Privatdozent at
Department of Sociology at Technical University of Dresden.

Visiting Chair at Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (Sept. 2009 to March 2010).

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links to the research fields:

Dominik Schrage: Die Verfügbarkeit der Dinge.
Eine historische Soziologie des Konsums, Frankfurt/New York 2009.
(The availability of things. A historical sociology of consumption)

sociology of consumption group

Kai-Uwe Hellmann/Dominik Schrage(ed.):
Book Series "Konsumsoziologie und Massenkultur",
VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2004-2009.

consumerism as an attitude towards the world

Consumerism is a disposition or an attitude of modern individuals that makes the promises of the market society attractive. Where and when did that attitude emerge? What is its social function? These are the key questions for my actual book that has just been published.
Together with Kai-Uwe Hellmann, I founded the sociology of consumption group, that aims to establish this subject in the German sociological debate. We had conferences in Dresden (2003), Magdeburg (2004), Giessen (2005) and a plenar session at the DGS conference in Munich (2004).

doctoral thesis (Dissertation):
Psychological engineering and radiophony
Constructions of subjectivity in artificial realities 1918-1932

Sociology and history of media-based and data-based socialisation/subjectivation
My doctoral thesis deals with the parallel constitution of subjectivity and reality through media (radio) and methods of social regulation in 1920's Germany. It consists of two exemplary studies: 1st on German psychological engineering ("Psychotechnik") of the time, which is much less disciplinary than often argued. Instead, Psycho-technique aims to make the artificial knowledge produced by testing accessible for the tested individuals as a means of orientation. 2nd on radio, which can be seen as a complementary technique to deal with the artificial realities emerging in the course of rationalisation and technologisation: Radio permits the development of technically transmitted and aesthetically constructed experience (radio drama), simultaneously heard by virtually the whole of society.

Section for the sociology of culture:
conference on the "technology and mass media"
(October 2005 in Hannover)

conference on the "theory of mass culture"
(March 2002 in Paderborn)

conference: "Ver-sprechen und Ver-sagen
in der Technikkultur" (Dec. 1999 in Berlin)

Sociology of culture
As a member of the section for the sociology of culture in the German Sociological Association (DGS), I am interested in the epistemology of social and cultural theories, especially in relation to the discussions on mass culture. (Member of the board since 2005)

Paper:
Selbstentfaltung und künstliche Verwandtschaft
(self-realisation and artifical kinship, pdf-file, in German)

Biopolitics and post-humanism
The debate on biopolitics and bio-technology is interesting because in its course, the notion of "human" seems to lose its evidence. To what extent do the newly emerging anthropo-techniques (techniques that construct humans) still correlate with the anthropomorphism (the use of metaphors and symbols of man) in labotatories and society?

book:
Dominik Schrage (ed.): Die Flut. Diskursanalysen des Dresdner Hochwassers im August 2002 (Reihe Dresdner Beiträge zur Soziologie, Bd. 1), MV Wissenschaft, Münster 2005.
(The flood. Discourse analysis of the Dresden high water in August 2002)

Paper:
Was ist ein Diskurs?
(what is a discourse?) (pdf-file, German)

Foucault and discourse analysis
I am especially interested in the concept of post-normative and post-disciplinary control. I hold to a concept of normalisation that is distinctive from the juridical normativity as well as from Foucaults concept of discipline that is based on prescriptive norms. What is in question here is a norm based on normality, on the normal.