Andreas Reckwitz (18 March 1970 in
Witten) is a German
sociologist and
cultural theorist. He is professor at the institute of social sciences at
Humboldt University Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany.
The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humboldt ...
.
Life
Reckwitz studied sociology, Political science and philosophy in
Bonn
Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...
,
Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
and
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...
. He graduated 1994 in Cambridge, overseen by
Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is an English sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists and is ...
. He achieved his
Dr. phil. in 1999 at
Hamburg University
The University of Hamburg (, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen''), the Hamburg Colon ...
. From 2001 to 2005 he worked there as assistant professor at the sociological faculty. In 2005 he became professor for sociology and
sociology of culture
The sociology of culture, and the related cultural sociology, concerns the systematic analysis of culture, usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by a member of a society, as it is manifested in the society. For Georg Simmel, ...
at
Konstanz University, 2010 professor for sociology of culture at the
Viadrina European University
European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) () is a university located at Frankfurt (Oder) in Brandenburg, Germany. It is also known as the University of Frankfurt (Oder). The city is on the Oder River, which marks the border between Germany ...
in
Frankfurt (Oder)
Frankfurt (Oder), also known as Frankfurt an der Oder (, ; Central Marchian: ''Frankfort an de Oder,'' ) is the fourth-largest city in the German state of Brandenburg after Potsdam, Cottbus and Brandenburg an der Havel. With around 58,000 inh ...
. In 2020 Reckwitz became professor for sociology and sociology of culture at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Reckwitz is a prominent proponent of social
practice theory
Practice theory (or praxeology, theory of social practices) is a body of social theory within anthropology and sociology that explains society and culture as the result of structure and individual agency. Practice theory emerged in the late 20 ...
and contributed to its development as an encompassing
social
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives fro ...
and
cultural theory
Cultural studies is an academic field that explores the dynamics of contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture) and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers investigate how cultural practices rela ...
. This serves as basis for his works on
subjectivation,
creativity
Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable Idea, ideas or works using one's imagination. Products of creativity may be intangible (e.g. an idea, scientific theory, Literature, literary work, musical composition, or joke), or a physica ...
and singularization of the social life.
In 2017 he published his work on the structure of the current late modern society, ''Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten. Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne'', which was published in English in 2020 as ''The Society of Singularities''. In this book he analyses how economy, work, information technology, lifestyle, classes and politics follow a system which values singularity and devalues non-singularity.
Reckwitz wrote several articles for the newspaper ''
Die Zeit
(, ) is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles.
History
The first edition of was ...
'' and appeared as an interview partner on the German national radio
Deutschlandfunk Kultur discussing current socio-cultural and political trends and issues in
western societies
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to various nations and states in Western Europe, Northern America, and Australasia; with some debate as to whether those in Eastern Europe and Latin America also constitute the West. ...
.
In 2019 Reckwitz was awarded the
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the
German Research Foundation
The German Research Foundation ( ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2019, the DFG had a funding bud ...
.
Research and areas of focus
The transformation of cultural theories
In his book published in 2000,
[Andreas Reckwitz: ''Die Transformation der Kulturtheorien. Zur Entwicklung eines Theorieprogramms'', Velbrück Wissenschaft, Weilerswist 2000] based on his doctoral dissertation, Reckwitz presents "cultural theories" as an autonomous explanatory framework in sociological theory. He distinguishes between four concepts of culture (normative,
holistic
Holism is the interdisciplinary idea that systems possess properties as wholes apart from the properties of their component parts. Julian Tudor Hart (2010''The Political Economy of Health Care''pp.106, 258
The aphorism "The whole is greater than t ...
, differentiation-theoretical, and meaning-oriented) and builds upon the meaning-oriented concept of culture. He contrasts cultural theories with action explanations based on
utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the ...
and norms: cultural theories explain action by referring to knowledge orders.
In contrast to utilitarian theories of action, cultural theories posit that action is not solely motivated by individual interests or norms, but by cognitive and symbolic orders that structure how individuals perceive the world.
Reckwitz develops two strands of cultural theory in social sciences in detail, one
phenomenological-interpretative (
Schütz,
Goffman,
Geertz,
Taylor
Taylor, Taylors or Taylor's may refer to:
People
* Taylor (surname)
** List of people with surname Taylor
* Taylor (given name), including Tayla and Taylah
* Taylor sept, a branch of Scottish clan Cameron
* Justice Taylor (disambiguation)
...
) and the other
structuralist (
Lévi-Strauss,
Bourdieu). The first is
subjectivist
Subjectivism is the doctrine that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience", instead of shared or communal, and that there is no external or objective truth.
