Claudia von Werlhof

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Claudia von Werlhof (born May 17, 1943 in Stahnsdorf , Teltow district ) is a German sociologist and political scientist . She held the first professorship for women's studies in Austria, based at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Innsbruck .

Life

After graduating from high school in Cologne in 1963, Werlhof studied economics and sociology in Cologne and Hamburg. In 1968 she obtained a diploma in economics and sociology. 1968 to 70 followed a doctoral scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in El Salvador and Costa Rica . In 1974 she was at the University of Cologne in sociology doctorate . 1974/75 she was a lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Frankfurt am Main. From 1977 to '79 she did research in Venezuela .

From 1975 to 1986 she worked as a research assistant at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University with a focus on development policy , where, together with Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, she helped establish the field of women and the Third World . In 1984 she completed her habilitation in political science at the University of Frankfurt with a thesis on women and agriculture in the Third World . She was a lecturer and visiting professor at various universities in Germany and abroad. In 1988 she was appointed professor for the Austrian political system with special emphasis on women's studies at the Institute for Political Science of the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences at the University of Innsbruck. It was the first professorship for women's studies in Austria. In 2011 Claudia von Werlhof retired.

Claudia von Werlhof is the mother of one son.

plant

Claudia von Werlhof was involved in the women's movement from the start. She is considered a co-founder of women's research in the Federal Republic of Germany. Her research and publications dealt with the theoretical and political questions of the women's movement and feminist theory.

Together with Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen , she is a co-founder of ecofeminism and developed the feminist Bielefeld subsistence perspective , which took the subsistence approach of Georg Elwert et al. took up and emphasized that subsistence production is not only an important component in developing countries, but also plays a major role in the capitalist societies of the center: housework by women reduces the reproductive costs of male wage laborers and thus subsidizes the capitalist sector. In doing so, they tied in with the debate about housework that was waged in the women's movement in the 1980s, combined the women's question with the third world question, later the ecological question, and refuted in empirical studies that female subsistence producers in the third world followed and would become wage workers. Rather, work is being pushed back into the domestic sector, where women produce for low wages for the world market. The Bielefeld sociologists called this process housewifeization . They analyzed that subsistence production, which serves the direct creation and maintenance of life, is subject to a constant social devaluation process, which, according to Werlhof, is linked to the modern understanding of nature and is not gender-neutral. Subsistence economy as the creation of the basis of life not only in traditional societies cannot disappear, but is subordinated to the capitalist commodity economy. The devaluation of subsistence goes hand in hand with the devaluation of the people who are connected to it. Werlhof and her fellow campaigners saw their approach as a critical social theory, and they also wanted to change this reality. Under the subsistence perspective , they understood regionalization and appreciation of the subsistence-oriented supply economy, even under globalized conditions, and thus empowerment of women who do this as subsistence producers. There could also be money, trade and markets in the subsistence economy. “With its specific methodological reference, this approach opened the field for an international perspective of feminist research, which focuses on the residents of the Cologne women's refuge as well as the Venezuelan farmer or the Indian homeworker.” The Bielefeld subsistence perspective became both inside and outside of scientific research further developed, various groups and initiatives related to him, which led to the establishment of the Institute for Theory and Practice of Subsistence eV in Bielefeld in 1995 .

Controversial debates about the subsistence approach sparked in the women's movement. The social pedagogue Iman Attia accused the ecofeminism and subsistence perspective of Werlhof and her fellow campaigners of mythologizing the housewife and mother, which only intensified the oppression they would try to fight. The authors' emphasis on the female subsistence economy stands in contrast to emancipation through participation in gainful employment, which for von Werlhof and other proponents of the critical patriarchal theory will not lead to emancipation, but only to the perpetuation of patriarchal relations of rule. This also results in a contradiction between the classical women's research represented by Werlhof and the more recent approach of gender studies .

In further research and publications, Claudia von Werlhof concentrated on globalization criticism and civil society alternatives to globalization , which she describes as dissidence , and condensed them into a “theory-practice approach of a critical patriarchal theory”. In 2007 she founded the association FIPAZ (Research Institute for Criticism of Patriarchy and Alternative Civilizations) and in 2010 the association Planetary Movement for Mother Earth .

controversy

In February 2010, von Werlhof came under fire when she brought up a conspiracy theory in an interview with Der Standard . According to this, the United States had a technique to use HAARP to artificially trigger earthquakes, and it may have caused the 2010 Haiti earthquake . The director of the Institute for Political Science Ferdinand Karlhofer distanced himself from the conspiracy theory, which lacks any scientific basis, and spoke of "damage" to the reputation of the institute. Werlhof replied in an open letter that she had given an interview “personally and by no means on behalf of the institute”: Therefore, she could not have caused the institute any harm. And she asked the question whether the “scientific understanding of the institute” was “guided by political interests”.

