BRE_F_02 Qualitative Panel: Milieu-specific Practices of Threatening and Strengthening Social Cohesion

Objectives / Research Questions

The qualitative panel study makes an empirical-analytical contribution to the investigation of practices of “doing social cohesion” in a methodologically innovative way. It focuses on work and family life as well as other life-worlds of individuals (micro- and meso-level) and includes socioeconomic conditions and the infrastructures or public goods that enable or endanger social cohesion (macro-level). The central questions of the qualitative panel include all elements of the general research heuristics of RISC – with a special focus on social practices as they are shaped by attitudes, social relations, and cooperation contexts, and shape them, in turn. The guiding questions are as follows:

• What explicit or implicit attitudes towards social cohesion do the various status groups and milieus show in their conduct of life?
• In which social relationships and networks and in which institutional contexts does the conduct of life take place?
• Which practices of the conduct of life – on one’s own side or by others – result from these personal ideas and social contexts? Which of these practices can have a threatening or strengthening effect on social cohesion? How is this effect perceived and how is it responded to? Or are the negative or positive effects on cohesion trans-intentional effects?

Thematic reference to social cohesion

The panel survey allows for a systematic comparison not only between different milieus but also between respondents from the same milieu and for their understandings of effective social cohesion, some of which are conflictual and some of which are consensus-based. The establishment of a qualitative household panel in selected regions of Germany, which includes various occupational status groups and social milieus (local upper classes, middle classes, precariously employed groups, or unemployed groups), will allow for the analysis of social practices in their interplay between different spheres of life (work, family, neighbourhood, etc.) and in their changes over time (as expectations and planning for the future and as reactions to and adjustments to changes). On this basis, it can be specifically investigated what intended and unintended effects that social practices in different status groups and milieus have on the strengthening and endangering of social cohesion.

At the Bremen section, the milieus of the middle classes and their biographical orientations and practices of the conduct of life are considered in greater depth in their effects on social cohesion.

At the Göttingen section, the special focus is on the interplay between work life and other life-worlds, as well as on the partly conflictual sociostructural positioning of various occupational and social status groups and on the resulting processes of solidarity loss.

In the panel study, the respondents are considered not only as individuals but also in their collective relations – as members of a household, family members, work colleagues, or neighbours. From these relationships and networks, their attitudes towards social cohesion and their practices that weaken or strengthen it are understood. In addition, the activities of the interviewees are viewed holistically in the qualitative panel as a diachronic and synchronic conduct of life. In contrast to other surveys, social practices and attitudes are not conceptualized as resulting from isolated moments of life and in sphere-specific isolation – for example, as political commitment today separate from consumer action or professional career aspirations and from political commitments yesterday.

Special attention is paid to two types of inter-milieu relations that are important for social cohesion: Firstly, how strongly do social milieus in families, friendships, neighbourhoods, associations, work organizations, educational institutions, civil society organizations, and media discourse spaces connect and mix, and to what extent do they seal themselves off from each other and understand each other less and less? Secondly, how great is the perceived or even deliberately sought competition with other milieus for social status, and what cross-milieu solidarity exists? Both relations are also framed by institutional contexts that can be shaped by political action.

Just as social cohesion thus results from practices of the conduct of life, these, in turn, are shaped by the nature of the social cohesion that exists. It is precisely this micro-macro connection that is central for our analysis. In what way is the state of society reflected in each individual conduct of life and, conversely, how does the state of society emerge from the manifold figurations of the conduct of life? In this micro-macro interplay, the meso-level can by no means be ignored but plays an indispensable intermediate part in the form of social structures that shape action and of collective and corporate actors – for example as work organizations, welfare state service providers, political parties, or citizens’ initiatives.