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What is meant by "general and theoretical Sociology"?

Sociologyin general is the teaching of the social conditions and consequences of human action as well as the principles of order, processes of change and developmental tendencies of social formations in their overall context.

The question of the relationship between social action and social "structures" (i.e. supra-individual patterns of coexistence) is addressed and answered in different ways by different sociological schools of thought.
Sociological theory is therefore concerned both with the (further) development of terms and concepts that enable an updated definition of this relationship and with the systematisation of different sociological schools of thought in order to make their similarities and differences analytically fruitful.

Against this background, three key questions serve both to improve our understanding of society and to localise different theoretical approaches within the sociological debate:

1. What determines the cohesion of society or which elements of the social are essential for this cohesion (aspect of "synthesis")?
2. How and by what means does society move or change (aspect of "dynamics")?
3. (How) is it possible to influence society through action (aspect of "practice")?

In accordance with the sociological understanding of the profession, by answering these questions sociological theory also contributes both to the elucidation of social practice and to the social reflection of Sociology as a whole:
By asking about the synthesis of social order, it necessarily also deals with what is to be considered regulations and what is to be considered a crisis.
Looking at the dynamics or changeability of society means that theories must take into account the historicity and thus the "expiry date" of their own findings.
Finally, sociological theory as an expression of thinking about society in society is always confronted with the question of the relevance of its own findings for social practice - including the social practice of "theorising".

Specifically, these questions give rise to a number of controversial issues and currents of thought that are formative for contemporary Sociology: Theories of action include theoretical approaches that emphasise more strongly the freedom and significance of individual action; they attempt to explain the emergence of social institutions from the consequences and collateral consequences of the coinciding actions of social actors.
Structural and systems theories take the opposite approach: for them, social development follows its own laws; human actions and inclinations are then derived from the social structural conditions and constraints. Most contemporary approaches, however, assume that social reality arises from the interplay of actions and structures.

What do we do in Jena?

Based on the aforementioned characteristics of general and theoretical sociology, three focuses can be distinguished, which also characterise theoretical sociology in Jena.

As general and theoretical Sociology, it deals 1) with the fundamental conditions of social action and social development.
"How are social regulations possible?" is the initial question of all sociological theory. Because this question only becomes a relevant problem in modernity, which can no longer assume the unquestionable validity of a given set of regulations, sociological theory in the narrower sense only emerges with the development of modernity in the late 19th century. It has therefore always reacted to the experience of modernisation processes, which reveal the prehistory, the inherent laws and the resistance of social structures against all individual and political will.

For us, sociological theory is therefore always the penetration of social formations as a whole and the analysis of their overarching changes.

For studying and teaching, "sociological theory" therefore 2) initially means analysing "classical" social theory drafts by authors such as Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Georg Simmel, but then also more recent authors such as Jürgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.

The interpretation of current social developments and the comparison of sociological "time diagnoses" by different authors is currently also characterised for us by the critical identification of undesirable social developments.

For this reason alone, sociological theory necessarily includes empiricism and sociological research . As a research-based theory, it attempts, for example, to provide answers to the question of how the attitudes and inclinations of the actors involved - the culture - develop depending on changing institutions and social structural processes such as rationalisation, differentiation or acceleration and, conversely, how institutions and structures are influenced by the actions of the actors.
In this way, not only the causes of change - including possible crisis phenomena - are identified, but also the horizons of practical influence and the potential for action and social transformation are shown.

The Department of General and Theoretical Sociology continuously researches transformation processes in various fields of social practice (e.g. in relation to natural relations, gender relations and intimate relationships, property relations, technological developments, acceleration processes, etc.). The results are discussed with colleagues and students and are incorporated into theoretical debates and course|classes - also in the form of the resulting textbooks. The assumption of changing "world conditions" in late modernity plays a central role in the diagnosis of the times.