Fonts (selection)

items

  • Women's work, the blind spot in the critique of political economy , contributions to feminist theory and practice, no.1, 1978.
  • The failure of the "Modern World System" and the new paradigm of the "Critical Theory of Patriarchy": The "civilization of alchimists" as a "system war" , in: Salvatore Babones, Christopher Chase-Dunn (ed.): Routledge International Handbook of World-Systems Analysis , Routledge (Verlag) 2012, ISBN 978-0-415-56364-2 , pp. 172ff

Editing

literature

  • Birgit Seemann : On the relationship between state and capital and patriarchy (Claudia von Werlhof), in: Feminist state theory. The state in the German research on women and patriarchy , Verlag Leske and Budrich, Opladen 1996, ISBN 978-3-8100-1675-1 , pp. 69ff
  • Mathias Behmann et al. (Ed.): Responsibility - sympathy - dissidence: criticism of patriarchy as a defense of the living. Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Claudia von Werlhof , Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt a. Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-631-63979-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b German Literature Lexicon , Volume 130, p. 57
  2. ↑ Ulla Bock : pioneering work. The first female professors for women's and gender studies at German-speaking universities 1984-2014 , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-593-50301-1 , pp. 58f. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ Gerti Seiser, Eva Knollmayer: From the efforts of women in science to gain a foothold (Volume 3 of the materials for the advancement of women in science), ed. Federal Ministry f. Science and Research, 1994, ISBN 978-3852240657 ; P. 567.
  4. ↑ a b Ulrike Schultz: The Subsistence Approach in Theory and Practice , in: Karin Fischer, Gerhard Hauck , Manuela Boatcă (ed.): Handbuch Entwicklungsforschung , VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-04790-0 , P. 72f. doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-658-04790-0
  5. ↑ Andrea Baier: Subsistence approach: From the housework debate to the "Bielfelder subsistence perspective " , in: Ruth Becker, Beate Kortendiek (ed.): Handbook for women and gender research , VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-17170-8 , P. 75
  6. ↑ Christa Müller: Partiality and Affectedness: Women's Research as Political Practice , in: Ruth Becker, Beate Kortendiek (Ed.): Handbook for Women and Gender Research , VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-17170-8 , p 341
  7. ↑ Andrea Baier, in: Handbook Women and Gender Research (2010), p. 79
  8. ↑ Iman Attia (1991): Against the Glorification of the Feminine: Critique of Ecofeminism . In: Psychologie und Gesellschaftskritik 15 (3/4), pp. 91–122.
  9. ↑ Anneliese Braun (2003): In Search of a Feminist Theory of Economics . In: Utopie Kreativ 152: pp. 543–554.
  10. ↑ Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen: From women's research and women's studies to gender studies . In: Mathias Behmann et al. (Editor): Responsibility - Sympathy - Dissidence: Criticism of patriarchy as a defense of the living. Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Claudia von Werlhof , Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt a. Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-631-63979-5
  11. ↑ Appreciations, Claudia von Werlhof , in: Universitätsleben , Volume 24, ed. Leopold Franzens University Innsbruck, p. 28
  12. ↑ Capitalism, a project of destruction , interview with Claudia von Werlhof, Irene Brickner, Der Standard / print edition February 13/14, 2010
  13. Jump up ↑ Hans Peter Hye, Krude Weltverschwornstheorien , Der Standard, February 18, 2010
  14. ↑ Christian Ortner , For whom seas of lights shine , Die Presse of February 19, 2010
  15. ^ Ulrich Berger: Haiti, HAARP and Tesla: How Claudia von Werlhof dismantles women's studies . Scienceblogs, February 14, 2010
  16. ^ "Done": Claudia von Werlhof's suspected earthquake , Der Standard , March 15, 2010, accessed on February 17, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Werlhof, Claudia von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sociologist and political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Stahnsdorf , Teltow district