The experience society - rise, fall or transformation? A quantitative-empirical study in Germany and Europe

最近的社会学理论描绘了一幅当代德国社会相当悲观的图景，比如“提前逃跑”。当代成功文化”（Neckel 2008），“恐惧社会”（Bude 2017）或“德国隐藏的危机”。《欧洲心脏地带的社会衰落》（Nachtwey 2018），仅举三例。这与上世纪80年代和90年代形成了显著的对比。前一种乐观主义的典范是格哈德·舒尔茨（Gerhard Schulze, 1992）关于“体验社会”的论点：在他看来，鉴于广大阶层享有的物质丰富，现代化已经从外部向内转变，从对地位和物质成功的取向转向几乎是嬉戏的“美好生活的工程”。因此，社会不平等在日常生活中也变得无关紧要，舒尔茨称之为主观去分层。面对最新的社会学诊断和日益增长的经济不平等和不安全感，在这方面出现了重要的问题：社会经历是否已经成为历史？还是我们仍然——甚至比以往任何时候——生活在一个体验式的社会？或者，面对新的社会生态危机和挑战（关键词：可持续性和大转型辩论），社会最近是否朝着完全不同的方向发展？在此背景下，该项目旨在澄清德国社会的立场，脱离2022年庆祝其30周年的经验社会理论。我们的主要目标是调查通往体验社会的道路是否仍然完好无损（“体验社会的兴起”场景），还是已经逆转（“体验社会的衰落”场景）。该项目也考虑到了这样一种可能性，即面对可持续发展的新存在问题，社会发展已经采取了Schulze的理论（场景“体验社会的转型”）无法设想的新方向。为了实现其目标，该项目将重点放在舒尔茨理论的两个基本假设上：面向主观体验和幸福的内向现代化，以及主观的社会分层。我们对德国的这些基本假设进行了长期检验（大约从1980年至今），并利用当前的横截面数据（大约从2000年至今）对国际——尤其是欧洲国家进行了比较。该研究项目主要基于二手数据分析；仅针对“转型”这一主题，我们计划进行探索性的原始数据收集。我们的项目不仅与理解当今社会高度相关，而且填补了宏观社会学长期存在的研究空白。

More recent sociological theories paint a rather gloomy picture of contemporary German society, such as „Escape ahead. The contemporary culture of success” (Neckel 2008), „Society of Fear“ (Bude 2017) or „Germany's Hidden Crisis. Social Decline in the Heart of Europe” (Nachtwey 2018), to name but three. The contrast to the 1980s and 1990s is remarkable. Paradigmatic for the former optimism was the thesis of the “experience society” by Gerhard Schulze (1992): from his perspective, in view of the material abundance broad strata enjoy, modernization had turned from the outside inwards, away from an orientation towards status and material success towards the almost playful "project of the beautiful life". As a result, social inequalities have also become largely irrelevant in everyday-life, which Schulze calls subjective de-stratification.Confronted with the most recent sociological diagnoses and the increasing economic inequality and insecurity addressed there, important questions arise in this regard: Is the experience society already history again? Or are we still - and perhaps even more than ever - living in an experience society? Or has society recently developed in a completely different direction in the face of new socio-ecological crises and challenges (keywords: sustainability and the great transition debate)?Against this background, the proposed project is intended to clarify the position of German society, departing from the theory of the experience society which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2022. Our primary goal is to investigate whether the path towards an experiential society is still intact (scenario "Rise of the Experience Society") or has reversed itself (scenario "Fall of the Experience Society"). The project is also open to the possibility that in the face of the new existential problem of sustainability, societal development has taken a new direction which could not have been conceived in Schulze's theory (scenario "Transformation of the Experience Society").To achieve its goal, the project focuses on two basic assumptions of Schulze's theory: that of an in-ward-directed modernization towards subjective experiences and well-being and that of a subjective de-stratification of society. We examine these basic assumptions for Germany over time (from about 1980 until today), and additionally in an international - especially European - country comparisons using current cross-sectional data (from about 2000 until today). The research project is largely based on secondary data analysis; only for the topic of “transformation” we plan an explorative primary data collection. Our project is not only highly relevant to understand present-day society, but fills a long-standing research gap in macro-sociology.