” in our relentlessly productive age, yet billions of people struggle nightly with this most fundamental biological necessity. While neuroscientists map REM cycles and psychologists probe the unconscious through dreams, sociology reveals how sleep itself has become a contested terrain where inequality reproduces itself, capitalism colonizes consciousness, […]
When The Machine Stops: Forster’s Prophetic Vision Meets Our Algorithmic Present
Teaser In 1909, E.M. Forster imagined humanity living in isolated cells, entirely dependent on an omnipresent Machine for survival, communication, and meaning. Today, as we navigate pandemic-accelerated digital transformation, AI-mediated relationships, and platform capitalism’s grip on daily life, his dystopian fiction reads less like speculation and more like documentary. This essay examines how Forster’s narrative […]
Twenty Seconds on Your Lips, Twenty Years on Your Hips: The Sociological Economics of ‘Free Lunch’ Illusions
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, and the illusion of costless pleasure. What appears as simple folk wisdom reveals deep sociological […]
The Friction Between Normal and Abnormal: From Foucault’s Asylum to Maté’s Toxic Culture
Teaser Who decides where the line between sanity and madness falls? From medieval fool’s freedom to modern psychiatric wards, the boundary between “normal” and “abnormal” has shifted dramatically—yet the mechanisms of exclusion persist. Michel Foucault revealed how institutions don’t just treat madness but actively produce it through normalization. Now, Gabor Maté argues that what we […]
The Pendulum of Open Society: Between Foucault’s Oscillation and Poe’s Descent
Teaser For decades, Western democracies celebrated their trajectory toward openness—expanded rights, recognition of difference, cosmopolitan solidarity. Yet today we witness a rollback: borders harden, authoritarian gestures return, and pluralism faces renewed hostility. Is this merely a Foucauldian pendulum—power’s predictable oscillation between expansion and contraction—or does it resemble Poe’s sinister tale, where the pendulum descends ever […]
When the Self Dissolves: Identity Fragmentation Between Social Voices and Clinical Reality
Alt text: Abstract representation of identity fragmentation showing a central self dissolving into scattered orange, blue, and teal circular forms with radiating lines on dark background, symbolizing the dissolution of coherent selfhood under social pressures. Teaser What happens when the “I” drowns in a flood of social expectations, when the self becomes so porous that […]
Questions about Ernie & Bert
(rev. by Claude.ai) Thoughts about a Queer Counterpublic A Sociological Seminar Paper Abstract This text examines the decades-long cultural debate surrounding Sesame Street characters Ernie and Bert through the theoretical framework of publics and counterpublics. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s foundational work on the public sphere, Nancy Fraser’s critique and concept of subaltern counterpublics, and Michael […]
Membranes of Meaning: How Social Systems Create Friction Through Inclusion and Exclusion
Teaser Every social system draws a line. Inside: recognition, participation, belonging. Outside: invisibility, exclusion, friction. From Parsons’ pattern variables to Luhmann’s autopoietic closures and Nassehi’s digital observations, systems theory reveals how societies generate their most consequential tensions not despite their boundaries, but precisely through them. What happens at the membrane where systems decide who counts […]