Dieter Prokop

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Dieter Prokop (2009)

Dieter Prokop (born August 23, 1941 in Reichenberg, Reichsgau Sudetenland , today Liberec , Czech Republic ) is a German sociologist . He is professor em. for sociology with a focus on media at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main .

Life

Dieter Prokop studied sociology, psychology and American studies in Freiburg im Breisgau , Munich and Frankfurt from 1960 to 1965 . In 1965 he obtained his Magister Artium in Munich.

From 1966 to 1973 he worked as a research assistant at the seminar for social studies (from 1971 department social sciences) at the University of Frankfurt am Main, where he was awarded a Dr. phil. PhD. From 1973 to 1980 he was a lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Frankfurt. In 1978 he completed his habilitation there.

In 1979/80 Prokop was the founding chairman of the joint commission for theater, film and television studies in the three departments of Modern Philologies, Classical Philologies and Social Sciences.

From 1980 to 1988 he worked as a freelance television journalist , as a writer and director for ZDF , Hessischer Rundfunk and Westdeutscher Rundfunk in the domestic and social policy editorial offices ; so on television for the ranks: New media, new markets, new power (ARD Education and Society); Head duel (series with politicians on topics such as modernizing the economy, unemployment, technology policy; ZDF domestic policy); Hollywood, Hollywood (History of Hollywood , shot in Hollywood; ZDF Education and Society).

In 1988 Prokop was appointed professor of sociology with a focus on media at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Frankfurt am Main, where he retired in 2005 . He was a guest author at taz in 1999/2000 , at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 2017 and has been a guest author at the Axis of the Good since 2019 .

He was married to the writer Eva Heller († 2008).

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General

Dieter Prokop "has been one of the most renowned experts in mass communication research for around three decades". His Sociology of Film (1970) is a classic in sociology. His readers on mass communication research are standard reading for students of journalism and communication studies, media studies and sociology. In numerous publications he has sociologically analyzed the overall context of economy, politics and society in relation to the media. Detlev Schöttker wrote in 1999:

“Dieter Prokop (born 1941) took up and continued a basic idea of ​​critical theory in his work, which Horkheimer and Adorno had suppressed since their return from exile, but which was part of the original program of the Institute for Social Research, namely the 'Critique of political economy '[…]. Prokop applied the procedure, which is about the analysis of the interdependence of society and economy, to the investigation of the mass media and thus shaped media research in Germany in the seventies and early eighties. "

- From Voice to Internet (1999)

Prokop analyzes the interweaving of society and economy and the overall cultural-industrial context of oligopolistic forms of market and power, of working methods and modes of production within the media, of social changes such as that from Fordism to post-Fordism, and of audience structures ( target groups , social milieus). The commodity character of cultural-industrial products is only constituted in the overall context of all of this. Prokop emphasizes in the “Aesthetics of the Culture Industry” that one should not construct a monolithic, hopeless system from these structures, “that the influence of economic, political, social structures on the product structures never happens uninterrupted, but that it is on the production side as well as on the The consumption side are people who do their work within the framework of these structures, develop their awareness, feel, reflect, use or not use freedoms ”.

Critical media research, critical theory of the culture industry

In his books, which have been published since 2000, Prokop represented a “new critical media research ” or “new critical communication research”. In 2001 he published a history of the media.

In the following years Prokop further developed the theory of the culture industry of the Frankfurt School in a critical discussion with Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer . Since 2003 he has dealt with all the blind spots that the classic Frankfurt School had left in its theory of the culture industry. Above all, he criticized their contempt for the creative aspects of the culture-industrial media. (With Adorno versus Adorno, 2003) He criticized the criticism of the 'commodity character' of its premises hostile to pleasure and tried a commodity theory that perceives the creative opportunities in the commodities (Das Nonidentical der Kulturindustrie, 2005), and he undertook a more detailed analysis of the real power structures and contradictions in the media (Der Kulturindustrielle Machtkomplex, 2005).

In his work “The Non-Identical in the Culture Industry” Prokop overcomes Adorno's and Horkheimer's culturally pessimistic approach and defends what in the culture industry defends itself against the rule of instrumental identification. At that time, Adorno and Horkheimer would not have recognized the creative aspect of media and goods. With this criticism of the fathers of the Frankfurt School, Prokop attempts to make critical theory fruitful for a new critical media research: We join all creative minds. It is definitely about criticism of the culture industry, but the real "areas of tension and contradictions" have to be discussed.

Prokop then investigated how critical theory can position itself in the jungle of different social science approaches - systems theory, constructivism, cultural studies, brain research (The extraordinary media congress, 2007). He presented the dimensions of what criticism is (The almost impossible feat of criticism, 2007)

In it he demands: ... in order to be able to criticize appropriately, one has to look closely. If you look closely, you will discover areas of tension between contradicting forces. Apology is then no longer possible. However, this ability to look closely is not possible without the ability to look at the object simultaneously from inside and outside at every moment of the analysis . Because only through the ability to endure ambivalences and contradictions can non- identity appear at all. Ultimately, according to Prokop, one must always consider whether one's own categories are not shaped too much from the inside of the system or whether they are imposed too much from the outside, as morality.

Prokop also presented an Aesthetics of the Culture Industry (2008), which would have been an impossibility for classical critical theory.

