Wilhelm Heitmeyer (born 28 June 1945, Nettelstedt, Germany) is sociologist and professor of education specializing in socialisation. From 1996 to 2013 he headed the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence (IKG) [1] at Bielefeld University. Since retiring as director, he has held the position of Senior Research Professor at IKG.
Wilhelm Heitmeyer’s father was a typesetter, who was killed in World War II. His mother worked in a cigar factory and later ran a grocer’s shop. Heitmeyer attended the Wittekind-Gymnasium in Lübbecke, North Rhine-Westphalia, before going on to study education and sociology at the University of Bielefeld. He received his doctorate in 1977, his habilitation in 1988.
Before embarking on an academic career Heitmeyer worked as a typesetter, and briefly as a secondary school teacher.
He resigned his longstanding membership of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1992, in protest at its asylum policy.
Heitmeyer has been married since 1968, and has two daughters.
Heitmeyer’s research interests have focused since 1983 on empirical research into right-wing extremism, violence, xenophobia, ethnic/cultural conflicts, and social disintegration. Since 1990 he has conducted a long-term investigation of group-focused enmity. [2] Heitmeyer has completed numerous projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In the mid-1980s he was one of the first to study extreme right-wing orientations among adolescents, and also violence in soccer stadiums. In the mid-1990s he was already investigating fundamentalist orientations among young Muslims. More recently, his interest has turned to violence in the Global South.
In 1996 Heitmeyer founded the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence, where he served as director until retiring in 2013. As founding editor-in-chief, he published the International Journal of Conflict and Violence from 2008 to 2014, together with Douglas Massey (Princeton), Steven Messner (Albany), James Sidanius (Harvard), and Michel Wieviorka (EHSS Paris).
In his work Heitmeyer puts forward the theory of social disintegration, which he developed with colleagues in the 1990s to explain violence, right-wing extremism, and ethnic/cultural conflicts. The theory is also known in the social sciences as the “Bielefeld disintegration approach,” and forms the basis for the syndrome of group-focused enmity. Disintegration is understood as the failure of societal institutions and communities to secure material existence, social recognition, and personal intactness. The essence of the theory is that as the experience and fear of disintegration increase, the extent and intensity of conflict expand and the ability to regulate it shrinks.
The concept involves three spheres of life, divided into two levels: the objective (participation, etc.) and the subjective, namely, recognition. In the disintegration approach social and societal integration of individuals and groups is understood as a successful balance between freedoms and bonds, where three specific problems are adequately resolved:
- In the sociostructural dimension, adequate participation in the material goods required for reproduction (labor, housing, consumer markets). This individual/functional system integration generates opportunities for positional recognition. - In the institutional dimension of socialization, a balance of conflicting interests (fairness, justice, democratic rule of law). This is communicative/interactive social integration, which represents opportunities for moral recognition. - In the personal dimension of communitization, the production of emotional, expressive relationships, meaning, and self-realization. This is cultural/expressive social integration and represents opportunities for emotional recognition.
Various processes work to exacerbate integration problems in modern Western societies:
- In the sociostructural dimension, social polarization reduces chances for individuals to gain access to the various social subsystems. While individualization expands personal freedoms, pressures also grow, for example to succeed in the labor market. When the probability of this recedes, frustration arises among the losers, who no longer receive positional recognition. Competition, economization, competitive thinking, and consumerism promote self-centered behavior (pushiness, social distinction, exclusion of others). - In the institutional dimension, political powerlessness leads to withdrawal from public affairs, including participation in securing core norms such as justice, solidarity, and fairness. This is associated with a loss of moral recognition. - At the socioemotional level, ambivalent individualization leads to a destabilization of couple relationships and disintegration of families, and thus endangers the socialization of children (elevated conflict potential, parental emotional stress), which also becomes visible in the loss of social recognition.
Since the 1980s Heitmeyer researches right-wing orientation among youth and the function of that orientation for the legitimization for violence. Associated therewith he researches causes for right-wing terrorism.
Another topic is violence from youth in different social contexts in association with experience of integration and disintegration. That also includes analyses about school shootings from young man.
An early research topic was violence in soccer stadiums.
Within the international context Heitmeyer dealt with the control resp. loss of control of violence. Together with John Hagan (Chicago) he published the International Handbook of Violence Research. Thereto belongs the guidance of an international.
For some time past his interest lies in violence within the global south.
Since 2000 Heitmeyer and his research group have been investigating “group-focused enmity,” a term and concept he himself coined and developed.
Group-focused enmity describes abasement and discrimination occurring solely on the basis of actual or attributed group membership, regardless of individual behavior. The groups involved include migrants, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, homeless people, people with disabilities, and people identified by their skin color. A ten-year project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and a DFG graduate college investigated this field with annual representative population surveys from 2002 to 2011. The findings were published in book form (in German) in the annual “Deutsche Zustände” series (published by Suhrkamp) and in reporting in Die Zeit newspaper over a period of many years.
Heitmeyer received a research professorship for 2003 to 2005 from the Volkswagen Foundation. In 2012 he received the Göttingen Peace Prize. In 2014 the Innovation Prize of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia gave Heitmeyer an honorary award for his development to conflict and violence research.[4]
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