Under the guiding theme "Everything new! Problem-sociological perspectives on semantics and practices of social innovation and transformation", the annual conference of the DGS Section Social Problems and Social Control took place from November 17-18, 2023 at Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts. In several papers, the speakers dealt with social problems, their construction and possible solutions by drawing on sociological theories and perspectives.

The conference opened with two pitches in which Elisabeth Wacker and Johannes Hiebl (DIPF) created a connection to policy-making and university teaching. In the following panels, for example, Aurora A. Sauter (JGU Mainz) presented a study on the problematization of weather and climate discourses which reports on ZDF. Folke Brodersen (CAU Kiel) spoke about socially innovative primary prevention offers in the area of paedophilia as a means of social control in the course of the transformation of sexual self-determination.

In view of the "hot" socio-ecological problems of our time, Thomas Scheffer emphasized in his keynote speech on the second day the need for a post-constructivist approach to problem identification, within which non-rejectable problems are more realized than constructed. In their presentation, sfs researchers Jennifer Eckhardt and Marthe Zirngiebl presented a theoretical merger of their qualification projects. Using the example of unpackaged shopping and unpackaged stores, they explained how problem construction can serve as a common point of reference for praxeological and subjectivization-theoretical approaches to systematically analyse and describe the reconfiguration of social practices.

The conference program is available here.  

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