Social Research Center Dortmund

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The Dortmund Social Research Center (sfs) is one of the largest German labor research institutes.

Founded in 1972 as the successor to the social research center at the University of Münster , which was established in April 1946 and transferred to Bielefeld University in 1969/70 , it was assigned as a state institute to the Ministry of Innovation, Science, Research and Technology of North Rhine-Westphalia until 2006 . Since the beginning of 2007 the sfs has been a central scientific institution of the Technical University of Dortmund .

The Institute

An interdisciplinary team of around 40 occupational and social scientists, economists, educators, statisticians, engineers and computer scientists researches, advises and evaluates current issues in the world of work. Research and consulting projects organized in associations and networks play an important role. In total, the institute works on seven thematic focal points, including national and European labor policy , service policy in times of social change, or education and work.

research

In addition to application-oriented basic research, for example on work design and occupational safety, the Social Research Center advises on new production concepts or in the area of ​​further training, evaluates the introduction of eco-audits, examines the effects of multimedia technology and deals with women-specific labor market policy, health policy or the future of Co-determination .

Focus:

  • New organizational concepts in production, administration and service
  • Modern knowledge and network management
  • Introduction of new quality and environmental management systems
  • Company working hours
  • Vocational training, further education, competence development
  • Occupational safety and health
  • Remuneration systems
  • Gender research
  • Network economy
  • social change
  • Education - work - participation
  • European labor policy
  • and much more

The sfs is a partner of the Goethe-Institut in the project Germany thinks .

Every year around 50 research projects on current topics in labor research are carried out at the Dortmund Social Research Center. The research focus and content-related research are continuously expanded by the Social Research Center and adapted to the current research discussions.

history

In the early days of the institute, the research of the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area and its social issues were in the foreground. The first scientific director, the Catholic social ethicist Heinrich Weber, defined the following tasks for the social research center:

  • Research into the social life of the Rhenish-Westphalian region in the past and present under socio-political, socio-psychological and socio-legal aspects,
  • Economic history and economic geography research of the Rhenish-Westphalian area,
  • Participation in solving practical and social questions through advice and expert work,
  • Use of the results of scientific research in the education and training of professionals.

The founding of the social research center was largely due to the social and industrial scientist Otto Neuloh , who headed it from 1947 to 1960. The social research center should upgrade the Ruhr area, which has long been neglected in terms of education and research policy, and work as independently of politics, parties or associations as possible. In spite of real independence, the academy was assured of an academic link by setting up the institute formally as a "branch of the Institute for Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Münster". This semi-university position also made it possible to employ people for whom the universities initially had no prospects.

Numerous studies on the (scientific) history of sociology and the empirical social sciences in the 20th century have pointed to the importance of the Dortmund Social Research Center. In particular, Jens Adamski examined the question of whether the research approaches of empirical social research established after the war were an American-inspired democratic new beginning in the subject or were continuities in Nazi social research that extended beyond individual persons and schools to methodical ones Preferences and theoretical premises extended.

Adamski uses the example of Wilhelm Brepohl to show that he continued his thesis of an independent "industrial people" ("Der Typ des Polack") of the Ruhr area in the Federal Republic, which he had already developed during the 1930s, and thus to his work as a leader during the Nazi era the research center for folklore in the Ruhr area . Brepohl came mentally from the Nazi organization German Labor Front , DAF, the so-called "Ergonomics Institute" AWI. The integration of the Harkort Institute into the Social Research Center can serve as a counterexample, with a research focus also originating from the Nazi era - represented by Carl Jantke , Bruno Kuske and Gunther Ipsen - saying goodbye to explicitly ethnic ideologues. The intensive urban research (e.g. by Elisabeth Pfeil ), which pointed beyond traditional culturally pessimistic patterns and population policy issues from the Nazi era, also testified to this. This strong tendency towards "social science", Adamski observes, also encompassed historically based projects at the social research center.

In the medium term, history could not establish itself in Dortmund, which Adamski attributes to the pragmatic relevance of the research approach and working style of the social research center. Above all, he emphasizes the convergence of application-oriented social research and conservative interest in stabilization that dominated the institute during the 1950s - a motivation that more recent research no longer lamented as a restorative blockade, but rather appreciated.

In 1960 Helmut Schelsky took up the post of Scientific Director. At that time, the social research center was still considered a “washing facility” for heavily burdened social scientists from the Third Reich. Schelsky, whose first appointment to the Reich University of Strasbourg in 1943 was not possible due to the war and who taught in Hamburg from 1948, also came from the social sciences of the Nazi era. On the other hand, in the 1950s he was able to establish himself as an innovative sociologist with a considerable social impact, so that his appointment as scientific director of the social research center could be understood as a modernization. He reorganized the institute and promoted a strongly sociologically guided basic research, which also set new priorities in terms of content, for example through a department for “Sociology of Developing Countries”.

