Shifts and reorientation within the social-crisis and catastrophe: towards the realization of pandemic epistemological processes

In the pandemic, the state in Germany reacts in lockdown with restrictions within the private sphere of a shutdown of the leisure and cultural sphere, while the work contexts are only peripherally affected. Out of this crisis, new techniques of leadership are intensifying. Discipline and norms are no longer suitable enough to ensure productivity in today's world, which is why there is a shift towards self-directed processes and mechanisms such as flexibility, motivation and goal setting. The actors are therefore no longer assigned a fixed place in the sense of discipline, but are encouraged to surrender to the new control mechanisms and to adapt themselves again and again with a high degree of self-control. The realistic fear of contagion reinforces the actors' willingness to submit to these forms of mobilization.

The Editor

PD Dr. Rolf Hepp teaches at the Institute for Sociology at the FU Berlin and coordinates the SUPI-Network.