After all, Prokop showed that critical thinking, as negative thinking, is not just a matter for academic discourse, but that it also exists in people's real life and unfolds its creative aspects in it. (The Creativity of Negative Thinking, 2011)

Critical economic sociology, European studies

Then Prokop turned to the economy, which was always neglected by critical theory, and wrote a Critical Sociology of Economics (2013) and a Critical Theory of Money (2014). While Adorno spoke of the fatal effects of 'exchange', Prokop starts from the real transformations of the economy: the oligopolistic market structures and the policy of deregulation in the real economy and the financial sector. And while the classical critical theory spoke of the 'rule of exchange value', Prokop sees the abstraction processes taking place 'in exchange' as opportunities for freedom.

From 2015 Prokop wrote several books on the structures of the European Union and its crises. It shows how the institutions of the EU and the euro zone and how European crisis management works. According to Prokop, the structural problem lies in the fact that the EU emerged as an association of states that has taken an interest in the development of the European internal market in institutions. The guarantee of citizenship remains with the constitutions of the member states.

bibliography

  • 1970: Sociology of Film , [EA Luchterhand, Neuwied], expanded: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1982
  • 1971 (Ed.): Materials on the theory of film , [EA Hanser, Munich], Athenäum Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main ²1974
  • 1972, 1973 + 1977, Ed .: Massenkommunikationsforschung , Volume 1: Production , Volume 2: Consumption , Volume 3: Product analyzes , Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
  • 1973 (Ed.): Critical Communication Research. Articles from the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung , introduction by Oskar Negt , Hanser, Munich
  • 1974: mass culture and spontaneity. On the changed form of goods in mass communication in late capitalism , edition Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main
  • 1979: fascination and boredom. The popular media , dtv, Munich
  • 1981: Media products. Approaches - procedures - criticism , Narr Verlag, Tübingen
  • 1981: Media effects , edition suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main
  • 1984: Secret seizure of power. New media are changing the world of work , Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
  • 1985–1986 (Ed.): Medienforschung , Vol. 1: Corporations, Makers, Controllers , 1985, Vol. 2: Desires, Target Groups, Effects, 1985, Vol. 3: Analyzes, Reviews, Aesthetics , 1986, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
  • 1988: Hollywood, Hollywood. History, stars, shops , VGS publishing company, Cologne
  • 1995: Media Power and Mass Effect. A historical overview , Rombach Sciences, Freiburg
  • 2000: Media Capitalism. The Lexicon of New Critical Media Research , VSA Verlag, Hamburg, ²2002
  • 2001: The battle for the media. The history book of the new critical media research
    • 2003 (Czech) The Karolinum Press, Prague
  • 2002: Dissatisfaction with the media. The theory narrative book of the new critical media research , VSA Verlag, Hamburg
  • 2003: With Adorno against Adorno. Negative dialectics of the culture industry , VSA Verlag, Hamburg
  • 2004: Against media lies. The new culture industry lexicon , VSA Verlag, Hamburg
  • 2005: The non-identical in the culture industry. New critical communication research on the creative in media goods , by Halem Verlag, Cologne
  • 2005: The cultural industrial power complex. New critical communication research on media, advertising and politics , by Halem Verlag, Cologne
  • 2007: The extraordinary media congress. A story about the antinomy of freedom and determination , Tectum Verlag, Marburg
  • 2007: The almost impossible feat of criticism. Epistemological problems in dealing critically with the culture industry , Tectum Verlag, Marburg
  • 2009: Aesthetics of the Culture Industry , Tectum Verlag, Marburg
  • 2010: Eva Heller's joke. With essays, lectures, cartoons and pictures by the author , Tectum Verlag, Marburg
  • 2011: The creativity of negative thinking , Tectum Verlag, Marburg
  • 2013: Critical Sociology of the Economy. How oligopoly corporations, power complexes and gambling banks market people's feelings and exclude their minds. Tectum Verlag, Marburg
  • 2014: Critical Theory of Money. Tectum Verlag, Marburg
  • 2015: The goose bumps factor. Tectum Verlag, Marburg
  • 2015: Critical Theory of Europe. Tectum Verlag, Marburg, ISBN 978-3-8288-3618-1 .
  • 2016: better understanding Europe's crises. Tredition Verlag, Hamburg
  • 2017: History of the Culture Industry. Tredition Verlag, Hamburg. Revised new edition by Prokop 2001
  • 2017: Theory of the culture industry. Tredition Verlag, Hamburg. Revised new edition by Prokop 2003
  • 2017: Lexicon of the Culture Industry. Tredition Verlag, Hamburg. Revised edition of Prokop 2004
  • 2017: Europe with the moral club. Tredition Verlag, Hamburg
  • 2018: Europe's choice between rhetoric and reality. Tredition Verlag, Hamburg
  • 2020: Power games of the present. Institutions, activists, rhetoric. Tredition Verlag, Hamburg

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Short profile and contributions by Dieter Prokop at the Axis of the Good .
  2. ↑ Source: TV information, quoted according to dieter-prokop.de
  3. ↑ Detlev Schöttker 1999, Ed .: From Voice to the Internet. Texts from the history of media analysis , Göttingen? UTB, Stuttgart. ISBN 3-8252-2109-1
  4. ↑ Dieter Prokop, Aesthetics of the Culture Industry , 2009, p. 1.
  5. ↑ Dieter Prokop, The Non-Identical of the Culture Industry , 2005, p. 9.
  6. ↑ Dieter Prokop, Das Non-Identische der Kulturindustrie , 2005, p. 14
  7. ↑ Dieter Prokop: The almost impossible feat of criticism , 2007, p. 17
  8. ↑ Dieter Prokop, The Non-Identical of the Culture Industry , 2005, p. 81
personal data
SURNAME Prokop, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Reichenberg