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SFB 882:  From Heterogeneities to Inequalities

Subject Area Social and Behavioural Sciences
Humanities
Term from 2011 to 2016
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 138713964
 
As well as having different physical features, people differ in their nationality and ethnicity; in their cultural preferences, lifestyles, attitudes, orientations and philosophies; in their competencies, qualifications and traits; and in their professions. But how do such heterogeneities lead to social inequalities? What are the social mechanisms underlying that process? These are the questions that interest the Collaborative Research Centre.
Initially, heterogeneities indicate merely that members of a society are different: ascriptive features such as physical differences between individuals, gender, age, nationality and ethnicity; cultural preferences, lifestyles, attitudes, orientations and philosophies; competencies, qualifications and traits that are considered or at least claimed to be socially legitimised mechanisms for the distribution of opportunities; and the differentiation of activities as part of the societal division of labour.
Inequalities must be thought of in the plural - they are a multidimensional phenomenon. This applies not only to the different dimensions of inequality, but also goes beyond their sociostructural distribution to address the perception, interpretation and evaluation of different inequalities and states of inequality. We consider both classic resource inequality and inequalities in recognition or in access to participation in various spheres of life.
Based on this distinction between difference and inequality, the second pillar of the programme is the attempt to identify and systematise the social mechanisms that enable social inequalities to emerge from heterogeneities. Hence, all the projects that form the Collaborative Research Centre share an interest in studying the social mechanisms through which individual heterogeneities ¿ in the sense of mere differences between members of a society ¿ lead to social inequalities. The ways that particular characteristics of heterogeneity lead to particular inequalities is analysed both from the synchronic perspective of different spheres of life and from the diachronic perspective of the life course, in order to do justice to the range of different interdependencies, levels and contexts of inequality production.
DFG Programme Collaborative Research Centres

Completed projects

Applicant Institution Universität Bielefeld
 
 

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