The German company is again split time. The handy metaphor for the division in two parts is also provided with a dramatising “always more”: no more splitting was, apparently, than it is today. Optionally, in the left and right, up and down, rich and Poor, East and West, or, very topical: in the that is a great Worry to society’s racism, and those that would have to be the racists. Or, at least, the phenomenon of the discrimination of people based on their skin color rather indifferent face. What has the political sociology of their current research to the understanding of social divisions in the country?

In a recent contribution to the magazine “Leviathan” has shown Michael Zürn from the social science research center Berlin for social research the state of the debate within the sociology of the now concise. With some distance to the heated debate around the question of whether racism is in the police more of a Problem of the Americans, or even a reason for concern, the dominant line of Conflict of globalised societies, as the opposition of Communitarians and Cosmopolitans to describe. It attacks a little too short, but in Essence, this polarization can also be used as the division of society into globalization losers and winners represent. A concise characterization has faced as well as the home-related and the “Frequent Flyers” to each other. Now they are arguing in the research for around 20 years, whether we should understand this new conflict rather socio-economically, socio-culturally or socio-politically. The three big questions, the columns at the moment, our societies, touching on these three dimensions equally: How open or closed the national borders for migrants are supposed to be? The Transfer of policy competences to European and international institutions is the only alternative? And finally: what is the relationship of individual rights and political majority decisions?

frequent flyer against Communitarians

The scientist Zürn addresses the current sociological research for this purpose, two reprimand – a larger and a smaller. The latter relates to the socio-political Dimension of the conflict, the current research ignore, so Zürn. Therefore, it remains for this research is also puzzling why so many who lose out to Globalisation – the so-called Communitarians – the right-wing populist parties chose, although you have but the Left is revenge a lot more social protection promise. Zürn, according to the come would only believe the promises of the Right unitaristen however, because they have responded to their sense of political exclusion and powerlessness. In particular, the issue of the refugees have contributed to the impression that a policy of open borders will be rejected by a majority, but never to the political Disposition date. Drastically Zürn formulated, that the “perception of a political class that is completely out of touch with the ordinary people do their thing, and the interests of a spoiled and tend to corrupt the cosmopolitan class” is used, expanding from this Moment on “rapidly.”

Zürns second reprimand is serious. In the sociological research to the lines of conflict in the modernization of a “history of philosophical teleology,” keep yourself hidden, the hurt, the bid of scientific value freedom. The concepts of Communitarians and Cosmopolitans had the explicit goal of bringing the two ideological positions behind it at eye level or equivalence. Other authors, criticized Zürn, worked with terms, producing a “theoretical asymmetry” between the two Camps. The modernisation losers and the legal voters, in the end mourned to the nation-state, as would be the case of these authors as “atavistic brake” towards the modernisation of the society. If Zürn, a notes that he self-level on the basis of personal “normative aspects” of the two positions, of course, not even as “equivalent”, but for scientific reasons, on this symmetry, then he meets with his censure sociology in a very sensitive spot. He hits you in the question of how much it is in this social conflict, as science itself is a party.