|
Institutional Mechanisms in Analytical Comparison
A new project entitled „Institutional Mechanisms in Analytical Comparison“ („Institutionelle Mechanismen im analytischen Vergleich“) began its work at FOVOG under the leadership of Gert Melville, Director Emeritus of FOVOG, and with Michael Hänchen as researcher. Over the next three years, selected exemplary institutions from the past and present will be subjected to an analytical comparison in order to identify factors and mechanisms that reveal general forms of institutional persistence, stability and potency, but also deficiencies.
The theory for the analysis of institutional mechanisms (TAIM) developed in the Dresden "SFB 537: Institutionality and Historicity" is used for this purpose. This theory can, for example, work out latent tensions and concealment mechanisms in order to capture stabilising successes of order or also destabilising factors of the institutional.
For this purpose, institutions are compared which are organisationally and ideologically family-based and which are assigned to three different cultural spheres: The noble house of the Dukes of Burgundy, the Augsburg merchant dynasty of the Fuggers and a Premonstratensian monastery.
Access to the empirical findings will be sought by means of three analytical steps: a) the breakdown of the mental and communicative structures, b) the development of the regulative, organisational structures and c) the development of the personnel structures.
The focus here is placed on three main points, which are present or assessed in differentiated gravity for the respective institutions. Firstly, the representation and own understanding of religiosity (in relation to legitimation in the world), secondly, the representation and own understanding of social status (habitus) and thirdly, the representation (and concealment) of power (active and passive). Collective and individual perception and acceptance by those concerned can be brought into comparison in a contrasting manner.
|
