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 Volunteering, potential for volunteering and the potential for volunteering in unions among young people in Eastern Germany

 

Implementing Institution:

Willy Brandt Zentrum, Universität Wrocław und dem Zentrum Technik und Gesellschaft, Arbeitsgruppe Technik und Protest der Technischen Universität Berlin

Funding institution:

Otto-Brenner-Stiftung

Project Director:

Prof. Dr. Jochen Roose

Implementation Period:

10.2013-12.2015

Members of the research team:

Franziska Scholl

 

Project Description:

Since volunteering usually initiates in people’s youth, a particular importance is attached to adolescents and their role within the context of a volunteering culture in the realm of civil society. Research on civil society participation has shown in multiple cases that the levels of volunteering in the East of Germany are considerably lower than in its western counterpart.  Focusing on adolescents in eastern Germany the research project concentrates on a group that is particularly important for the research on volunteering. The research project uses existing data from standardized surveys to analyze in detail the scope and types of, as well as explanations for volunteering among East German adolescents. Existing studies such as the “Freiwilligensurvey” (Survey of volunteers), the study “Aufwachsen in Deutschland” (AID:A, Growing up in Germany) and the “Shell-Jugendstudie” (study on youth commissioned by Shell) are valuable and so far under-researched sources of information when taken together. In a first step, the here presented research project describes existing levels of volunteering among East German adolescents in a detailed manner. In a second step, large multivariate methods help to develop a typology of the different types that further serves as the basis for differentiated models of explanation for volunteering.  Missing data in one sample can at least in parts be compensated through information of one of the other samples. In a last step the volunteering-type based explanation models help to conduct differentiated analyses of the volunteering potential. In each of these steps a special focus lies on volunteering in unions.


 The Greeks, the Germans, and the Crisis

Implementing Institution:

Willy Brandt Zentrum, Universität Wrocław, der Freien Universität Berlin und der University of Crete

Funding institution:

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Deutschland und General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, Culture and Sports of Greece

Project Director:


Prof. Dr. Jochen Roose, Prof. Maria Kousis, PhD

Implementation Period:

11.2013-12.2015

Members of the research team:

Franziska Scholl, Moritz Sommer, Kostas Kanellopoulos, Marina Papadaki

Projekt-Webseite:

www.ggcrisi.info

Project Description:

Societal developments like the Eurozone crisis need interpretation: What is the cause of the problem? Who is to blame or to praise? Who should be in charge of reacting? Multiple answers are presented in the public sphere. Politicians, protest groups, economic actors, and many others present their respective interpretation of the crisis in the media. The research project focuses on the media reporting in two countries prominently involved in the Eurozone crisis: Greece and Germany. The core question of the project is: Who is made responsible by whom in the debate on the Eurozone crisis?

We assume that public attribution of responsibility is not a matter of personal taste or idiosyncratic beliefs. Rather actors are motivated to present themselves positively in the public and propose actions to their favor. Also they are embedded in their culture and follow their respective general values. Accordingly, we want to explain the attribution patterns by the structural position of the actors, their cultural embeddedness and their values.

In particular, we are interested in the mutual references between the two countries, Greece and Germany. How do actors in one country relate to actors in the other country and how does this change over time? Both countries are closely linked by the crisis development, though with very different roles and perspectives. The interpretation of the respective other country, its actions and duties are of major importance for the handling of the crisis and the relation between the two countries and its peoples.

Read 5040 times Last modified on Tuesday, 04 April 2023 23:01
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