Crossing Borders, Shifting Boundaries (PDF)

University-studies, Haller was a post-doc fellow at the Institut für Höhere Studien (Institute for Advanced Studies) in Vienna. After his graduation to Dr. phil. in 1974 he started his professional career as Assistant Professor at the Institute's Department of Sociology. The Institut für Höhere Studien (IHS) in Vienna was and continues to be a prestigious post-doctoral training and research institute in the areas of economy, sociology, and political sciences. IHS was important for Max Haller's career development in two regards: First, the post-doc-training and his participation in various research projects allowed him to enlarge and deepen his knowledge of empirical research methods. At the same time, the intellectual climate at IHS stimulated his interest in social scientific theories as well as in sociopolitical issues and problems. In 1979, he was promoted to the head of its Department of Sociology. One year later, in 1980, Haller accepted the opportunity to collaborate as co-director in the large-scale empirical research project Vergleichende Analysen der Sozialstruktur mit Massendaten (VASMA; English: Comparative Analyses of Social-Structure Using Mass-Data) at the University of Mannheim, Germany, under the direction of Walter Müller. In 1983 he defended his Habilitation Theorie der Klassenbildung und sozialen Schichtung (Theory of class-formation and social stratification) at the University of Mannheim. In the same year, he was appointed to Scientific Director of the Zentrum für Umfragen, Methoden und Analysen (Center for Survey Research, Methodology and Analyses), the largest and most renowned center for survey research and quantitative methods in the social sciences in Germany, located in Mannheim. Only two years later, in 1985, Max Haller accepted a profes-sorship at the Karl-Franzens-University of Graz. Since then he is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology at Graz University and in charge of the area of Macrosociological Analyses and Methods of Empirical Research. Parallel to the chronological sequence of work-places, we can find a sequence of three principal areas in the sociological work of Max Haller: During the first two stages of his academic career - the periods he spent in Vienna and in Mannheim - Haller's research activities focused on macro-sociological analyses of change in occupational structures, systems of social stratification, and trends of social mobility in highly developed Western societies. Starting from the case of Austria (Klassenbildung und soziale Schichtung in Österreich, 1982. English: Class Formation and Social Stratification in Austria), he gradually extended his area of investigation to Germany, France, the United States, Italy, and the highly developed countries of the world in general (Klassenstrukturen und Mobilität in fortgeschrittenen Gesellschaften, 1989; English: Class-Structures and Mobility in Advanced Societies). His scientific publications of this period are characterized by sophisticated statistical analyses of sociological mass-data and their interpretation by using relevant sociological theories regarding social stratification. The dominant position among social scientists in the German-speaking language area was that distinctions between social classes would erode in advanced post-industrial societies and that the concept of "class" (class-structure, class-formation) should be abandoned in favor of the more fluent and less ideologically-charged concept of "strata" (stratification). Contrary to this view, Max Haller emphasized that the concept of "social classes" should be maintained and is applicable to post-industrial societies. The high quality of Haller's research in this area is reflected in the fact that his publications were well-known and discussed in the international research community; two of his articles, Marriage, Women and Social Stratification, 1981, and Patterns of Career Mobility and Structural Positions in Advanced Capi-talist Societies. A Comparison of Men in Austria, France and the United States, 1985 (with W. König, P. Krause and K. Kurz), were published in the prestigious journals American Journal of Sociology and American Sociological Review. The second principal area of Max Haller's work is the analysis of social attitudes and value-change in different areas of social life (politics, family, work, religion, environment etc.) by using cross-national comparative sur-vey data. Closely related to Haller's research activities in this area is his engagement in the creation of research cooperatives and research programs providing the organizational requirements for carrying out high quality social surveys on a regular basis. Haller was involved in this new area of research for the first time when he was responsible for the conception and implementation of the German ALLBUS (Social Survey for Germany) in his position as scientific director of ZUMA in Mannheim (1982-1984). At that time, he established contacts with sociologists from Great Britain, the United States and Australia who were in charge of the national surveys in their countries in order to establish a continuous cross-national comparative survey research programme. As a member of this initiative he was co-founder of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) in 1984. When Haller moved to Graz in the following year, one of his principal concerns as a newly appointed professor was to introduce a longitudinal National Social Survey in Austria and to incorporate