Society for Social Research and Education (GeSoB)

The founding of the Society for Social Research and Education (GeSoB) coincided 2012 with a period of economic crisis and social upheaval of global character. We can speak of a turn of an era, in which solutions and concepts chosen so far have proven inadequate, in which new theoretical and practical questions have arisen that call for innovative social answers to the pressing socio-political, cultural and economic questions facing actors in the fields of society, politics, economics and education. In this context, GeSoB makes its contribution with social innovations based on interdisciplinary research that combines theory with practice, basic research with applied research that analyzes and overcomes the contradictions fed by social, regional, national and transnational interdependencies. Only diversity of methods is appropriate in a research program designed in this way. The heuristic reference points of our view of humanity are the inalienable, universal and indivisible human rights and, in the social sphere, all those visions that promote the goal of an egalitarian and solidary society based on the self-socialization of people: We consciously oppose those social conditions that are subordinated to unquestioned naturalized constraints – be they economic or technocratic – with a social ideal designed in the public interest. The way to achieve this is primarily through education, which in our understanding must go beyond purely vocational and efficiency-oriented training, deepening and sharpening the reflective view of society as a whole and enabling analysis and criticism.