While Thomas Hobbes was an early proponent of subjecti ...
in nature, while the second is
objectivist. He identifies "practice theory" or praxeology as a synthesis of both, overcoming both mentalism (localizing culture in the mind) and textualism (localizing culture in discourses).
Practice theory allows for the overcoming of the dichotomy between the subjectivism of interpretative approaches and the objectivism of structuralist approaches, by proposing a vision where social practices are both carriers of meanings and structured by recurring patterns of bodily and material actions.
The hybrid subject
Reckwitz develops a historical sociology of forms of subjectivation that have shaped
modernity
Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular Society, socio-Culture, cultural Norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the ...
since the 18th century. He seeks to identify the hegemonic "subject cultures" in three areas: labor, personal relationships, and technologies of the self. Three historically successive subject cultures emerge: the
bourgeois
The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...
subject of the 18th and 19th centuries, the employed subject of the
industrial society
In sociology, an industrial society is a society driven by the use of technology and machinery to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour. Such a structure developed in the Western world ...
of modernity, and the
postmodern
Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...
subject (after 1980). Each of these subject cultures is contradictory and unstable: the bourgeois subject (morality and autonomy), the employed subject (social and aesthetic orientation), and the postmodern subject (creativity and entrepreneurship). Reckwitz highlights the role of cultural and aesthetic counter-movements in these changes, such as the
romantic, the
avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
, and the
counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...
.
[Andreas Reckwitz: ''Das hybride Subjekt. Eine Theorie der Subjektkulturen von der bürgerlichen Moderne zur Postmoderne'', Velbrück Wissenschaft, Weilerswist 2006]Cultural counter-movements, such as Romanticism, artistic avant-gardes, or the 1960s counterculture, played a decisive role in transforming forms of subjectivation, offering alternatives to dominant models.
The invention of creativity
In his book published in 2012,
[Andreas Reckwitz: ''Die Erfindung der Kreativität. Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung'', Suhrkamp, Berlin 2012] Reckwitz explores how creativity has become a dominant social expectation in late modern society. He introduces the idea of a "creativity
dispositif
In the philosophy of Michel Foucault, a ''dispositif'' or ''dispositive'' is any of the various institutional, physical, and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures which enhance and maintain the exercise of Power (philosophy), power w ...
" centered around a regime of the aesthetic new. This dispositif involves a constellation of producers and audiences that define what is considered new.
Creativity is no longer an exceptional attribute reserved for artists; it has become a generalized social norm in late modern society. To be creative now means participating in the production of the new, whether in the arts, the economy, or everyday life.
Reckwitz shows how the field of art has served as a model for this dispositif. The development of the art field, changes in management discourse, the
creative industries
The creative industries refers to a range of economic activities which are concerned with the generation or exploitation of knowledge and information. They may variously also be referred to as the cultural industries (especially in Europe) or the ...
, the media star system, and transformations in
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
and
urban planning
Urban planning (also called city planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportatio ...
have all contributed to the formation of this creativity dispositif.
The artistic field has played a major role in the spread of the creativity regime. It is the artistic practices, with their constant quest for novelty, that have inspired other fields to adopt a similar logic of innovation and singularity.
He concludes by highlighting the inherent tensions within this culture of creative expectation.
If creativity is now a generalized expectation, it simultaneously generates tensions: individuals find themselves caught in an endless race for innovation, which can lead to psychological pressure and a quest for recognition that is never fully satisfied.
The society of singularities
In his book ''Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten'' published in 2017,
[Andreas Reckwitz: ''Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten. Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne.'', Suhrkamp, Berlin 2017] Reckwitz analyzes the structure of late modern society through the fields of economy, labor, digital technologies,
lifestyles
Lifestyle is the interests, opinions, behaviours, and behavioural orientations of an individual, group, or culture. The term " style of life" () was introduced by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in his 1929 book, ''The Case of Miss R.'', ...
/classes, and politics.
Cultural production has shifted from a logic of standardization to a logic of singularization, where the production of uniqueness and difference has become a central goal.
He identifies a "social logic of singularization" in late modernity, a system that values uniqueness and devalues what is not singular.
Singularity becomes a key value in a society that values individuality, where goods, services, and even people must stand out through unique qualities. This phenomenon extends to culture, the economy, and also social life, where each individual seeks to assert their distinctiveness.
Reckwitz attributes this singularization to economic (
post-industrial capitalism), technological (
digitization
Digitization is the process of converting information into a digital (i.e. computer-readable) format.Collins Dictionary. (n.d.). Definition of 'digitize'. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/ ...
as a cultural machine), and sociocultural factors (the new middle class as the dominant milieu). He concludes that singularization leads to social polarization, marked by valuation and devaluation conflicts, which are characteristic of late modern society.
