The experience society - rise, fall or transformation? A quantitative-empirical study in Germany and Europe

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Jan Delhey; Dr. Christian Schneickert
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 465345673

More recent sociological theories paint a rather gloomy picture of contemporary German society, such as „Escape ahead. The contemporary culture of success” (Neckel 2008), „Society of Fear“ (Bude 2017) or „Germany's Hidden Crisis. Social Decline in the Heart of Europe” (Nachtwey 2018), to name but three. The contrast to the 1980s and 1990s is remarkable. Paradigmatic for the former optimism was the thesis of the “experience society” by Gerhard Schulze (1992): from his perspective, in view of the material abundance broad strata enjoy, modernization had turned from the outside inwards, away from an orientation towards status and material success towards the almost playful "project of the beautiful life". As a result, social inequalities have also become largely irrelevant in everyday-life, which Schulze calls subjective de-stratification.Confronted with the most recent sociological diagnoses and the increasing economic inequality and insecurity addressed there, important questions arise in this regard: Is the experience society already history again? Or are we still - and perhaps even more than ever - living in an experience society? Or has society recently developed in a completely different direction in the face of new socio-ecological crises and challenges (keywords: sustainability and the great transition debate)?Against this background, the proposed project is intended to clarify the position of German society, departing from the theory of the experience society which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2022. Our primary goal is to investigate whether the path towards an experiential society is still intact (scenario "Rise of the Experience Society") or has reversed itself (scenario "Fall of the Experience Society"). The project is also open to the possibility that in the face of the new existential problem of sustainability, societal development has taken a new direction which could not have been conceived in Schulze's theory (scenario "Transformation of the Experience Society").To achieve its goal, the project focuses on two basic assumptions of Schulze's theory: that of an in-ward-directed modernization towards subjective experiences and well-being and that of a subjective de-stratification of society. We examine these basic assumptions for Germany over time (from about 1980 until today), and additionally in an international - especially European - country comparisons using current cross-sectional data (from about 2000 until today). The research project is largely based on secondary data analysis; only for the topic of “transformation” we plan an explorative primary data collection. Our project is not only highly relevant to understand present-day society, but fills a long-standing research gap in macro-sociology.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants