Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Macrosociology

I am a postdoc researching the political sociology of inequality. With Steffen Mau and Thomas Lux, I am currently working on the 4-year project "New Inequalities, New Cleavages? A Political Sociology of Contemporary Society."

Inspired by Bourdieu's cultural class analysis and cleavage theory, my work revolves around the role of morality, identity, and class in changing political conflict structures. I am interested in the way political worldviews are shaped by unequal social relations and by the values guiding the conduct of life. Thematically, I work on social conflicts around redistribution, sustainability, migration, gender relations, and sexual liberalization; as well as on phenonema of populism and political polarization.

I did my PhD at Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, working with Donatella della Porta. My thesis, which I defended in December 2021, was a mixed-methods study on class, social identity, and cleavage transformation in contemporary Germany. Assessing diagnoses of a rift between the 'old working class' and the 'new middle class', the study reconstructed milieus, moral economies, and political habitus forms of production workers and socio-cultural experts.

Before joining Humboldt, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Zurich and a visiting researcher at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

For further details, see CV.

Publications

• 2022 – "Verletzte Ansprüche. Zur Grammatik des politischen Bewusstseins von ArbeiterInnen" (with Linda Beck), Berliner Journal für Soziologie: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11609-022-00470-0 (Open Access)

In the media:

"Die alltägliche Kritik der Arbeitenden wird nicht repräsentiert. Wohin sich dieses Gefühl politisch entwickelt, ist offen.", Jacobin Magazin: https://jacobin.de/artikel/macht-euren-scheiss-doch-alleine-arbeiterklasse-politische-repraesentation-rechtsruck-demobilisierung-linda-beck-linus-westheuser/

“Welches politische Bewusstsein hat die Arbeiterschaft?” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/karriere-hochschule/welches-politische-bewusstsein-hat-die-arbeiterschaft-18246819.html

Interview: “Das politische Denken von Arbeitern ist widersprüchlicher als es die Schlagzeilen glauben machen”, Kontrast Magazin https://kontrast.at/linda-beck-linus-westheuser-interview/

“Proletarier ohne Bewusstsein.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wissen/geist-soziales/proletarier-ohne-bewusstsein-18108922.html

• 2022 – "Class Without Consciousness. The Politics of Demobilized Class Society", Special Issue (with Donatella della Porta), Berliner Journal für Soziologie 32(2). Editorial: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11609-022-00474-w (Open Access)
• 2022 - Theorizing Cleavage Identities: The Contribution of Cultural Sociology, preprint: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/xv6se/ 
• 2022 – "This is not America: Politische Polarisierung in Deutschland als Schimäre", in: Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen. https://tinyurl.com/politische-polarisierung  
• 2020 – "Populism as Symbolic Class Struggle. Homology, Metaphor, and English Ale", in Participation & Conflict 13(1) 2020: 256-283. http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco/article/download/21989/18561
• 2020 – “The Symbolic Politics of Populism Reflects the Class Alliances it Attempts to Assemble.”, LSE British Politics and Policy Blog: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-class-politics-of-populism/
• 2019 – “The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and the Great Recession” (Book Review), Mobilization 24(4): 531-2. https://tinyurl.com/tea-party-ows-review
• 2018 – “Doing Gender”. Gender Glossary. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-170183
• 2015 – “Männer, Frauen und Stefan Hirschauer: Undoing Gender zwischen Praxeologie und Rhetorischer Modernisierung”, GENDER – Zeitschrift für Gesellschaft, Geschlecht und Kultur 3: 109-125. https://doi.org/10.3224/gender.v7i3.20846