Completed projects

Commensuration processes in financial markets

A DFG research project

It is now widely recognized that the global financial system is not without risk. But what actually makes the financial system a system—that is, a densely interconnected, self-perpetuating, expansion-prone, self-referential entity? This question is rarely asked because the concept of a system is largely considered "burnt out" in sociology. But if we disregard theoretical preferences and aversions, the question is important. If we ask it, we can arrive at the following answer: the systemic nature of the financial system depends on its ability to commensurate, i.e., to make different financial values and financial instruments comparable. Many basic financial instruments (loans, government bonds, stocks) have existed for a long time, but they did not exist in a financial system, but rather as scattered social practices in their respective social milieus—without any strong connection between them. There were no means of systematically comparing and relatively evaluating them. However, in a long historical process, these means were developed, for example in the form of return and risk indicators, diversification and arbitrage techniques, etc. Scattered financial practices became elements of a highly interdependent, highly globally interconnected, and highly dynamic system, each of which reacts very sensitively to changes in others.

The DFG research project investigates commensuration processes in two dimensions:

• Commensuration of derivatives and "simple" financial assets (such as stocks and bonds)
• Commensuration of the banking sector and the shadow banking sector, and thus also the commensuration of money and money-equivalent instruments such as repos, money market funds, and ABCP.

Translation conflicts

The DFG research project begins where the theoretical debate on the theory of functional differentiation usually ends: in everyday practice at specific interfaces, where the difference between different perspectives and logics has empirical social consequences.

How a society that can no longer be legitimately represented and described by a central authority adapts to differences in perspective, and which practical solutions prove effective in dealing with difference, will be examined in three different subject areas:

• Team-based treatment of dying patients in palliative care units
• Organized practice of organ donation
• Public discourse on religious circumcision

The subprojects focus on the everyday negotiation and organizational handling of translation conflicts. The normative model of a consensus reached through argumentation (Habermas) is expressly not to be elevated to a standard; rather, the focus of interest is on low-threshold forms of understanding—practical solutions.

What all contexts have in common is that different perspectives crystallize around specific social problems. However, it is precisely because of the epistemological untranslatability of these perspectives that they give rise to the conditions for practical translation conflicts, which are not crisis-ridden exceptions, but rather the operative norm.

Increased options through productive self-restraint? Resilient structures of experimental institutionalization

Modern societies are characterized by an increase in options for action accompanied by a simultaneous increase in decision-making pressure.

With the law, they have institutionalized procedures that can be used to respond to the exponential increase in decision-making problems. The research project investigates a possible change in legal forms in the regulation of these decision-making conflicts: Are potential "resilience reserves" of the law being lost in this process of change? Or will new legal forms emerge?
Under the heading "legal self-binding mechanisms," the research project therefore analyzes changing decision-making procedures in modern societies.

Institutions can have an action-oriented effect. They either create specific programs and institutionalizations ("ethics commissions") or formulate more abstract principles ("precautionary principle"), which open up new scope for decision-making for those involved.

It can be observed that actors are increasingly forced to react ad hoc without being able to draw on experience. This is because new decision-making situations can less and less be decided on the basis of experience-based knowledge. This calls for new forms of responsibility, transparency, and participation. However, these "solutions" often prove to be ambivalent: too much transparency can reduce decision-making ability, while too much participation can trigger disinterest in political processes.

The research project empirically examines the accompanying change in legal forms at ethics committees (with a focus on the field of biomedicine) and current changes in risk management law (with a focus on chemical regulation).

A project funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Research, Science, and the Arts.

The importance of knowledge in shaping and regulating health and education policy in Europe: similarities and differences between nations and sectors

What knowledge base can policymakers draw on?

How does knowledge circulation between research institutions and politics work?

Questions of this kind are asked and answered as part of the Knowledge and Policy research project. The project examines the intersections between scientific expertise and political decision-making processes. It aims to provide insights into how expertise from relevant scientific fields is incorporated into political decisions in the form of expert panels, committees, or contract research. Aspects of health and education policy in Germany are examined as case studies.

The international research project seeks to identify similarities and differences between the two sectors under investigation, "education policy" and "health policy," as well as between the participating countries. The aim is to trace country- and sector-specific models of how cooperation between science and politics can be structured.

Countries involved:

• Germany
• Belgium
• France
• Norway
• Scotland
• Portugal
• Hungary
• Romania

Reflexive constitutionalism? Legal transformation in the process of reflexive modernization

Proponents of reflexive modernization sociology emphasize that the process of globalization and increasing transnationalization is putting pressure on national forms of regulation and action. It is obvious that the relevant legal forms are changing in the process of regulating and managing the various challenges of the risk society and the unintended side effects of the global risk society. As a consequence of these processes, new forms of transnational law can be observed, which are discussed under the term "emergent law."

The DFG research project attempts to systematize this process of legal policy change in the context of transnational and cosmopolitan order formation and to establish the normative institutionalization of "reflexive constitutionalism" using selected examples. This process of change is examined both in terms of its legal aspects (proceduralization, temporalization, flexibilization) and its legal policy aspects (system of fundamental rights, decision-making rules at the constitutional level). The project also distinguishes between these levels of analysis from a national and a cosmopolitan perspective. Particularly in transnational economic law (medical law, patent law), the emergence of transnational conflict of laws can be observed (changes inherent in the law). The intertwining of national and cosmopolitan perspectives reveals the particular dynamics of the current transformation of legal forms in modern law. In order to highlight the scope of these dynamics, the research project will structure its analysis from the perspective of the state of emergency. Ultimately, developments on both levels raise fundamental questions about the limits and effectiveness of modern law.

