Far more than pure description

Prof. Jukschat, welcome to the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences and to our beautiful three-country region. Or should we rather say: welcome back?

Thank you very much! Yes, I do indeed have deep biographical and family ties to Upper Lusatia. I grew up in Zittau and the Zittau Mountains, and my parents and parents-in-law live here in the region. As a teenager, however, a lot of things were too narrow for me here and I went to Australia for almost a year after graduating from high school. I then studied in Leipzig and discovered (cultural) sociological thinking and qualitative-reconstructive social research at the Institute for Cultural Studies there. I have always been interested in topics in the context of social problems, deviance and social control. So it is probably no coincidence that I ended up at the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN) after my studies. After eight years at the KFN in Hanover, I moved to the German Youth Institute (DJI) in Halle, where I recently worked a lot on radicalization and social polarization as well as the possibilities of pedagogy and social work to strengthen democratic coexistence. And now I'm really looking forward to my new professional role in my old home. Especially as I can see that a lot has changed here in recent years. And with the structural change, there are also major and certainly challenging social changes ahead, which need to be shaped and scientifically supported. Perhaps I can contribute a little to this.

You have been Professor of Applied Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences since July. How did you find your first few weeks in the summer?

I received a very warm and friendly welcome from my colleagues. Of course, it's very quiet on campus due to the pandemic, and my start coincided with the lecture-free period. But this gives me the opportunity to arrive in peace and prepare my teaching thoroughly for the winter semester. 

What are your main areas of focus in teaching and research?

As part of my work at the DJI, I recently provided academic support for (socio-)educational model projects on prevention and deradicalization in prisons and probation services. In this context, I also spent a lot of time looking at the conditions of professional action in social work. The importance of reflexivity has been made very clear to me time and again. I am convinced that sociological thinking in general and the understanding attitude of the qualitative-reconstructive research paradigm in particular are helpful for (prospective) practitioners of social work, education or in other social and political organizations when it comes to systematically distancing themselves from everyday actions, but also for the analytical penetration of social processes, mechanisms and contexts in the respective fields of action. In my teaching, I would therefore like to focus on working with students to make sociological thinking and methodological skills fruitful for their fields of practice.

With regard to research, I would like to build on my work on political socialization, (de)radicalization and the promotion of democracy and focus on questions of political participation that arise in Lusatia in connection with the upcoming regional structural change. My hope is that teaching and research can be profitably combined.

The coming winter semester is to take place entirely in person again, provided the pandemic allows it. What do you expect from the collaboration with your students on site?

First of all, I'm just curious about the students, their ideas and topics! I'm looking forward to getting to know them, for which face-to-face teaching naturally offers much better conditions. Let's hope it will be possible.

Criminology, radicalization and the promotion of democracy in the penal system on the one hand and computer game addiction and ethnographic practical research on the other. The range of your academic papers to date sounds exciting and varied. Where does your interest in these topics come from?

Basically, my research topics are linked by a fundamental interest in the social production of social problems and their treatment. For a long time, I conducted biographical research, for example into the conditions under which deviant behavior develops and consolidates - in my dissertation, for example, on the subject of addictive computer gaming, and later also on the example of people from abroad who were imprisoned in Germany for burglary. In recent years, my research into the phenomenon of radicalization and the prevention of radicalization has shifted my interest more towards the social and discursive creation of social problem categories, the consequences of these problematizations for the affected groups, but also the professional (social) educational treatment of these problems.

In one of your academic lectures, you will be exploring the question: How do you get from the research idea to theory formation in qualitative research projects? As an expert in empirical social research methods, have you found a quick answer?

Unfortunately, I have to disappoint you. There is no quick and easy way. Qualitative research requires a certain ability to suffer, because qualitative research is hard work and often an intensive and circular struggle with the data. However, it is often precisely the detours and supposed disruptions that ultimately promote knowledge. It is precisely the principle of qualitative research that it is open and sensitive to the inherent logic of the field being researched - always ready to revise its own assumptions in the face of empirical reality. If qualitative research also aims to contribute to theory formation and not just provide nice stories or pure description, it also requires the courage to detach oneself from the concrete data and take the leap into abstraction and generalization. The good news is: qualitative-reconstructive research is also incredibly fun! And you should just go for it, because qualitative research methods are best learned by practicing them, ideally in research workshops and in exchange with more experienced colleagues.

What insight from your academic career to date would you have liked to have had at the beginning of your training and would now pass it on to your students?

At the Institute of Cultural Studies at Leipzig University, I was very fortunate to be socialized in an academic environment that always demanded a lot from students in their engagement with the content, but at the same time expected a lot from them. I only realized later that this kind of enabling logic cannot be taken for granted. I would like to make this experience of being encouraged in my own ideas and their implementation and being able to rub shoulders constructively possible for the students here too.

What did you miss most about your home country?

Every time I visited my home country, I realized how beautiful it is here. The varied landscape, the bathing lakes, the mountains with their impressive rock formations... And of course it's nice to be closer to my family again, also for my children, who now see their grandmas and grandpas much more often than before. 

And what do you wish for your home region?

My wish is that the region can overcome the trauma of the biographically difficult post-reunification transformation process for many, focus on the positive developments of recent years and see the upcoming structural change as an opportunity. There is not only an enormous economic transformation process ahead, but also a social one that is no less challenging. I very much hope that we will succeed in shaping this process in a participatory manner, counteracting polarization and divisions and strengthening democratic, solidary cooperation on the ground.

The interview was conducted by Cornelia Rothe M.A.