Michael Vester

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Michael Vester (born December 9, 1939 in Berlin ) is a professor emeritus for political science at the University of Hanover with a research focus on social structure , milieu and mentality , social movements, and socio-political learning processes.

Career and research areas

From 1959 Michael Vester began an interdisciplinary study of social sciences in Hamburg , New England and Frankfurt am Main . He was active in the German and American student movements and graduated in 1965 with a thesis on the political sociology of Charles Wright Mills . He worked as a university assistant at the Institute for Political Science at the TH Hannover, headed by Peter von Oertzen , and in workers' education . From 1971 he was Professor of Political Science and was particularly involved in the university reform , the youth center movement and the Portugal solidarity.

His area of ​​research was initially the history and theory of labor movements in the sense of Edward P. Thompson's theory-driven history from below . Using the case study of the beginnings of the English labor movement, the development of class consciousness in relation to cycles of collective learning as well as the formation of strategies and identities in the historically different conflict phases of class struggle were analyzed.

In 1969 he investigated the red dot campaign against the increase in public transport fares in Hanover. In the early 1970s he conducted an empirical study of the social situation of students in Hanover.

From 1976 he further developed the focus on social movements , in which he dealt with the current change in social structures and social movements. He took inspiration from the experiences in the agricultural cooperatives of the Portuguese revolution and from the German peace movement . During this period he carried out the interdisciplinary research projects agricultural reform and development in southern Portugal (1986–1990) and social structural change and new social milieus in western Germany (1988–1990).

Michael Vester headed the research center working group for interdisciplinary social structure research (agis) in the first years of its creation from 1991. Initially, the escalation of social change under the influence of German unification and the globalization of the markets were examined here. Other topics from agis were

  • the social milieus in East Germany,
  • the milieus of adult and worker education,
  • the connection between milieus and church ,
  • the milieus of the 'new' working center,
  • the social and political 'disaffection' of the voters' milieus.

In connection with this research, a new empirical and theoretical guiding concept was developed on how structural change and change in mentality are mutually dependent. "Classical" paradigms of business ethics and mentalities from Max Weber to Pierre Bourdieu were used, a new perspective on the theory of Karl Marx was developed and an attempt was made to re-pose the old question of social justice in a fruitful way.

Vester is a member of Attac's Scientific Advisory Board .

Publications (selection)

  • The emergence of the proletariat as a learning process . European publishing company: Frankfurt am Main 1970 ff.
  • The early socialists, Vol. I and II. Rowohlt 1970/71
  • (m. Jürgen Peters) Instructional film 'Can't you read?' (ARD October 14, 1972, SFB July 6, 1974, WDR August 20, 1974): Screenplay (pp. 1–67), Cologne 1973.
  • About forms of cooperation at universities. Academism and new forms of learning - new wine in old bottles? , in: Politikon No. 43, April / May 1974, pp. 17-26
  • (Ed.) Shlomo Na'aman , Does' Scientific Socialism Exist? Frankfurt / M .: SOAK Verlag 1979
  • (Ed.) EP Thompson, The Misery of Theory. Frankfurt / M .: Campus 1980.
  • The forgotten revolution. Seven years of agricultural cooperatives in Portugal. Materialis 1982;
  • (Ed.): Underdevelopment and self-help in European regions. Offizin 1993;
  • (with Peter von Oertzen and others) Social milieus in social structural change . Cologne: Bund Verlag 1993.
  • (Eds., With Michael Hofmann and Irene Zierke) Social milieus in East Germany . Cologne: Bund Verlag 1995;
  • (Ed., With Peter A. Berger) Old inequalities - new divisions , Opladen: Leske + Budrich 1998
  • M. Vester, P. v. Oertzen, H. Geiling et al. a .: Social milieus in social structural change . Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp Verlag 2001²
  • (Eds., With Wolfgang Vögele and Helmut Bremer) Social milieus and church , Ergon Verlag 2002
  • Social milieus and social politics , in: From Politics and Contemporary History , 44–45 / 2006 free PDF text version
  • The struggle for social justice. Impositions and coping strategies in the crisis of the German social model , in: H. Bude / A. Willisch (ed.): The problem of exclusion , Hamburger Edition , 2008, pp. 243–292

literature

  • Andrea Lange-Vester & Helmut Bremer (eds): Coping, processing, conversion: social milieus and change in social structure. Festschrift for Michael Vester , Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. 2006

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Vester: The emergence of the proletariat as a learning process. European Publishing House, Frankfurt 1970
  2. ↑ With pleasure . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1969, p. 41-42 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Members of the Attac Scientific Advisory Board ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (January 2016)
personal data
SURNAME Vester, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin