Melanie Tatur

Melanie Tatur (born August 28, 1944 in Dillenburg ) is a German political scientist specializing in transformation research in the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe. She is Professor of Political Science and Political Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.

Life

Tatur grew up in Krefeld after the war and attended schools in Krefeld from 1951 to 1965 . In addition, she acquired Russian language skills. From 1965 she studied Slavic Studies and History at the University of Göttingen . From 1966 to 1970 he studied political science, sociology and modern history at the Free University of Berlin and the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt. From 1971 Tatur worked as a research assistant at the Eastern European Institute of the Free University of Berlin. It dealt with the Collaborative Research Center “Industrialization and Society of the Soviet Union”. In 1976 she received her doctorate at the Philosophical Faculty of the Free University of Berlin with her thesis on "Scientific work organization - work sciences and work organization in the Soviet Union 1921-1935", which was awarded "magna cum laude". In 1978 she received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) at the Institute for Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, which lasted until 1979. From 1979 to 1981 Tatur received a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the International Institute for Comparative Social Sciences at the Science Center in Berlin. In 1983 she took over a work contract with the Research Center for Eastern Europe at the University of Bremen, where she dealt with the evaluation of Solidarność journals in 1980/81. This was followed by a work contract at the same institute to create the study “Solidarność as a modernization movement”. From 1988 to 1992 Tatur also worked there as a research assistant and taught in Bremen and Oldenburg .

In 1991 she completed her habilitation at the University of Bremen with the work “Solidarność as a modernization movement - social structure and conflict in Poland”, which was awarded “magna cum laude”, based on her previous research.

From 1991 to 1994 she worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Political Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. In 1994 Tatur took over a professorship for politics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt.

In the 1990s there were several collaborations with the Volkswagen Foundation . Since 1999, Tatur has been conducting the research project “Actors and institutions of local / regional development policy in post-socialist Europe”.

Thanks to its close cooperation with Eastern European institutions, Tatur has a large network of cooperation partners in Eastern Europe .

Today Tatur lives in Frankfurt am Main. She is married and has two grown children.

Scientific work

With the publication of her doctoral thesis ("Scientific work organization - work sciences and work organization in the Soviet Union 1921-1935", 1976) Tatur laid the first cornerstone in her long-term research on Eastern Europe. In this work, taking into account the degree of industrialization at that time, the role of (scientific) work organization in the Soviet Union and its contrast to work organization in western, capitalist countries was examined. She places a special emphasis on the role of NOT ( Naucnaja Organizacija Truda - Scientific Organization of Work).

After completing her doctorate, she continued her research in this area and received a research grant from the DFG on "Policies for the Modernization of Work Organization in Eastern Europe 1970-1980". As part of this research, she published in 1983: "Taylorism in the Soviet Union" in which Tatur examined the effects and characteristics of Taylorism . Also with the help of this scholarship she published “Work Situation and Workers in Poland 1970-1980”, in which she concentrated her research on Poland and discussed questions of “Implementation of social science drafts and state policy in the company”. On the sidelines of the study, she also illustrated the related macroeconomic development (in particular government investment policy) during this period.

After the end of this research grant, she began her work on the Polish workers' movement Solidarność at the University of Bremen. She concluded this work with her study “Solidarność as a modernization movement - social structure and conflict in Poland”, in which, in addition to examining the role of Solidarnosc, she took up and expanded the theses from “Work situation and workers in Poland 1970-1980”. At the same time, it enlarged the scope of observation from the level of internal social structures to the overall social structure of Poland.

Since the early 1990s, Tatur's research has focused on the analysis of transformation processes in the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In particular, she examines the political, economic and social reorganization of these countries with regard to their socialist past, the changes in structures and actor constellations and the manifestations of post-socialist capitalism. Tatur's research particularly focuses on actors and institutions at the middle level (trade unions, labor movements, local state and non-state actors) and their macro-political positioning. Here would be the Volkswagen Foundation's research project supervised by Tatur: “Actors and institutions of local / regional development policy in post-socialist Europe. Case studies in Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Ukraine ”should be mentioned, in which precisely these actors and their role in the transformation processes are analyzed and compared.

The development processes in the labor movement and the trade unions in Eastern Europe, as well as the changes in work organization and economy and their effect on the transformation are another focus of Tatur's work. In the work published together with Rainer Deppe “Reconstitution and Marginalization. Transformation processes and trade unions in Poland and Hungary ”(2002) and“ Economic transformation and trade union politics. Processes of upheaval in Poland and Hungary at the branch level ”(1996) an examination of the labor movement, the trade unions and the economy, as well as their role in the transformation takes place. These studies are also to be seen in a causal connection with their previous occupation with Solidarnosc and the modernization movements in socialist Eastern Europe, as well as their occupation with work organization (see also their habilitation thesis "Solidarnosc as a modernization movement. Social structure and conflict in Poland", as well as above PhD thesis and publications from the 1970s and 1980s mentioned above). Again and again one finds in her work with regard to Poland the reference to Solidarność and its effects on the transformation and the current social conditions (among others in the essays "The Legacy of Solidarność as Resource and Problem of Transformation in Poland" 2003, and " Solidarność: Myth as Reality “1999).

Another focus of her work is the analysis of regionalization processes in the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe as a result of the transformation. The focus here is on regional and local state and non-state actors and regional development policy , as well as decentralization (including "The Challenge of Regional Policy. Actors and Institutions in Local and Regional Development ”1999, and“ Making Regions in Post-Socialist Europe: The Impact of Culture, Economic Structure, and Institutions. Case Studies from Poland, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine ”2004).