In view of the rapid expansion of university sociology, Schelsky's “almost excessive” postdoctoral qualification practice could not prevent the social research center from increasingly losing out in competition with university advancement opportunities. When Schelsky was appointed to chair the founding committee of Bielefeld University, it was an almost inevitable conclusion that the non-university institute should now be converted into a university institute. Against the resistance of the city of Dortmund, the Social Research Center transformed itself into the new Bielefeld Faculty of Sociology in 1969/70, for which Schelsky had planned no fewer than twelve professorships with 46 assistants in an initial concept paper.

In 1972/73, however, the social research center was re-established as the state institute of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia at the Dortmund location. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Social Research Center under the directors Willi Pöhler , Gert Schmidt and Gerd Peter made important contributions to the humanization of working life program , primarily through large sector projects in the clothing, steel and foundry industries.

These research topics are no longer dealt with today, but the strongly application-oriented social research has become the trademark of the social research center, from which some spin-offs have developed over time.

The Social Research Center has been a central facility at TU Dortmund University since 2007 .

literature

  • Otto Neuloh , Roland Pardey, Norbert Bettinger, Hans-Alexander Graf von Schwerin, social research out of social responsibility , Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1983.
  • Manfred Hermanns: Heinrich Weber. Social and Caritas scientist in a time of upheaval. Life and work. Würzburg: Echter 1998. In particular, pp. 86-89. ISBN 3-429-01971-0 .
  • Jens Adamski: Finding aid for the inventory of the “Social Research Center at the University of Münster, Headquarters in Dortmund” in the archive of the Social Research Center Dortmund (sfs). TU Dortmund University, 2008.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the person cf. Hans Gängler, Classic of Social Work , in: Hans-Uwe Otto, Hans Thiersch (ed.), Handbook of Social Work, Luchterhand , Neuwied 2001, pp. 1044-1056.
  2. ↑ Otto Neuloh: Development and performance history of the Dortmund Social Research Center , in: Otto Neuloh et al., Social research out of social responsibility. Development and performance history of the Dortmund Social Research Center. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verl, 1983, pp. 13-102.
  3. ↑ Johannes Weyer, West German Sociology 1945–1960. German continuities and North American influence . Berlin 1984, p. 207 ff.
  4. ↑ Christoph Weischer, The company "Empirical Social Research". Structures, practices and models of social research in the Federal Republic of Germany , Munich 2004, p. 63 ff.
  5. ↑ Jens Adamski, Doctors of Social Life. The Dortmund Social Research Center 1946-1969 . Institute for Social Movements - Series A: Representations 41, Essen 2009.
  6. ↑ visible in the funding of the institute by the Rockefeller Foundation , cf. Karl Heinz Roth : Intelligence and Social Policy in the "Third Reich". A methodological-historical study, using the example of the Ergonomic Institute of the German Labor Front. Saur, Munich 1993, ISBN 3598111665 , p. 37, readable online
  7. ↑ Jens Adamski, Doctors of Social Life. The Dortmund Social Research Center 1946-1969 . Institute for Social Movements - Series A: Representations 41, Essen 2009, p. 103
  8. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from October 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.geschichtskultur-ruhr.de
  9. ^ Karl Heinz Roth: Intelligence and Social Policy in the "Third Reich". A methodological-historical study, using the example of the Ergonomic Institute of the German Labor Front. Saur, Munich 1993, ISBN 3598111665 , p. 37.
  10. ^ On the role of Kuske in founding the Harkort Institute and its transfer to the Social Research Center: Hansjörg Gutberger, Spatial Development, Population and Social Integration. Research for spatial planning and spatial planning policy 1930-1960 . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2017, p.312; Johannes Weyer, West German Sociology .... pp.209f., U. Attachment.
  11. ^ Paul Nolte, The order of the German society. Self-design and self-description in the 20th century , Munich 2000, pp. 253ff.
  12. ↑ Klaus Ahlheim: The Dietrich von Oppen case and the Dortmund “washing plant”. In: Carsten Klingemann et al. (Ed.), Yearbook for the History of Sociology 1997/98. VS, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-322-99645-X , pp. 311–324, here p. 317.
  13. ↑ Jens Adamski, Doctors of Social Life. The Dortmund Social Research Center 1946-1969 . Institute for Social Movements - Series A: Representations 41, Essen 2009, p. 167.

Coordinates: 51 ° 32 ′ 56.5 ″  N , 7 ° 27 ′ 51.9 ″  E