Hendrik Vollmer’s research while affiliated with Leicester College and other places

Resilience has become a widely publicized and almost universally accepted end of social and institutional practice and, for social scientists struggling for recognition among competing forms of expertise about vulnerability, risk, and crisis management, concepts of resilience have continued to gain appeal (e.g., Boin & van Eeten 2013, p. 430). Researchers and theorists have set out to identify processes and structures that might strengthen the ability of groups, firms, states, businesses or armies to withstand adversity. The search for resilience has been as much a search for knowledge as it has been a search for virtue – and for results ideally marketable in the form of advice to an enlightened government of resilience (Chandler 2014).

Soziale Prozesse sind flüchtig und häufig schweigsam; sie passieren, sind bereits vorbei und hinterlassen spärliche Spuren. Die historische Sozialforschung stellt das vor erhebliche Probleme. Ihre natürlichen Verbündete scheinen diejenigen Ereignisse zu sein, die das Schweigen sozialer Prozesse übertönen und Spuren hinterlassen, die ihre Flüchtigkeit überdauern: „Battles, alliances, scandals, conquests, conspiracies, revolts, royal successions, reforms, elections, religious revivals, assassinations, discoveries“, laut William Sewell (Logics of history: Social theory and social transformation, 225, 2005) „the bead and butter of narrative history“ – und gleichzeitig eine vernachlässigte Kategorie der Sozialtheorie (ebd.). Eine „eventful sociology“ sei gefordert (Sewell Logics of history: Social theory and social transformation, 110 ff., 2005), die in besonderer Weise von historischer Expertise profitieren könne: „The conceptual vehicle by means of which historians construct or analyze the contingency and fatefulness of social life is the event. Historians see the flow of social life as being punctuated by significant happenings, by complexes of social action that somehow change the course of history.“ (ebd.: 8) Sewell stellt der „Schweigsamkeit des Sozialen“ (Hirschauer Die Befremdung der eigenen Kultur. Zur ethnographischen Herausforderung soziologischer Empirie, 437 ff., 2001) damit die Einschlagswirkungen historischer Ereignisse gegenüber und sieht in ihnen die wesentlichen Orientierungspunkte für das Verständnis sozialen Wandels.

This paper discusses the compatibility of Thomas Schelling's concept of coordination games with microsociological analyses of everyday interaction offered, among others, by Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel. This compatibility is based on the mutual premise that participants of everyday interaction are continuously involved in the tacit coordination of expectations. Whereas game theory focuses on distinct patterns of interdependence between participants, microsociologists have been pointing to principles of affirmation adhered to by participants of everyday interaction in establishing and preserving coordination. Tacit coordination of expectations is complemented by signalling and by processes of framing, explored by Goffman in terms of keys and frames and by game theorists in terms of correlated equilibrium selection and signalling games. Implications for social theory are discussed, particularly with respect to welfare aspects of everyday interaction.

In the wake of disruption and disaster, cooperation among members of a collective is refocused on matters of status, membership and the formation of coalitions. In an important contribution to sociological theory, Hendrik Vollmer emphasizes the processes through which disruptions not only affect, but also transform social order. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s understanding of framing and the interaction order, as well as from a range of insights from contemporary sociological theory and ethnographic, historical and organizational research, Vollmer addresses the dynamics of disaster and disaster response within the framework of a general theory of disruption and social order. It is proposed that the adjustment of cooperation in favour of coalition-forming strategies is robust in both informal and organized social settings and transcends the ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ approaches currently favoured by theorists. Offering a systematic sociological analysis of the impact of disruptiveness, this book investigates how punctuated cooperation precipitates social change.

Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of the field, this article distinguishes ›oppositional‹ and ›auto­nomous‹ interdisciplinarity as two modes of research between historiography and sociology. Whereas oppositional interdisciplinarity is a movement of challengers introducing new theories, methods and issues to their respective disciplines and may ultimately transform it, autonomous interdisciplinarity means a sustained positioning at the border between disciplines, requiring intensive committment with a neigboring discipline. The article sketches the two scenarios with reference to past examples and assesses their conditions and future prospects. This exercise in mapping the field is meant as an invitation to a debate on what kind of interdisciplinarity historians and sociologists want to establish.

Das gegenwärtige soziologische Interesse an Krieg, Militär und kollektiver Gewalt hat eine Reihe neuer Themen hervorgebracht, die das Gesichtsfeld der militärsoziologischen Forschung erheblich erweitert haben (vgl. Heins/Warburg 2004: 75ff.). Die soziologische Fachdisziplin hat sich seit der letzten großen Konjunktur der Militärsoziologie in der Nachkriegszeit des letzten Jahrhunderts zweifellos bedeutend fortentwickelt. Deshalb werden gegenwärtig auch an eher traditionellen Themen und Forschungsfragen der Militärsoziologie neue Aspekte sichtbar, die neue Antworten auf alte Fragen suchen lassen. Der vorliegende Beitrag möchte solche Erkenntnischancen anhand des traditionsreichen Themas der Kohäsion und Desintegration militärischer Einheiten demonstrieren.

This introductory essay reviews recent advances in the emergent field of social studies of finance (SSF) and, subsequently, sets out to illustrate how a closer engagement with SSF might benefit research interests in accounting and vice versa. Finally, it provides a sketch of how mutual engagements across the fields might be intensified in what is identified as an emerging accounting and finance track in the discourse of social science. The prospects of a broader field of research exploring the use of financial numbers across social settings, markets, organizations and cultures are projected, and the possibility of articulating a strong sociological programme of research is considered.