The concept of diagnosis that we heuristically use as the sensitising concept (Blumer 1954) is medically influenced (cf. Behrend 2005; Osrecki 2011; Krähnke 2016). It allows us to first trace discourses and practices of diagnosing in different time periods and contexts. We assume that the concept of diagnosis undergoes shifts in meaning in the course of its migration through different time periods and contexts, which correspond to differences in the concrete practices of diagnosing in each case. In the dialogue of the individual projects, these transformations of the concept of diagnosis and corresponding forms of the practice of diagnosing will also be explored genealogically (cf. Foucault 1983). With this interest, further questions become virulent: Under what historical and social circumstances does the concept of diagnosis prevail over other concepts of observing and problematising contemporary phenomena (e.g. analysis, criticism, comparison) and coping with uncertainty (e.g. surrender to fate, confession, prophecy)? To which areas, objects, facts is the concept of diagnosis related in each case? What resonances and dissonances arise between different context-specific concepts, discourses and practices of diagnosing?

Guest speakers

• Prof Dr Fran Osrecki, Sociology, Berlin School of Economics and Law
• PD Dr Heike Delitz, Sociology, University of Bamberg

In this work package, the main fields, disciplines and institutions of diagnosis in the modern age will be identified, alongside medicine and healthcare, for example science, education, art, sport, policing and politics. The focus is firstly on the respective objects of diagnosis, secondly on the epistemic and normative orders and standards by which these objects are judged, thirdly on the specific forms of concepts and discourses of diagnosis in the various fields and the concerns associated with them, and finally fourthly on the interactions between the various diagnostic concepts and discourses: Under what circumstances, for example, is sociological time diagnostics used in police work? How are medical and sociological diagnoses interdependent? How does this in turn relate to future-oriented thinking and action in the field of economics? And which 'big' diagnostic narratives come into play? In this context, the particular milieu, location or institutional references of diagnostic observations are also of interest. In health policy or in police work, for example, they can manifest themselves in the fact that certain milieus and places become the focus of a diagnostic detection of infection or crime potential and are thus labelled as potentially dangerous. Another example would be the thematisation of educational institutions - kindergartens, schools, universities or even sports clubs - as places of potentially available 'human capital', whereby educators are called upon and deployed as 'talent scouts'. Finally, the possibilities of networking diagnostic knowledge across space, time, fields, disciplines and institutions through digital technologies, the creation of memories and archives, etc. will also be explored by way of example.

Guest speakers

• Prof. Dr Nicolai Hannig, History, TU Darmstadt
• Prof. Dr Frank Adloff, Sociology, University of Hamburg

This work package will zoom in as closely as possible on the concrete practices of diagnosing in the various fields, disciplines and institutions. Historical and empirical (ethnographic, praxeographic) case studies take a detailed look at the places, socio-material arrangements, infrastructures, procedures and techniques of the selective problematisation of contemporary phenomena and thus also the local production of existential social reference problems qua diagnosis: Under what circumstances, where, by whom and, above all, how are certain phenomena named, created, plausibilised, made to be seen and felt as particularly urgent problems to the detriment of other phenomena? Which imaginations (horror and wishful thinking, crisis scenarios, future scenarios, etc.), definitions, norms and standards claimed to be valid (e.g. in the assessment and evaluation of specific bodies and psyches in the diagnosis of sporting talent or psychological problems at school) materialise in the practices of diagnosis? Who or what is used as a diagnostician in these practices? By exploring the 'micro-orders' of diagnostics in different (application) contexts in this way, the interdisciplinary overview aims to develop its own contribution to a differentiated picture of diagnostics in its historical dynamics, heterogeneity and unity.

Guest speakers

• Prof. Dr Theodore Schatzki, Geography, Philosophy and Sociology, University of Kentucky
• Prof. Dr Martina Löw, Sociology, TU Berlin
• Prof Dr Kerstin Schmidt, American Literary Studies, LMU Munich

Diagnoses take on their own form in different historical and social contexts. They are articulated, for example, in texts, enquiries, visual representations, diagrams or cultural performances in science and art or on the stages of theatre, opera and sport. In this work package, the network therefore focusses on narrative, visual, aural and staging processes as well as the media in which diagnoses are presented, in which they address an audience and become effective. A particular interest lies in the questions of, firstly, the contribution of scientific and non-scientific forms of representation to the implementation of certain discourses and practices of diagnosis, secondly, the resonances between these forms of representation, and thirdly, the (media) technical possibilities of their intermedial networking.

Guest speakers

• Dr Mario Wimmer, Media Studies, University of Basel
• Prof. Dr Albrecht Koschorke, German Studies, University of Konstanz

Discourses and practices of diagnosing often refer to certain milieus, groups of people and time-spaces of different sizes in which irregular phenomena are identified. Against this background, the power-theoretical question arises as to which milieus, groups and time-spaces are problematised in diagnostic discourses and practices, by whom and from which perspective. This question concerns both the local and the global. It will be considered as a cross-sectional question in all sub-studies. In work package 5, the focus of interest - again zooming out - is primarily on the constantly contested hegemonies of diagnosing and the differences that diagnosing and being diagnosed causes on a global scale. Example questions are: How does the 'centre' diagnose the 'periphery' (e.g. as retarded, underdeveloped, etc.), and conversely, how does the latter diagnose the latter? To what extent do diagnoses create identifiable spaces in the first place by precisely localising certain irregularities (such as the so-called diseases of civilisation or the potential for violence), while marking other deviations as cross-border global problems of long duration (such as climate change)? In the exchange of the findings gained in the work packages, the recursiveness between 'grand' narratives and political programmes (e.g. sustainability or health) and the 'global' problems will be examined. The recursiveness between 'big' narratives and political programmes (e.g. sustainability or health) and the many 'small', unspectacular everyday techniques of 'responsible' lifestyles should be examined in order to (a) gain initial historically and empirically sound insights into the significance of diagnoses and practices of diagnosing for the self-constitution of modern societies and their subjects, (b) develop questions for follow-up research, and (c) self-critically reflect on the assumptions and limits of our own research programme. For example, it would be worth asking to what extent diagnosing is an exclusive project of European modernity, whether there were or are related concepts of self-observation in other regions of the world, and with which other practices of coping with uncertainty diagnosing competes in certain periods - and this not only in the historical comparison of modern and pre-modern societies, but above all within the "multiple" modernity (Eisenstadt 2000). The possible Eurocentrism of our own central question about the social and subject-constitutive relevance of diagnosing in modernity is thus also at issue.

Guest speakers

• Prof. Dr Ulrich Bröckling, Sociology, University of Freiburg
• Prof. Dr Banu Bargu, Political Science, University of California
• Prof. Dr Achim Landwehr, History, University of Düsseldorf