The biennial conference of the German Society for Sociology (DGS) with the 2012 headline “Diversity and Coherence” was held during the first week of October at the Ruhr University Bochum. More than 2.100 participants listened to featured lectures, discussed in plenary meetings or learned about recent research in self organized ad hoc groups. CrossWorlds collegiates Kalja Kanellopoulos and Andreas Bischof attended the conference. Andreas presented findings of his Master Thesis (published OpenAccess here) as part of the group “Virtual Worlds: Between Euphoria and Pathologisation – Sociological Approaches and empirical Analyses“.
Beside the subject-matter about social inclusion and cohesion, a lot of interesting issues were highlighted. Ongoing controversies about diverging theoretical approaches to society, like system theory vs. hermeneutical sociology of knowledge, were just one of them. Another very vital field were methodological questions. To this topic some of the most discussed contributions was Schmidt/Scheffer technique of “live sociology“.
Interlinkings between “virtual” and “real”, or technically mediated social phenomena were merely treated on the fringes of the agenda. Very instructive exceptions were the ad hoc groups “Foreigness 2.0 – Handling and Concepts of Foreigness in the Web“, “New Media – New Ways of Life?” and the above mentioned “Virtual Worlds: Between Euphoria and Pathologisation – Sociological Approaches and empirical Analyses” by Nadine Jukschat and Kornelia Sammet.
Andreas Bischof’s talk shows, that sociology doen’t necesarrily needs new theories to cover recent technical and social phenomena like e.g. the use of Facebook. More urgent would be an adjustment of sociological perspectives away from a dichotomia between “face to face interaction” and “technic” towards an understanding of its coaction in use. His empirical findings on teenagers using Facebook for flirting highlights, how technical features and social context of users mutual influence the specific use.
A paper of Andreas Bischof’s talk will follow since it will be part of the conference transcript.
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