His most recent lectures and essays deal with the systemic competition between the West and China, the sociology of partnership and criteria for social polarization.
They examine the function of interdisciplinarity in science, turn to the social change caused by the pandemic and discuss the contribution of religion to the emergence of modern society.
Jürgen Kaube
Editor.
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Perhaps these examples suffice to indicate both the spectrum of Rudolf Stichweh's sociological research and the restlessness of this thoughtful spirit.
His curiosity and reading have not diminished since we were astonished about it on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.
It includes biology and physics - the emergence of this discipline was the subject of his dissertation - "Science" and "Nature" as well as sports history, urban studies and the novels of Claude Simons.
A world history of the foreign
In Bonn, the last stage of his university career, which led from Bielefeld, where he succeeded his teacher Niklas Luhmann, to Lucerne, where he was also rector of the university for four years, political issues increased.
There he is, a fact full of irony, “Dahrendorf professor for the theory of modern society”: Hardly any famous sociologist is more alien to him than Dahrendorf.
In addition to his retirement, Stichweh heads the Department for Democracy Research in Bonn.
Which does not prevent him from continuing his studies in the sociology of science, his contributions to the understanding of the university or his interest in the world history of the foreigner as a social figure.
Anyone who reads Rudolf Stichweh's essays, many of which have also been collected, will always find the nutrients for entire books in them. But Stichweh himself has so far only written books if he had to do so on an academic basis. We therefore combine the congratulations on today's seventieth birthday with the wish that the book projects he has, especially the book about the stranger, about whom he knows more than anyone else, may soon succeed.