MISDIAGNOSIS OF POLARISATION?

Robert Misik in conversation with Steffen Mau

MISDIAGNOSIS OF POLARISATION?
Trigger points: Consensus and conflict in contemporary society

There is increasing talk of a »division in society«. In the everyday perception of many people, too, irreconcilable camps are increasingly facing each other. As plausible as they may sound, such diagnoses raise questions: How far apart are opinions in the population really? And is society really more divided today than it was during the student protests or in the early nineties?
More clarity is needed, not least because a division can also be talked up. Steffen Mau, Thomas Lux and Linus Westheuser have painstakingly mapped attitudes in four arenas of inequality: poverty and wealth; migration; diversity and gender; climate protection. The surprising finding is that there is a degree of consensus on many major issues. However, when certain trigger points are touched, the debate suddenly intensifies: equality yes, but no »gender language« please! Environmental protection yes, but who bears the costs? A 360-degree survey of the conflicts surrounding old and new inequalities, which provides an indispensable basis for discussion and debunks many myths.

Steffen Mau, publicist

Robert Misik, Author and journalist

Steffen Mau, born in 1968, is Professor of Macrosociology at Humboldt University in Berlin. His book Lütten Klein. Leben in der ostdeutschen Transformationsgesellschaft (st 5092) was number one on the ZDF, Zeit and Deutschlandfunk Kultur non-fiction bestseller lists. In 2021 he received the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation, other prizes: »Against Forgetting - For Democracy« 2023; Communicator Prize 2023; Schader Prize 2023

Steffen Mau, Thomas Lux, Linus Westheuser:
Trigger points. Consensus and conflict in contemporary society
Suhrkamp Verlag, December 2023, 25,- €