Prof. Dr. Sascha Münnich

The office hours of Prof Dr Sascha Münnich in the winter semester 2024/25 are as follows:

Wednesdays, 2.00 pm - 3.30 pm on the following dates:

• 18.09.24
• 25.09.24
• 09.10.24
• 06.11.24
• 13.11.24
• 04.12.24
• 11.12.24
• 08.01.25
• 22.01.25
• 29.01.25
• 05.02.25

The consultation hours take place in presence during the lecture period, during the semester break mostly online.

Registration is by email to the Münnich office, Ms Birgit Reitzig: sekretariat-muennich@europa-uni.de.

• Economic sociology
• Historical and comparative sociology
• Social and cultural dimensions of economic behaviour
• Legitimacy of different types of economic profit realisation
• Institutional evolution and change of market economies
• Ecological transformation
• Global capitalism and inequality

Neuerscheinungen (Auszug): Münnich, Sascha (2024, im Erscheinen): Selbstkritischer Kapitalismus in Grün - Segmentierung und Kapitalismuskritik aus Sicht der Wirtschaftssoziologie. In: Neckel, Sighard / Degens, Philipp: Das Scheitern des Grünen Kapitalismus. Frankfurt a. Main: Campus.

Kraemer, Klaus; Münnich, Sascha; (2021) (Hrsg.): Ökonomischer Nationalismus. Soziologische Analysen wirtschaftlicher Ordnungen, Frankfurt a. Main: Campus. Link

Alle Publikationen sind hier einsehbar.

Prof. Dr Sascha Münnich, born in 1977, is Professor of Economic Sociology at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). His research and teaching focuses on the historical and comparative analysis of the relationship between the institutional and political figuration of capitalist economies, including labor and financial markets, as well as the symbolic and discursive practices and patterns of their legitimacy and justification, the moral economies that informs their interpretation and critique. In addition, this programme of a sociologically oriented political economy is not only concerned with stable orders, but also with a permanent process of change and transformation of the economy-as-society. Conceptually, he looks at economic activity via the classical analytical triangle of ideas, interests and institutions, with  a clear historical-comparative dimension in his empirial research. Moreover, these questions present themselves today in the relationship between globality, nationality and locality in and around Europe.

In his current research, Sascha Münnich is concerned with the empirical investigation of the legitimacy of corporate profits from a historical-comparative perspective, as well as the formation and impact of a field of transnational economic and capitalist criticism, in which civil society organisations and social "anti-finance" movements have attempted to bring the critical discourse into the political field since the financial crisis of 2009, thereby reproducing or overcoming cultural patterns of different national economies in Europe. In addition, there is fundamental economic sociological work on the significance of social relations for the distribution of economic values in markets and on the legitimacy of financial profits historically and currently. Another area of interest is the investigation of private indebtedness and over-indebtedness in countries of the global North and the global South as a challenge for welfare states and economic productivity opportunities, as well as the socio-economic transformation of the "rurban" area in Brandenburg.

Sascha Münnich studied social sciences in Göttingen and then worked as a doctoral fellow, post-doc and later habilitation student at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies with Prof. Dr Jens Beckert and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Streeck. He then was professor of international comparative sociology and later professor of sociological theory at the Georg-August-University in Göttingen. In 2010, he was awarded the Otto-Hahn-Medal of the Max Planck Society for his PhD on the historical-comparative development of labour market and social policy in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany and the USA. Sascha Münnich has worked several times as a researcher at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, in 2014 and 2015 he was John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Harvard Center for European Studies. Since 2022 he ist the director of the Institute of European Studies at Viadrina.

Lebenslauf (deu) | CV (eng)

Übersicht der aktuellen Lehrveranstaltungen auf ViaCampus.

Ausgewählte Themen der Lehre von Prof. Dr. Sascha Münnich

• Paradigmen sozio-ökonomischen Denkens
• Zwischen System und Akteur – Theorien sozialer Strukturierung
• Theoretische Grundlagen der Sozialwissenschaften
• Moderne Soziologische Theorie

• Wirtschaft und Kultur
• Ökonomie für Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaftler:innen
• Kapitalismus und Gesellschaftskritik
• Global Inequality, Economy and Labor
• Finanzkapitalismus und Krise
• Geld, Schulden, Finanzmarkt
• Wohlfahrtstaate und Kapitalismus
• Nationale Demokratie und globale Ökonomie
• Macht, Herrschaft, Legitimität

• Lehrforschung „Soziale Lebenslagen im ländlichen Raum in Brandenburg“  und „Exploring tesla in Brandenburg“

• Sozialwissenschaften und Geschichte
• Äpfel, Birnen und Orangen - Methoden des Gesellschaftsvergleichs

Awards and honours

• 2020: Karl Polanyi Prize of the Economic Sociology Section for the essay "Profit as Social Rent: Embeddedness and Stratification in Markets“ (Sociological Theory 37/2: 162-183, link)
• 2014/2015: John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellowship of Harvard University, Cambridge, USA   
• 2010: Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society for an outstanding dissertation   
• 2006: Wolfgang Enke Prize of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Göttingen for outstanding final theses in the field of social policy. Awarded for the thesis "The Crisis of the Welfare State: Anatomy of a Social Science Debate"

Lectures and conferences (selection)


Conferences organised by us

• 29 - 31 January 2019 International Conference „The Social Legitimacy of Financial Profits“ at the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (final conference of the BMBF project “Die gesellschaftliche Legitimität von Finanzprofiten“)    
• 16/17 November 2017 Conference „The measurement of the entrepreneurial in independent work“ at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen  
• 14/15 December 2016 4U Workshop – Studying Capitalist Phenomena in Time “The Moral Roots of Financial Regimes in Germany and the UK, 1870 – 1933 and 2008 – 2011” at the Universität Uppsala in Sweden (cooperation with Prof. Patrik Aspers, Uppsala)  
• 17/18 March 2016 Annual Conference of the DGS Economic Sociology Section: "From market to economic order. What can sociology contribute to the understanding of economic systems?" at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen  
• 26/27 June 2014: Annual Conference of the DGS Section for Economic Sociology (together with Dr Patrick Sachweh, University of Frankfurt): "Kapitalismus als Lebensform. Patterns of interpretation, legitimisation and criticism in the market society" at Goethe University Frankfurt a. Main    
• 11/12 July 2013: Joint workshop of sociologists and historians: "Social Sciences and History" at the MPI for Social Research in Cologne  
• 14/15 November 2013: Third Doctoral Workshop of the German Section of the European Network for Social Policy Analysis (ESPANet): "Privatisation and Marketization of Social Services and Social Programs" at the MPI for the Study of Societies in Cologne  

Presentations

• Symposium of World-Interdisciplinary Network of Institutional Research (WINIR) "Varieties of Anti-Capitalism. Institutional roots of moral critique of financial capitalism in Germany and Britain." London, UK, 16-18 December 2019
• University of Hamburg, Institute of Sociology: „Varieties of Anti-Capitalism – Zur Institutionalisierung der Profitkritik im Finanzkapitalismus“ 11.01.2019  
• University of Heidelberg, Max Weber Institute for Sociology: “Varieties of Anti-Capitalism. On the institutionalisation of profit criticism in financial capitalism“  21.11.2018  
• DGS Congress 2018 – Lecture in the Ad-Hoc Group „Comparative Economic Sociology“ Göttingen, 28 September 2018
• International Conference on Cross-movement Mobilisation “The non-liberal origins of (neo-)liberalism. Polanyi’s blind spot?” Bochum, Germany, 04.2017
• Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) – Annual Meeting “Countermovement Revisited: On the Analytical Power and Boundaries of Polanyi’s Concept Today” Berkeley, USA, 06.2016
• Goethe-Universität, Institut für Soziologie, Frankfurt a. Main: „How the moral economy of finance shaped the perception of the 2008 credit crunch”  12.05.2016  
• Louvain School of Management, Dept. of Strategic Management, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: "Profit as a cultural problem"  02.03.2016 
• University of Madison, Wisconsin, USA: "Why Do Capitalist Societies Have a Problem with Financial Profits? Legitimacy and Critique of Financial Regimes." 04/06/2015  
• University of Berkeley, California, USA: "Value distribution in markets from a comparative-cultural perspective." 02/06/2015
• Allied Social Sciences Association / American Economic Association (ASSA/AEA) - Annual Meeting "A Sociology of Profit. Economic Sociology and the Profit Puzzle in Economics" Boston, USA, 04.01.2015  
• Harvard University, Center for European Studies, Cambridge, USA: "Why Do Capitalist Societies Have a Problem with Financial Profits?" 23/03/2015  
• University of Jena "Vom Stamme Nimm. Profit and the legitimacy of financial market capitalism." 26 May 2014
• Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) - Annual Meeting "Solving the Profit Puzzle. How to link Economic Sociology and the Theory of Capitalism" Boston, USA, 29.06.2012  
• Network for European Social Policy Analysis (ESPANet), Annual Meeting "Ideas, Power and Business Interests in the New Deal" Budapest, Hungary, 03/09/2010  
• 5th Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference (IPA) "Interest-Seeking as Sense-Making. Business, Ideas, and Power in the US Social Security Act of 1935" Grenoble, France, 25 June 2010

Activities

• Board member of the Association of Friends and Alumni of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
• Membership in the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE)
• 2013 - 2019: Member of the Board of the Economic Sociology Section of the German Sociological Association
• 2016 - 2017: Editor of the European Economic Sociology Newsletter  
• 2009 - 2012: Spokesperson of the working group "Comparative Welfare State Research" of the section "Comparative Political Science" in the German Political Science Association