Ethics and Organization - Clinical Ethics Committees: Structures for Ethical Decision-Making

The proliferation of ethics committees in various areas of society points to two things: firstly, that modern society must inevitably live with moral diversity, and secondly, that decisions in important areas of society increasingly have to be made without reliable decision-making criteria. This interdisciplinary research project involves theologians and sociologists. While the theological colleagues are primarily interested in the question of how certain standards of Western reasoning can be implemented in current decision-making routines, the sociological participants are interested in identifying semantic and strategic basic structures in ethical decision-making processes.

The study will examine issues relating to social theory, organizational sociology, and the transfer of scientifically based standards to non-scientific contexts. The primary focus of the study will be medical ethics committees.

A DFG research project.

Legal consequences: Risk regulation of new risks using the example of biomedicine

The DFG research project examines the specific risk-related characteristics that can be observed in the current development of biomedicine. The novel "personality risks" in the context of biomedical human technologies, observable "subjectification processes in law," and new debates on fundamental rights serve as a field of investigation to differentiate the resulting lines of conflict in two directions. On the one hand, the constitution and differentiation of new legal subjectivity in the context of biomedicine and its subjective legal forms of expression, which can no longer be easily short-circuited with the previous welfare state rights of institutionalized individualism. On the other hand, possible answers to the conflicts this has caused, which are emerging in the procedural solutions to date and require further differentiation.

Secondly, the project aims to clarify the current diagnosis of a "blurring of boundaries" in politics. It is based on the assumption that empirical observations of new legal subjectivity reveal lines of conflict that not only imply an increase in new subjective rights, but also represent a challenge to existing legal-political forms of institutionalized individualism.

For the empirical further development of the "theory of reflexive modernization," the project thus addresses the question of how the consistent use of "successful technology" gives rise to social side effects that cause a reorganization or questioning of existing institutional boundaries and boundary-setting patterns. In doing so, the research project aims, on the one hand, to clarify the legal theory and legal policy aspects of "subpolitics" and, on the other hand, to develop a legal sociological typology and procedural heuristics for procedural regulations dealing with new risks.

Images of death in modern society

Following the erosion of classic religious and other traditional images of death, this research project investigates images of death that are relevant to everyday life and can be assumed to either replace or expand upon the classic and traditional images of death.

A DFG research project.

Institutional consequences of cognitive uncertainty and normative uncertainty: the example of human genetics

The DFG research project contributes to the discussion on the changing status and significance of "scientific knowledge" in the second modernity. Under the conditions of "reflexive modernization" – according to the hypothesis – the increase in knowledge simultaneously contributes to an increase in ignorance. More scientific knowledge does not necessarily lead to greater certainty, but rather to an increase in cognitive uncertainty and normative insecurity. This problem will be examined using the example of medical technology developments in the field of human genetics.

The project examines three key social institutions whose task is to reduce or compensate for uncertainty from selected perspectives: the professions, the law, and politics. It examines the question of whether and in what way the existing methods used by these institutions to deal with uncertainty are sufficient, at what points they are no longer successful, and in what form signs of new reflexive procedures can be found.

Regulatory and policy issues in human genetics

The development of human genetic knowledge has led to new demands on the legal system. New boundaries must be drawn within the system of subjective rights. For example, human genetic knowledge requires a new balance to be struck between the right to know one's own genetic ancestry and the right not to know. The state's duty to protect must also be renegotiated in light of the fundamental right to "bioethical self-determination" enshrined in general personal rights. In addition, developments in human genetics affect our understanding of personal identity. Forms of intimacy are being politicized, resulting in new definitions of the relationship between private and public life.

Life politics call for new legal procedural instruments, but the political procedural and control instruments of simple modernity are insufficient to respond to this challenge of life politics. This raises the central question of what "intermediate" decision-making and procedural levels can be found here. The research project addresses these questions and examines their sociological and, not least, legal-sociological function in the form of new mediation and consensus procedures.

Supported by the VW Foundation.

Standardization of professional conduct in the context of legal frameworks, professional self-regulation, and reflexive competence, using human genetics as an example

Standards are rules of conduct, i.e., more or less binding expectations that members of a group or society place on each other and monitor compliance with. "Standardization" refers to the setting, monitoring, and sanctioning of rules of conduct and implies both the question of who is involved and the process of setting standards. The professional activities of human geneticists are embedded in a multi-layered system of behavioral expectations and regulations.
Analytically, the research project is based on a graded model of standardization—oriented toward the degree of bindingness—which is to be empirically tested.

Legal norms, i.e., legal texts and legally binding judgments relevant to human genetics, are characterized by their high degree of binding force and thus form the highest level in this model. However, the standardization of professional conduct is not the sole responsibility of state legislative and judicial authorities. Rather, the self-governing bodies of the profession, i.e., primarily professional associations and trade unions, also claim their own responsibility for this. The second level therefore comprises rules of conduct and regulations that are established and enforced by the medical and human genetics professions.
Theoretically, the standardization of professional conduct is situated between the conflicting interests of legal regulation on the one hand and legal control of self-regulation on the other.

The research project thus operates at the interface between legal and professional sociological issues. In doing so, it seeks to clarify the question of a possible affinity or inherent contradiction between "reflexive" competence in human genetics on the one hand and the more recent legal sociological discussion of so-called "reflexive law" on the other.

Funded by the VW Foundation.