The social polarization we observe today is largely related to the competition for the recognition of singularity. This struggle for recognition produces deep inequalities, where those who fail to distinguish themselves are devalued.
The end of illusions
In his 2019 work ''Das Ende der Illusionen'',
[Andreas Reckwitz: ''Das Ende der Illusionen: Politik, Ökonomie und Kultur in der Spätmoderne.'', Suhrkamp, Berlin 2019] Reckwitz continues the reflection begun in ''Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten''. The book consists of five essays that analyze the consequences of the transition from industrial modernity to the post-industrial society of singularities. It addresses the dynamics between hyperculture and cultural essentialism in late modern culture, the emergence of a three-class society, and the asymmetries of cognitive capitalism.
We live in an era where culture is both hyper-cultural, with a constant flow of creations and differentiations, and essentialist, where fixed cultural identities are reaffirmed in the face of the uncertainty of the modern world.
The final essays examine the spiral of disillusionment linked to self-commercialization and self-realization, as well as the limits of
liberalism
Liberalism is a Political philosophy, political and moral philosophy based on the Individual rights, rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law. ...
as a political paradigm.
The ideal of self-realization in the society of singularities ultimately generates a spiral of disillusionment, as the incessant quest for recognition and singularity becomes an unbearable burden for individuals.
Reckwitz concludes by proposing a model of "embedded liberalism," inspired by
Karl Polanyi
Karl Paul Polanyi (; ; 25 October 1886 – 23 April 1964)''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 2003) vol 9. p. 554 was an Austro-Hungarian economic anthropologist, economic sociologist, and politician, best kno ...
, which aims to re-integrate economic, cultural, and political dynamics into collective social frameworks.
In light of the limits of open liberalism, it is necessary to reintegrate economic and cultural dynamics into broader social frameworks, in order to create a balance between individual freedom and collective solidarity.
Selected publications
* ''Verlust. Ein Grundproblem der Moderne. ''Suhrkamp, Berlin 2024, ISBN 978-3-518-58822-2.
* ''The Society of Singularities''. Polity, Cambridge 2020.
** Translated from ''Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten. Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne.'' Suhrkamp, Berlin 2017,
* ''The End of Illusions: Politics, Economics and Culture in Late Modernity''. Polity, Cambridge 2021.
** Translated from ''Das Ende der Illusionen. Politik, Ökonomie und Kultur in der Spätmoderne''. Suhrkamp, Berlin 2019. .
* ''Kreativität und soziale Praxis. Studien zur Sozial- und Gesellschaftstheorie.'' transcript, Bielefeld 2016, (collected articles).
* ''The Invention of Creativity. Modern Society and the Culture of the New,'' Polity, Cambridge 2017, .
** Translated from ''Die Erfindung der Kreativität. Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung.'' Suhrkamp, Berlin 2012,
* ''Unscharfe Grenzen. Perspektiven der Kultursoziologie.'' transcript, Bielefeld 2008, .
* ''Subjekt.'' transcript, Bielefeld 2008, .
* ''Das hybride Subjekt. Eine Theorie der Subjektkulturen von der bürgerlichen Moderne zur Postmoderne.'' Velbrück Wissenschaft, Weilerswist 2006, . (habilitation dissertation)
* ''Die Transformation der Kulturtheorien. Zur Entwicklung eines Theorieprogramms.'' Velbrück Wissenschaft, Weilerswist 2000, .
* ''Struktur. Zur sozialwissenschaftlichen Analyse von Regeln und Regelmäßigkeiten.'' Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen/ Wiesbaden 1997, .
As editor
* with Sophia Prinz and Hilmar Schäfer: ''Ästhetik und Gesellschaft.'' Suhrkamp, Berlin 2015, .
* with Stephan Moebius: ''Poststrukturalistische Sozialwissenschaften.'' Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2008, .
* with Thorsten Bonacker: ''Kulturen der Moderne. Soziologische Perspektiven der Gegenwart.'' Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main/ New York 2007, .
* with Holger Sievert: ''Interpretation, Konstruktion, Kultur. Ein Paradigmenwechsel in den Sozialwissenschaften.'' Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen/ Wiesbaden 1999, .
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reckwitz, Andreas
Living people
1970 births
People from Witten
German sociologists
Modernity
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners
Academic staff of the University of Konstanz
Academic staff of European University Viadrina
Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin
University of Bonn alumni
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
University of Hamburg alumni