In general, the study of the formation and emergence of corporations and institutions at the regional level and their constitution in the post-socialist states mentioned above is one of the main concerns of Tatur (see "Corporatism as a Paradigm of Transformation" 1994, and "Neo-Corporatism in Eastern Europe" 1994 ). Tatur sees the so-called. "Embeddedness" of democracy ( embedded democracy ), ie the equipment of a state with functioning institutions, as an important criterion for the successful outcome of transformations (see "The 'embeddedness' of the system change in Eastern Europe," 1999). Since the EU's eastward expansion in 2004 , Tatur has primarily focused on the European and integration policy of the new Eastern European member states.

Important publications

Books

• Melanie Tatur: Making Regions in Post-Socialist Europe: The Impact of Culture, Economic Structure, and Institutions. Case Studies from Poland, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, 2 Vols., Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004
• Melanie Tatur with Rainer Deppe: Reconstitution and Marginalization. Transformation processes and trade unions in Poland and Hungary, Frankfurt: Campus, 2002
• Melanie Tatur: The Challenge of Regional Policy. Actors and Institutions in Local and Regional Development, Eschborn: gtz, 1999
• Melanie Tatur: The big strikes. New labor movement, system change and trade unions in Russia, reports - analyzes - documents, Bremen: Edition Temmen , 1998
• Melanie Tatur with Rainer Deppe (ed.): Economic transformation and trade union politics. Process of change in Poland and Hungary at the branch level, Münster: Dampfboot, 1996
• Melanie Tatur: Trade Unions in the Transition, International Journal of Political Economy, Summer 1994, Vol. 24 No.2
• Solidarnosc as a modernization movement. Social Structure and Conflict in Poland, Frankfurt / New York: Campus, 1989
• Work situation and workforce in Poland 1970-1980, work reports of the Berlin Science Center, Frankfurt / New York: Campus, 1983
• Taylorism in the Soviet Union, The Rationalization Policy of the USSR in the 1970s, Frankfurt / New York: Campus, 1983
• "Scientific work organization". Work sciences and work organization in the Soviet Union 1921-1935, Berlin: Harrowitz, 1979

Essays

• Sleeping Beauty and Demons of the Past - Representations of National Identities in Poland, in: Hamersky, Heidrun / Pleines, Heiko / Schröder, Hans-Hennig (eds.): Another world? Culture and politics in Eastern Europe 1945 to today, Stuttgart, 2007, 195-210
• Introduction: Conceptualizing the Analysis of “Making Regions” in Post-socialist Europe, in: M. Tatur (Ed.): Making Regions in Post-Socialist Europe: The Impact of Culture, Economic Structure, and Institutions. Case Studies from Poland, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, Vol. 1, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004, 15-48
• “History” and identity discourses - tools of regional elites in constitutional processes, in: Berliner Debatte Initial 2003/6
• The legacy of Solidarnosc as a resource and a problem of transformation in Poland, in: HH Höhmann / H. Pleines (Ed.): Economic policy in Eastern Europe between economic culture, institution building and actor behavior. Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic in comparison, Bremen: Temmen, 147-179
• Prof. Dr. Melanie Tatur with Andrzej Bukowski: Regional Actors and Structural Policy Arrangements. Comparative considerations on Debrecen / Hajdú-Bihar and Kraków / Malopolska, in: H.-H. Höhmann (Hrsg.): Economy and culture in the transformation process, Bremen: Temmen, 2002, 278-297
• The "embeddedness" of the system change in Eastern Europe. In: Höhmann, Hans-Herman (ed.): An underestimated dimension? On the role of economic and cultural factors in the Eastern European transformation. Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1999, 193-220
• Challenges, Paradigms and Problems of Regional Policy in Post-socialist Europe, in: M. Tatur (Ed.): The Challenge of Regional Policy. Actors and Institutions in Local and Regional Development, Eschborn: gtz, 1999, 7-20

• Law, symbolism, power - on the techniques of institution building in Hungary, Poland and Russia, is published in: W. Glatzer (Ed.): Views of the Society, Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1999
• Solidarnosc: Myth as Reality, in: D. Beyrau (Ed.): Looking back without anger. Poles and Germans in the past and present, Tübingen: Attempto 1999
• Prof. Dr. Melanie Tatur with Rainer Deppe: Transformation sequences and trade union constellations in Poland and Hungary, in: E. Dittrich, F. Fürstenberg, G. Schmidt (eds.): Continuity in change. Companies and companies of Central Europe in the transformation, Munich 1997, 131-154
• Solidarność i "Solidarność", in: E. Kobylińska, A. Lawaty, R. Stephan (eds.): Polacy i Niemcy 100 kluczowych pojęć, Warszawa 1996, 306-310
• Reality and myth. What remains of the solidarity ?, in: Eichholz Brief. Journal for Political Education 2/1996, 73-80
• Towards Corporatism? - The Transformation of Interest Policy and Interest Regulation in Eastern Europe, in: EJ Dittrich, G. Schmidt, R. Whitley (ed.): Industrial Transformation in Europe. Process and Contexts, London: Sage, 1995, 163-184
• Prof. Dr. Melanie Tatur with Rainer Deppe: Transformation sequences and trade union constellations in Poland and Hungary, in: Institut für Sozialforschung, Mitteilungen, 1995/6, 5-34
• Solidarność: Functional change in a social movement, in: 1999. Journal for Social History of the 20th and 21st Century, 1993, Issue 2, pp. 78–88
• Scientific work organization. On the reception of Taylorism in the Soviet Union, in: Year books for the history of Eastern Europe, 1977/25

Web links

• Literature by and about Melanie Tatur in the catalog of the German National Library
• Site by Melanie Tatur at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University