sfs Participation in the 43rd Congress of the German Sociological Association (DGS) at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

 As part of the Section on Rural, Agricultural, and Food Sociology’s event on “Digital Foodscapes,” Dr. Lisa-Marian Schmidt presented excerpts from her postdoctoral research project. Under the title “Worlds of Pleasure? Digital Subjectivations in the Food Crafts,” she explained the initial findings of her empirical research on the confectionery and winemaking trades and opened them up for discussion. It becomes apparent that digital subjectification is a fragmented network of images, texts, and numerical objects that is constituted in layers. Pastry chefs present themselves within this network—and through it—as “artists of indulgence,” while winemakers primarily highlight the traditional production conditions of “manual labor in and with nature” as a central aspect of their identity.

Christine Best participated in the ad hoc group on sociological research on menstruality organized by Dr. Corinna Schmechel (University of Göttingen), where she presented preliminary findings from her ongoing dissertation project, which lies at the intersection of gender studies and the sociology of work and is supervised by Prof. Dr. Mona Motakef at TU Dortmund University. In her presentation titled “‘I just suffer through it and try to get on with it somehow’—Empirical Highlights from a Qualitative Study on the (In)visibility of Menstruation in the Workplace,” Christine Best presented a preliminary case study of a physical therapist. The case reconstruction illustrates that, in this instance, the way menstruation is handled in a work context is characterized by shame, taboo, and invisibility. In doing so, the physical therapist must operate within structural paradoxes that marginalize her own experience and in which she also (re)produces the uncaring working conditions that surround her.

Social science research on menstruation is still a relatively new field in the German-speaking world. In particular, connections to labor and industrial research are rare. The ad hoc group generated considerable interest, thereby contributing to both visibility and networking within the German-speaking research community.