Situation

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Situation in life describes a state in the life world with the general circumstances and the scope of the possibilities under which individual persons or groups live in society , including the social position assumed .

Life situations include different aspects and dimensions, for example the family situation, the work situation, the income and assets situation , the state of health , the living conditions or the education .

The sociological understanding of life situation differs from the colloquial content of the term and its use in the context of the organization of communal task structures (see life situation principle ). It is primarily used in sociological research on poverty and as a “ social situation ” in social structure analysis .

Concept history

The term life situation was used early by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their description of the situation of the proletariat . The term was first formulated theoretically in the social sciences by the philosopher and economist Otto Neurath . In 1909 he expressed his criticism of the work of the Verein für Sozialpolitik, as it was too one-sidedly geared towards the “numbers of the money bill”. Rather, however, for socio-political considerations, the "overall situation of a group of people" should be taken into account, that is, vital aspects, which Neurath called the situation as a whole:

“The situation in life is the epitome of all circumstances that relatively directly determine the behavior of a person, his pain, his joy. Housing, food, clothing, health care, books, theater, a friendly human environment, all of this is part of life. "

- Otto Neurath (1909)

This line of thought was adopted in the post-war period by Gerhard Weisser , who assumed that the economic system not only distributes income, but life situations . Like Neurath, he was interested in creating life situation types based on the same objective constellations of life situation- specific characteristics , considering their distribution in society and thus gaining knowledge about the existing social structure :

"The situation in life is the scope that external circumstances offer people to fulfill basic concerns that would guide them in shaping their lives or, with as free and deep self-reflection as possible, would guide them to consistent action with sufficient willpower."

- Gerhard Weisser (1978)

Using the leeway metaphor shows that Weisser saw the situation in life as a potential rather than a realized quantity. In accordance with his commitment to “liberal socialism” and thus a diverse society, he viewed life situations as overall life chances, the value of which is higher, the more opportunities to fulfill meaningful basic concerns are available in the individual life situation. With the focus on the distribution of opportunities and realization possibilities for needs and interests for the analysis of social inequality, he anticipated a large part of the popular qualification approach of the economist and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen.

Sociological research on poverty

In the operational implementation of the concept of life situation in the context of sociological research on poverty, reference is usually made to a further development of the term by Ingeborg Nahnsen , which divides Weisser's total scope into fictitious individual scope, which can be measured using indicators , for the purpose of simplified practical usability . Poverty is then understood as falling below minimum standards or undersupply in central living conditions . The central dimensions of life are z. B. Income, employment situation, education, housing situation, health and social inclusion and participation.

The life situation approach is often viewed contrary to the current resource concept, according to which poverty is generally assumed with an available income below the poverty line and less measurable factors such as B. Job satisfaction or integration into social networks are neglected. In the concept of living conditions, not only economic resources but also other resources , in particular infrastructural and social resources , are taken into account.

In practice, however, the resource and life situation approaches cannot always be clearly delineated from one another, since the life situation models used to date are usually extended resource approaches that, in addition to the central resource income, assess the actual supply situation of other important material and immaterial resources. According to the ideal content of the Weisser and Nahnsen life situation approach, however, it is not the actual supply situation of an individual or household that is relevant for the value of the living situation, but rather the chances and possibilities of choosing between different supply situations according to his interests. From an empirical point of view , however, it is problematic to capture leeway and opportunities using suitable measuring instruments, since these are potential and not realized variables, so that, for practical reasons alone, opportunities for action and leeway must be estimated using the actual supply situation.

The empirical life situation research focuses on the one hand on research into social inequality and on poverty research. The life situation approach forms the basis for the periodically published poverty and wealth reports of the Federal Republic of Germany with the title "Life situation in Germany" (see below: web links ).

A methodical alternative here is Amartya Sen's realization chances approach , which differentiates between realized chances of realization and potential chances of realization and does not, like Weisser, only include external (socio-structural) circumstances but also individual dispositions in the analysis of the individual scope for development. Both the life situation approach according to Weisser and the capability approach according to Sen have in common that poverty or extreme social inequality is to be understood as a lack of opportunities for realization.

The life situation approach was expanded in 1999 by Uta Enders-Dragässer and Brigitte Sellach with regard to the gender perspective. In addition to the five "classic" room for maneuver in life (scope for provision and income, scope for learning and experience, scope for disposition and participation, scope for contact and cooperation, scope for regeneration and leisure), they introduced three further scope (scope for social ties, scope for gender roles, scope for protection and Scope for self-determination). In 2002, Veronika Hammer and Ronald Lutz confirmed this gender-specific differentiation on the basis of theoretical and empirical contributions with their anthology “Female life situations and social disadvantage”. The complex realities of life for women became generally more visible and the view for women-specific life situations was sharpened - this also applies especially to the family and life forms of single women.

See also

literature

  • Uta Enders-Dragässer, Brigitte Sellach: The “life situation approach” from the perspective of women's studies. In: Journal for Women's Research. No. 4, 1999, pp. 56-66.
  • Dietrich Engels: life situations. In: Bernd Maelicke (Hrsg.): Lexicon of the social economy. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2008, pp. 643–646 ( PDF file; 21 kB ).
  • Wolfgang Glatzer, Werner Hübinger: Life situations and poverty. In: Diether Döring, Walter Hanesch, Ernst-Ulrich Huster (ed.): Poverty in prosperity. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1990.
  • Veronika Hammer , Ronald Lutz (Ed.): Female life situations and social disadvantage. Theoretical approaches and empirical examples. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2002.
  • Karl Bernhard Hillen: Life situation research in the social sciences, especially in social policy. University of Bochum 1975 (doctoral thesis).
  • Ingeborg Nahnsen: Comparison of life situations. In: Heinrich Henkel, Ulrich Merle (ed.): Magdeburg Declaration. New tasks in the housing industry. Cologne 1992.
  • Otto Neurath : Empirical Sociology. Writings on the scientific worldview. In: Collected Philosophical and Methodological Writings. Volume 1, Vienna 1981, pp. 423-527 (Vienna 1931).
  • Amartya Sen: Economy for Man. dtv, Munich 2007.
  • Gerhard Weisser: Contributions to social policy. Selected and edited by Siegfried Katterle, Wolfgang Mudra and Lothar F. Neumann. Schwartz, Göttingen 1978.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party . In: Marx-Engels works . Volume 4, pp. 459–493, here p. 470: “With the development of industry, not only does the proletariat increase; it is compressed in larger masses, its strength grows and it feels it more. The interests, the living conditions within the proletariat are increasingly balancing each other out, as the machinery more and more blurs the differences in work and pushes wages down to the same level almost everywhere. "
  2. ↑ Otto Neurath : Empirical Sociology. In: Collected Philosophical and Methodological Writings. Volume 1, Vienna 1981, pp. 423-527, here p. 512.
  3. ^ Gerhard Weisser : Contributions to social policy. Schwartz, Göttingen 1978, p. 361
  4. ^ Weisser: Contributions to social policy. Schwartz, Göttingen 1978, p. 275.
  5. ^ Stefan Hradil : Analysis of social structures in an advanced society. From classes and layers to locations and milieus. Leske and Burich, Opladen 1987; Otto G. Schwenk: Social situation in the Federal Republic. Leske and Burich, Opladen 1999.
  6. ↑ Diether Döring, Walter Hanesch, Ernst-Ulrich Huster (Ed.): Poverty in prosperity. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1990; Walter Haensch, Peter Krause, Gerhard Becker: The new poverty report of the Hans Böckler Foundation, the DGB and the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband. Reinbek 2000.