Inequality and Prejudice. German Social Scientist as Producers of Feeling Rules

Abstract

This article is about how sociological research in Germany addresses issues that first seem to be unconnected: young new Fascists and migrants. We will present research in these two areas to show how social scientists contribute to feelings about their respective objects of research. We will argue that although both have cultural disorientation of their study objects as their point of departure, they offer differing explanations for it and as a consequence construct contrasting emotions towards the new Fascists and migrants: they portray new Fascists as disoriented victims of modernization in need of sympathy, while they blame migrants for their disorientation resulting from migration and thus call for indifference or antipathy towards this group. Comparing both research fields we can show that both sets of emotions interconnect and thus form a dichotomous emotional regime. Sociological research helps to sustain lines of inclusion and exclusion from the German society.