Wirklichkeit(en)

Sociology and History have long been keen to discuss what social science can accomplish when it follows in the footsteps of Max Weber who relied on the tradition of geisteswissenschaft in Germany. This volume assembles twelve contributions that elucidate what it means to practice what has been named “methodconscious social science”, in the wake of Verstehen as a most fruitful, if underrated, approach in sociological cum historical analysis. The themes that are being tackled in this volume range from social life as it relates to the German family or ageing, and sociological theory as it takes account of charisma or psycho-analysis, to history as it involves National Socialism in its sociologically relevant features, and eventually history as it invokes the democratization of Germany after World War II and the social research conducted by American military government that documented such democratization between 1945 and 1949.