Austria into the International Social Survey Programme. He organized a research cooperative which carried out three waves of the "Austrian Social Survey" (in 1986, 1993 and 2000). In addition, due to his initiative, Austria was one of the six participating countries when ISSP carried out its first survey in 1985. During the last 25 years, ISSP has expanded to over 40 member states, including most countries of Europe and roughly 20 countries from the other continents. Max Haller is not only co-founder of ISSP, he is also one of its most important members in terms of promoting new research proposals and developing research instruments. He succeeded to introduce three new modules - Social Networks and Social Support (ISSP-1986), National Identity (ISSP-1995) and Leisure Time and Sports (ISSP-2007). As the convener of the questionnaire-drafting group he had a major influence on the conception of these surveys, and he also made substantial contributions to many other survey-modules of ISSP. With admirable efforts and with the support of his research team in Graz he succeeded to raise the funds to carry out almost all annual ISSP surveys in Austria since 1985. He and his collabo-rators in Graz have produced more than a hundred scientific articles based on ISSP data, many of them published in highly ranked international socio-logical journals. Max Haller demonstrated his central position within ISSP once again when he offered to host the 25th annual meeting of ISSP in Vienna in 2009. On the occasion of this jubilee meeting he organized the edited volume Charting the Globe. The International Social Survey Programme, 1984-2009"(together with Roger Jowell and Tom W. Smith) which won an award from the ASA Section on Global and Transnational Sociology for the best publication by an international scholar in 2010. The third focus of Max Haller's scientific work is on developments, opportunities and problems related to the political and economic integration of Europe. One of the first issues which attracted his attention was the question of ethnic-national identities and relations within the European Union, with a particular reference to the case of his home country South Tyrol. In the 1990s Haller organized several scientific events dealing with different aspects and problems surrounding the question of national identity and the process of European integration: a lecture-series on The Reawakening of Ethnicity and Nationalism (1992); the conference Social Justice and Democracy in the United Europe (1993), a symposium about National Identity in Austria (1996) and the symposium Societal Integration in Europe. This last symposium was held in Vienna on the occasion of the Austrian presidency of the European Union in 1998. Among the numerous publications of Max Haller in this area of research two books merit particular attention: The first is Identität und Nationalstolz der Österreicher (Identity and National Pride of the Austrians, 1996). The main part of this book, written by Max Haller, is based on the results of two large cross-national-comparative surveys (WVS 1990 and ISSP-1995 on "National Identity"); these analyses are complemented with contributions from other authors: an in-depth interview study on the image of Austria and its population among Austrian emigrants and Neo-Austrians, an analysis of the historical development of Austrian identity since 1945, an investigation of the role of politicians and intellectuals in the making of the Austrian nation, and a study on the relevance of the nation for the social identity of high-school students. Combined with each other, these studies give a comprehensive and complex account and analysis of the historical formation and the characteristics of Austrian national identity. The second book to be mentioned here, published in 2008, is European Integration as an Elite-Process. The Failure of a Dream? The central thesis of this book is that European integration has given rise to a new political and bureaucratic elite, termed "Eurocracy". The members of this elite have a strong tendency to pursue their own financial and political interests. In order to maintain their power and to legitimize further growth of the EU bureaucracy, they glorify the advance of European integration with dubious myths concerning the benefits of this process and ignore the interests, problems, and fears of the population of the countries they represent. Thus, there exists a considerable split between elites and citizens, which has become more profound over time. The book ends with a fervent plea in favor of strengthening the social and democratic character of the European Union. Haller's fundamental and provocative critique of the European Union received much attention and gave rise to controversial debates not only among social scientists, but also in the quality press. In addition to the three principal areas mentioned so far, Max Haller has done research and published on a number of other sociological problems, as can be seen in his publications listed at the end of this volume. He has carried out research projects on various issues concerning family and gender roles (e.g., health-problems of employed married women; children of divorced parents, family violence, and care for the elderly); some of these activities were related to his membership in an interdisciplinary work group for research in the area of communal social planning, established by the provincial government of Styria. He has done research on the state of sociology as a scientific discipline and