Gert pimple

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Gert Pickel (* 1963 in Kronach , Upper Franconia) is a sociologist and political scientist . Since 2009 he has held the professorship for Church and Religious Sociology at the Theological Faculty of Leipzig University . He is married to the political scientist Susanne Pickel , with whom he also publishes together.

Life

After studying sociology and political science at the University of Bamberg , Pickel worked from 1992 to 1996 at the Social Science Research Center at the University of Bamberg. From 1996 to 2007 he worked at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) at the chair for comparative cultural sociology. From 2005–2006 he held the chair for comparative cultural sociology at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt an der Oder. Between 2007 and 2009 he was professor for church and religious sociology at the theological faculty of the University of Leipzig. Since autumn 2013 he has also been dean of the theological faculty at the University of Leipzig, where he has various other functions.

The focus of his work lies in the quantitative-empirical sociology of religion, political cultural research and comparative democracy research as well as democracy measurement . In addition, together with other authors, he has written and edited various books and articles on methods of comparative political science and social sciences. As part of his dissertation, he dealt with the phenomenon of disaffection with politics, especially among adolescents and young adults. His habilitation thesis deals with the development of political culture and the attitudes of the population towards democracy in comparison with Eastern Europe.

In the last few decades Gert Pickel u. a. Research stays in Albania , Bulgaria , Romania , Slovenia and Poland . Accordingly, various of his works deal with Eastern Europe from a comparative perspective. The main focus was on the comparison of the religious situation in Eastern Europe after socialism, the change in political cultures and the democratization taking place there. In this context, there was also a further engagement with methods of comparative research. In this as in other areas, Gert Pickel distinguished himself as the author of various textbooks, from which the introduction to comparative political culture and democracy research (together with Susanne Pickel) and the introduction to the sociology of religion published in 2011 should be emphasized.

More recently, he has dealt with the role of “religious” social capital for societies and the churches and has been concerned with the analysis of secularization processes and secularity in an international comparison, but also in Germany. In doing so, he represents a moderate variant of the secularization thesis , which combines processes of breaking off the religious with path-dependent developments.

Statements on secularization

Pickel assumes that overarching processes of secularization take place worldwide, but are accompanied or even thwarted by other changes and developments taking place in societies. In particular, processes in which identity formation or securing of identity take place often have a vitalising effect on religiosity. Not infrequently, however, such processes also lead to conflicts and problems for social integration. From Pickel's point of view, secularization is a universal process, but it is neither irreversible nor linear. From his point of view, secularization is rather dependent on its framework conditions under which various aspects of modernization (gains in prosperity, urbanization, increasing mobility) are of central importance. It is therefore natural for path-dependent developments in secularization to take place. To support his results, he uses data from a large number of comparative international surveys.

Statements on religious social capital

With regard to social capital, he assumes that this could possibly represent a new, modern civil society appropriate, social form of religious self-organization. Especially at the major events of the Kirchentage and the Katholikentage, regular meetings of these particularly committed Christians can be observed. In particular, the church's opportunity structures for the training and settlement of groups with voluntary commitment, which exist specifically in the vicinity of church parishes, is what Pickel sees as a specific “religious contribution” to civil society. Since such groups of voluntary engagement according to the social capital approach tend to build trust, the church congregations assume the role of producers of democratic civil society in a figurative sense. Social capital results from the positive reciprocal relationships between the members of these groups. The willingness to build trust is also supported by Christian values. The concept of religious social capital was transferred by Pickel and his colleagues from the English-language discussion ( Robert Putnam ), which speaks of faith based social capital. Results from the 5th church membership study by the EKD support these assumptions, as they show a value 20 percentage points higher among church members with 50% social trust than among those without religious affiliation . The corresponding trust value is almost 75% among visitors to the Evangelical Church Days.

Statements about non-denomination

Various other publications by Gert Pickel deal with the issue of non-denominationalism. Pickel sees a variety of types of non-denominational and non-denominational, among which the group of those who are also religiously disinterested is the most strongly represented. These observations apply to Germany as well as to all Western European and several Eastern European countries. In most cases, lack of denomination is related to a generally uninterested attitude towards religion in general, as empirical results show in a large number of different studies.

Activities and memberships

From 2001 to 2015 Pickel was a member of the board of the section on the sociology of religion of the German Society for Sociology , from 2006 to 2015 a member of the speakers' council of the working group for democracy research of the German Association for Political Science , as well as a founding member of the working group intercultural comparison of democracy from 1997 to 2006.

