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Overview

Overview

The MA degree course Modern Societies and Cultures is a research-oriented response to sociological diagnoses of current social challenges. Current social diagnoses indicate that the conflicts of contemporary societies are increasingly expressed in cultural terms (religion, faith, lifestyle, milieu, but also different scientific cultures). While on the other hand the category of the culturally becomes reflexively accessible to the actors.

Therefore, the concept of culture is from the point of view of social self-organisation not unproblematic, because culture can appear at the same time

  • as a normative instance with its own validity logic,
  • as the object of conflict and
  • as a resource.

The corresponding dynamics and reflective significance of the cultural in the articulation of social problems forms the centre of the courses of studies.
The focus of your studies is the acquisition of sociological reflection knowledge and articulation skills in relation to the cultural dimension of social challenges. Students acquire these skills through activating forms of teaching and learning and through cooperation with other institutes of Justus Liebig University within the framework of cooperation modules. These cooperation modules provide you with a perspective on areas of social conflict and problems both through sociological analysis and through the corresponding specialist knowledge from the cooperating subjects.
The course is characterised by its theoretical orientation and its sociological-transdisciplinary orientation (cf. cooperation modules).

The core area of the study programme is about

  • the mediation of different concepts of the relationship between culture and society,
  • to explore different perspectivations of the concept of culture, and
  • its shift into reflection in contemporary societies.

In this context, the development of sociological cultural concepts in the second half of the 20th century in particular should be taken into consideration and newer discussions should be included, for example:

  • life world analysis
  • constructivism,
  • linguistic turn,
  • practice/performative turn,
  • pictorial turn,
  • deconstruction,
  • theory of practice,
  • science and technology studies.

Methodological and methodological questions are dealt with in close connection to empirical questions.