its position in the Austrian society (conditions of production and forms of application of social research; the teaching of sociology at universities; the employment of sociologists outside scientific institutions). Last but not least he has written a textbook on Sociological Theory (1999, 2nd edition in 2003), in which he undertakes a systematic comparison of important contemporary social science theories (behavioralist theories, structural functionalism, system theory, and the rational-choice approach), and proposes principles for a new concept of sociology as a "Science of Reality" (Wirklichkeitswissenschaft), inspired by the scientific positions of Max Weber, Erving Goffman, Alexis de Tocque-ville, and Karl Popper. Max Haller has not only done an enormous amount of research and publications, he has also spent a lot of his time and energy in service to the scientific community and the development of international professional networks. He was an active member of the Austrian Sociological Association for many years, and its President from 1986 to 1989; in 1994 he was appointed corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Science; he was member of various sections of the German Society of Sociology and of the American Sociological Association; and he had a crucial role in the foundation of the European Sociological Association (1989-1992). In addition to his organizational activities in connection with ISSP and his research on European integration, Haller has co-organized, among others, the annual conference of the Austrian Society of Sociology in Graz in 1987, the combined congress of the German, Austrian and Swiss Societies of Sociology in Zürich in 1988, the First Conference of Sociology in Central Europe in Krakow in 1989 and the First European Conference of Sociology in Vienna in 1992. A last area of Max Haller's lifework that we would like to recognize here is his study and research visits, guest professorships, and lecturing activities. Haller was visiting professor and/or research fellow, among others, at the "Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung" in Berlin (1990 and 2008), the "Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques" in Paris (1991), the University of Antwerpen (1994), the University of Waterloo, Canada (1995), the Emmanuel College in Cambridge (1996) and the University of California in Santa Barbara (1999). From 2002 to 2005 he held the position of "Professore di fama internationale" at the Università degli Studi in Trento, Italy. He has given more than 100 lectures and papers at scientific conferences, and a similarly high number of guest-lectures and talks at universities and other institutions around the world. Concluding this account of Max Haller's academic career and his scientific achievements one can say that he undoubtedly belongs to those sociologists who are guided by an inner vocation, and who consider their work not only as a profession, but a mission. This strong intrinsic motivation allowed him to pursue his goals, to carry out his research activities and to disseminate and defend his ideas with an enormous energy, determination and perseverance, sometimes close to the point of obstinacy - qualities which perhaps refer back to his descent from a Tyrolean mountain-farmers family. Apparently, Max Haller's energy and his ambition to "cross borders" in order to establish new scientific contracts and to discover new fields of social research has not diminished even in the last stage of his academic career: A few years ago, after the death of his wife, he undertook a journey from Cairo up the Nile by ship and overland by train and bus through Sudan to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. On this journey, which was planned as a mixture of a touristic and scholarly trip, he made contact with sociologists from Ethiopia and Tanzania. These contacts were expanded to a partnership agreement between the Universities of Graz and St. Augustine in Tanzania, involving the strong personal engagement of Max Haller in founding a new sociology department at this university. With these activities, he has once again made a contribution towards extending the boundaries of the international sociological community and opening new perspectives for sociological research. * * * * * * * * We will proceed now to a short introduction to the contents of this Festschrift. The idea of this book is to focus on one specific area of Max Haller's work - national and transnational identities - as this topic has accompanied him throughout his life. A considerable number of the articles presented in this volume are based on new empirical research, drawing upon topics, theses and results from Haller's publications, and/or reanalyzing the cross-national comparative ISSP-surveys on national identity that he designed. The contributions of this book, thus, are intended to continue, to complement and also to criticize the work of Max Haller in search of a deeper understanding of social reality. Corresponding to the subtitle of the book - "National and Transnational Identities" - this volume is divided into two parts: The first part, "Determinants and Effects of National Identity", includes contributions about the meaning and developments, the determinants and effects of ethnic and national identity, addressing also questions of collective memo-ry. The second segment focuses on the path from national to transnational identities and includes several empirical studies on the development and formation of such identities.