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Project Area B

From Heterogeneities to Inequalities in the Context of Organizations

The five projects of Project Area B of CRC 882 deal with organizations in the fields of education and work as actors and contexts of producing insecurity. The common basic idea is that organizations contribute essentially to the production of social inequalities because they perceive and interpret individual heterogeneities very differently and selectively, making them criteria for membership and the distribution of resources. In this context, three problems are particularly visible:

(1) As organizations channel interactions by way of formal position structures and systems of rules, they contribute to establishing boundaries and differentiate the distribution of rewards and strains. This way they not only transform individual heterogeneities into classified differences, they also open up selective realization opportunities along differentiaton criteria which are intra-organizationally judged on. The identification of such processes and mechanisms allows for more detailed assertions on how exactly organizations are important for generating inequalities.

(2) With organizations themselves becoming subject to horizontal differentiation and granting different advantages to their members, for an individual´s opportunities of access and realization it becomes ever more important into which organization he/she is included at what stage of his/her lifecourse and at which stage of its own development this organisation is. Then, inequalities – e. g. in the sense of cumulating advantages and disadvantages – are also a result of the sequence of individual memberships with the same or different organizations, which must be appropriately taken into account by inequality research.

(3) Both educational and work organizations are institutionalized action contexts where attributions are communicated and perpetuated. By the example of ethnically coded attributions, gender stereotypes and normative attitudes towards distributional justice it will be analyzed in detail how such a reproduction of attribution and interpretation patterns happens within organizations and which mechanisms work there.

Project Area B

  • Project B1

    Ethnic Heterogeneity and the Production of Inequality in Educational Organizations from Early Childhood Onward

  • Project B2

    Ethnicity at University: Processes of Ethnic Demarcation and Relations of Inequality Over the Course of Studies

  • Project B3

    Interactions Between Capabilities in Work and Private Life: A Study of Employees in Different Work Organizations

  • Project B4

    Companies and Inequality: The Synchronic and Diachronic Inequality Effects of Temporary Layoffs (Recalls)

  • Project B5

    Organizations and Life Conduct of Fathers