Aporias of subjectivation. On the appropriation and negotiation of discursive subject positions via a further development of the documentary method at the example of occupational socialization in the realm of professional politics and arts

• Applicant: Dr. Alexander Geimer
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 253406369

Until today, the normative character of collective structures of knowledge is not considered systematically in qualitative research. The main objective of this project is grounded in a further development of the Documentary Method allowing the reconstruction of such knowledge structures (hegemonic subject positions) which do not trace back to mutually shared spaces of experience (such as milieu or generation) but to discursive-hegemonic imperatives which gain different relevance according to shared spaces of experience. Thus, it is the aim of a Documentary Subjectivation Analysis to reconstruct the interaction of subject positions and reflexive as well as non-reflexive structures of knowledge which are guided by (professional-) biographical and milieu-specific orientations; thereby a research gap can be closed.The methodical-methodological aims are concretized by means of qualitative, cross-sectional data (interviews, group discussions with young professionals) concerning the occupational socialization in the domains of politics and arts. This contrast is - as part of a theoretical sampling - based on the assumption that it is especially the subject position of an authentic self which is to negotiate and appropriate by professionals. This as well as other hegemonic subject positions are to identify empirically by means of the analysis of group discussions, they are then to validate via interview analysis which also allows the reconstruction of different forms of negotiation and appropriation of subject positions which are related to different spaces of experience according to (occupational) biographies and/ or milieus. Thereby patterns and aporia of subjectivation are revealed having been observed in detail neither in qualitative inquity nor in the context of research on occupational socialization. The project is to understand essentially as a further development of qualitative research methods and their methodology and contributes to the investigation of occupational socialization in politics and arts with the special consideration of totalizing identity norms and according hegemonic subject positions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants