Against this background, the network aims firstly to historicise this particular practice of social self-observation and problematisation, secondly to explore its specific rationality in relation to other forms of rational control of social processes, thirdly to gain an overview of the respective historical and contemporary forms of diagnosing and fourthly to shed light on its reality-creating power using selected cases as examples.

The network thus pursues the overarching question of what the various manifestations of diagnosing do for the self-control and performative self-constitution of modern societies. Since the spread of diagnostic practices cannot be understood without 'beings' who carry out these practices (in interaction with infrastructures, technologies, etc.), the research interest in this context is also directed , fifthly, at the subjectivation of individuals, collectives and organisations as 'actors' of diagnostics.

The research interests outlined above are motivated by cultural history and cultural sociology: they are based on the assumption that the orders of societies and the forms of their subjects are not only based on socio-structural "basic processes" (Christof Dipper), but also on cultural processes of self-perception that interact with the "basic processes". Seen in this light, societies and their subjects are not only socio-structural but also cultural formations. And an influential force in their cultural self-formation in modernity, according to our thesis, are practices of diagnosing, in which in turn historically specific and consequently changeable social imaginations of crisis, openness to the future and mouldability are constituted.

In order to identify (historically and sector-specifically, diachronically and synchronously) distinguishable forms of diagnosing and to make them accessible for empirical studies, a heuristic concept of diagnosis is required that comprises the following steps: 1. the relevance of individual characteristics, made observable with special techniques and (measurement) procedures, as symptoms for the deviation from a normal or standard state; 2. the synthesis of individual symptoms into an integral crisis form; 3. the systematic prognosis of future developments based on an anamnesis and the consideration of other factors; finally, 4. proposals for subsequent therapeutic (preventive, corrective, supportive, promoting) measures of intervention (e.g. interruption, reorganisation, restoration, prevention or optimisation), the implementation of which (e.g. through employment programmes, health policy measures, the levying of a CO2 tax, the subsidisation of electric cars, the promotion of talent, etc.) gives diagnoses the status of a social productive force sui generis.

Not all of these four steps are always taken. For example, although a diagnosis is crucial for legitimising an intervention, not every diagnosis necessarily results in an intervention. Furthermore, we assume that the concept of diagnosis has undergone semantic and pragmatic changes in the course of its migration through various scientific and non-scientific social areas and disciplines, which should therefore also be analysed.

With the help of this heuristic concept, the network aims to track down diagnoses of different mediality, scale and scope: 1. disciplinary and contemporary discourses of diagnosing (e.g. in sociology, educational science, history), which we regard from a performative perspective as a "special form of practices" (Andreas Reckwitz) insofar as they produce the facts of which they 'speak' in 'speaking' in the first place; 2. historical and current cultural performances, e.g. on the stages of theatre, opera or sport, in which crisis scenarios and future concepts take on a special sensual-sensual form and conciseness due to the physicality and imagery of the representations; 3. diagnostic practices, e.g. measuring deviations from the norm or potentials in different time periods, social areas and material arrangements. Methodologically, the network's analyses are therefore primarily based on (historical) discourse analysis, concepts of the performative informed by media theory and approaches from (cultural) sociology and historical praxeology.

In conjunction with socio-theoretical reflection on the historical and social conditions of the emergence and dissemination of diagnoses, these theoretical and methodological instruments make it possible to use interdisciplinary case studies to investigate the diversity of diagnostic topics, their manifestations, their changes, their modes of action and their consequences for social self-perception and political self-organisation.