| Dozent/in |
Dr. Jelena Brankovic |
| Veranstaltungsart |
Hauptseminar |
| Code |
HS261734 |
| Semester |
Herbstsemester 2026 |
| Durchführender Fachbereich |
Soziologie |
| Studienstufe |
Bachelor |
| Termin/e |
Fr, 18.09.2026, 14:15 - 16:00 Uhr, Online
Fr, 23.10.2026, 10:15 - 17:00 Uhr, 4.B51
Sa, 24.10.2026, 09:15 - 16:00 Uhr, 4.B02
Fr, 11.12.2026, 10:15 - 17:00 Uhr, Inseliquai 10 INE 220
Sa, 12.12.2026, 09:15 - 16:00 Uhr, 4.B02 |
| Umfang |
2 Semesterwochenstunden |
| Inhalt |
What does it mean for a hospital to be ranked, a university rated, or a firm scored for its sustainability—and what happens to each of them as a result?
Much of the apparatus surrounding organizations today—ratings, accreditation systems, reporting frameworks, performance dashboards—is treated as neutral background: the technical scaffolding against which organizational life takes place. The sociology of knowledge offers a different view, arguing that these arrangements actively constitute organizations as knowable, comparable, and governable units, not merely represent them.
This Hauptseminar takes that insight as its starting point. The central question is how organizations are made observable and governable—through what infrastructures, data practices, and classificatory systems this becomes possible, legitimate, and consequential. When they take hold, they shape what organizations attend to, how they allocate resources, and what counts as legitimate performance, often in ways that outlast the purposes for which they were built. Drawing on infrastructure studies, the sociology of quantification, and sociomaterial approaches to organizing, the course equips students with analytical tools to pursue these questions across a range of empirical settings.
The seminar meets in two block sessions. The first builds the theoretical and conceptual foundations of the field, while the second is devoted to student-led case research, in which small groups present and discuss empirical cases of their choice—from audit frameworks to rankings to performance dashboards, across organizations of any kind. Between the two blocks, students develop their cases independently. By the end of the course, students will have developed a sharper eye for the work that measurement does—and for what gets lost, distorted, or foreclosed when organizations are made to count. |
| Sprache |
Englisch |
| Anmeldung |
***Wichtig*** Um Credits zu erwerben ist die Anmeldung zur Lehrveranstaltung über das UniPortal zwingend erforderlich. Die Anmeldung ist ab zwei Wochen vor bis zwei Wochen nach Beginn des Semesters möglich. An- und Abmeldungen sind nach diesem Zeitraum nicht mehr möglich. Die genauen Anmeldedaten finden Sie hier: http://www.unilu.ch/ksf/semesterdaten |
| Abschlussform / Credits |
Aktive Teilnahme (Referat) / 4 Credits
|
| Kontakt |
jelena.brankovic@doz.unilu.ch |
| Literatur |
Star, S. L. (1999). The Ethnography of Infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3), 377–391. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027649921955326
Power, M. (1997). The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford University Press. Chapters 1-2.
Espeland, W. N., & Stevens, M. L. (1998). Commensuration as a Social Process. Annual Review of Sociology, 24(1), 313–343. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.24.1.313
Orlikowski, W. J. (2007). Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work. Organization Studies, 28(9), 1435–1448. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840607081138
Espeland, W. N., & Sauder, M. (2007). Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds. American Journal of Sociology, 113(1), 1–40. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/517897
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