Sociology of the child, ecological socialization research

Following a period as visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York, and at Cornell University (Ithaca NY) I began a close collaboration with Urie Bronfenbrenner in the context of his work in the field of "The Ecology of Human Development". This approach became a primary focus of my activity at the University of Konstanz (4.7, cf. 4.19, 4.22, 4.42, 5.5, 5.67) and encompassed also the following topics:

• an analysis of the idea of socialization using the example of the historical development of the role of the child (5.10, 5.11), an account of early childcare and childcare policies in the context of the international study group “Early Childcare” led by Hal Robinson (University of Washington, WA.) (cf. 1.4a, cf. 1.9), and subsequently the conception of a “Sozialpolitik für das Kind" [Social Policy for the Child] (cf. 2.2, 5.14), which unfolded in various ways, including a bridge to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (5.73a) and  a report on “Childhood in Switzerland” (cf. 1.4a).

• analyses of the explicit and implicit “knowledge of socialization” of parents (5.20, 5.32).

• participation in an international project on the living situation of young families with corresponding empirical studies in Germany. Among other things, this project was characterized by a methodology focusing simultaneously on factors that both support and aggravate parenthood (5.22, 5.24, 5.26, 5.27).

• editing German editions of publications of two American colleagues (cf. 3.1, cf.3.3) and a French colleague (cf. 3.2).

• co-editing the anthology "Examining Lives in Context: Perspectives in the Ecology of Human Development " (cf.2.7).

Following that I, in collaboration with Ludwig Liegle, extended my understanding of socialization by proposing the concept of "generative socialization " in the German Handbook of Socialization (4.82, 4.95), in the manual " Socialization and Ambivalenzen" (5.86), and by co-editing a volume on Sozialökologische Sozialisationsforschung [Socio-Ecological Research on Socialization] (cf.2.9).

The essence of my understanding can be summarized by the following propositions:

• The concept of socialization describes the processes and their structural embedding in which people learn to feel, think, and act in coexistence with others, while at the same time developing ideas about who they themselves are or could be – learning to deal with contradictions, differences and experiences of ambivalence that arise in the process.

• On the one hand, socialization is analyzed advantageously from the perspective of individual experiences while, on the other hand, from the perspective of their social and institutional organization. I paid particular attention to the tensions and ambivalences that often arise in this juxtaposition (5.86). My focus was the conceptual development of social-ecological socialization research grounded in the sociology of knowledge (cf. 2.9, 4.36, 4.80, 5.27). It included the consideration of time as a dimension of social theory and research (5.8) and of G.H. Meads notion of the social reality of perspectives (5.37).