Since 2009 he has also been a member of the spokesperson for the Political and Religious Working Group of the German Association for Political Science. Since autumn 2015 he has been a member of the six-member board of the German Association for Political Science.

Gert Pickel is co-founder and director of the Competence Center for Right-Wing Extremism and Democracy Research (KReDO) at the University of Leipzig, which is based there at the Theological Faculty and conducts interdisciplinary empirical research. At the same time he is one of the initiators of the IFRiS network of the universities of Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz as well as the Hannah Arendt Institute Dresden .

He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Academy of World Religions in Hamburg and the Evangelical University Advisory Board and is the deputy chairman of the Evangelical Diaspora eV association

From 2007 onwards, he has been part of the editorial team of the Journal for Comparative Political Science (ZfVP) and is also one of its editors and co-founders.

Between spring 2011 and autumn 2015 Pickel was a member of the scientific advisory board and the executive working group of the 5th church membership investigation of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). In 2013 he was also significantly involved in the evaluation of the Bertelsmann Religionsmonitor 2013 - with the focus on the international comparative study.

Fonts (selection)

• Political unity - cultural dichotomy? - The declaration of political and democratic attitudes in East Germany before the 1998 Bundestag election. (Ed., Together with Dieter Walz / Susanne Pickel) Peter Lang, Berlin 1998, ISBN 978-3631338926 .
• Religious and ecclesiastical change in East Germany 1989–1999. (Ed., Together with Detlef Pollack) Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1999, ISBN 978-3810024770 .
• Democracy measurement. Concepts and findings in an international comparison. (together with Hans-Joachim Lauth / Christian Welzel ) Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 978-3531134383 .
• Rule of law and democracy. Theoretical and empirical studies on law in democracy. (Eds., Together with Hans-Joachim Lauth / Michael Becker ) Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 978-3531136455 .
• Religion and Morality - Decoupled or Linked? (Ed., Together with Michael Krüggeler) Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2001. ISBN 978-3810031631 .
• Youth and disenchantment with politics. Two cultures in Germany after unification. Series: Political Culture in the New Democracies of Europe (Volume 2). Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2002. [Dissertation] ISBN 978-3810035806 .
• Political Culture in Post-Communist Europe. Attitudes in New Democracies. (Eds., Together with Detlef Pollack / Jörg Jacobs / Olaf Müller) Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. ISBN 978-0754619697 .
• Political culture and democracy research. Basic concepts, theories, methods. An introduction. (together with Susanne Pickel) Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2006. ISBN 978-3-8100-3355-0 .
• Eastern European population on the way to democracy. Representative studies in Eastern Germany and ten Eastern European transition states. Series: Political Culture in the New Democracies of Europe (Volume 1). (together with Detlef Pollack / Olaf Müller / Jörg Jacobs) Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2006. ISBN 978-3-8100-3615-5 .
• Introduction to the methods of comparative political science. (together with Hans-Joachim Lauth / Susanne Pickel) Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2009. ISBN 978-3-531-13843-5 .
• New developments and applications in the field of methods of comparative political and social science. (Eds., Together with Susanne Pickel / Gert Pickel / Hans-Joachim Lauth) Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2009. ISBN 978-3-531-16194-5 .
• Amnesia, amnesty or coming to terms with it? On dealing with an authoritarian past and human rights violations. (Ed., Together with Siegmar Schmidt / Susanne Pickel) Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2009. ISBN 978-3-531-13868-8 .
• Church and Religion in Contemporary Europe. Results from theoretical and empirical research. (Ed., Together with Olaf Müller) Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2009. ISBN 978-3-531-16748-0 .
• Religion and Religiosity in the United Germany. Twenty years after the upheaval. (Ed., Together with Kornelia Sammet) Wiesbaden: VS Springer, 2011. ISBN 978-3-531-17428-0 .
• Secularization, individualization or market model? Religiousness and its explanatory factors in a European comparison. In: Cologne Journal for Sociology and Social Psychology 62/2010: 219–245.
• Sociology of Religion. An introduction to the central subject areas. Wiesbaden, 2011. ISBN 978-3-531-15456-5 .
• Comparison of political systems. (together with Hans-Joachim Lauth and Susanne Pickel) Schöningh, Paderborn 2014 (UTB 4000), ISBN 978-3-825-24000-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Gert Pickel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage Gert Pickel University of Leipzig
• Gert Pickel: Return of autocracy, post-democracy, disenchantment with politics - is there a fundamental legitimacy crisis in democracy? (not available)