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Thomas Scheffer

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Fachbereich Gesellschaftswissenschaften, Faculty Member

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Scheffer studies the state-at-work by combining ethnographic fieldwork and discourse analyses. In his ethnographic studies, he visited various worksites of legal, political, and administrative value production. In order to understand their respective modes, he would identify and relate work episodes and work processes of, for instance, administrative asylum tests, political positioning, legal case-work, military commands, or police prevention. At the core are "formative objects" that are worked on by members across episodes and process. Scheffer's trans-sequential case studies are increasingly moved by the diagnosis of the situated and conditioned capacities to actually deal with existential problems such as climate change or matters of war. The object-centred studies mobilize and integrate various research methods, including conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis, and Lab Studies. It undertakes dialogues with rich theoretical resources such as the works by Erving Goffman, Jürgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, or Michel Foucault.
Phone: 069 798-36533; Sekr. 069 798-36530
Address: Prof. Dr. Thomas Scheffer
Soziologie mit Schwerpunkt Interpretative Sozialforschung
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität
FB 03 Gesellschaftswissenschaften
Institut für Soziologie
Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 6
D - 60323 Frankfurt a. M.
Büro 3 G 026
Sekret.: Büro 3 G 016

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Books by Thomas Scheffer

Gesellschaften unter Handlungszwang. Existenzielle Probleme, Normalität und Kritik.

IfS Aus der Reihe 2, 2024

Klimawandel, Armutsmigration, Krieg: Wir stehen vor einer ganzen Reihe existenzieller Probleme, d... more Klimawandel, Armutsmigration, Krieg: Wir stehen vor einer ganzen Reihe existenzieller Probleme, die spätmoderne Gesellschaften ebenso herausfordern wie deren Gesellschaftswissenschaften – und beide allem Anschein nach überfordern. Der Band fragt danach, wie der Problemschwere zunächst wissenschaftlich, sodann aber auch gesellschaftlich überhaupt Rechnung zu tragen wäre: Was bräuchte es, um den existenziellen Charakter von Problemen zu realisieren, also zum einen zu erkennen, zum anderen aber auch zur Leitlinie des eigenen Handelns zu machen? Was verhindert die so verstandene Realisierung der großen Fragen unserer Zeit? Und wie wäre es um die überkommenen Formen gesellschaftlicher Normalitätsproduktion bestellt, wenn existenzielle Probleme als solche anerkannt und angegangen würden? Das Buch ist als Debattenband konzipiert, in dem die Herausgeber auf kritische Repliken zu ihren jeweiligen Positionen gemeinsam Stellung beziehen.

Doing Discourse. Ethnomethodologische Fallstudien zum Deutschen Kriegsdiskurs.

Soziologie Magazin, 2019

Die Ethnomethodoligsche Diskursanalyse fokussiert situierte Äußerungen auf der Schwelle zur Aussa... more Die Ethnomethodoligsche Diskursanalyse fokussiert situierte Äußerungen auf der Schwelle zur Aussage. Was erfodern die Beiträge zu Kriegsdiskursen im Moment ihrer Äußerung? In Kriegsdiskursen werden dabei heute nicht nur Fragen nach Krieg und Frieden, sondern aufgefächerter nach der Bereitstellung und dem Einsatz militärischer Mittel ebenso behandelt, wie Fragen der Rechenschaft und Verhältnismäßigkeit. Diese diskursiven Orientierungen vollziehen die Fallstudien nach, ob diese im Gericht, im Parlament, in der journalistischen Berichterstattung oder im militärischen Einsatz selbst realisiert werden.

Polizeilicher Kommunitarismus. Eine Praxisforschung urbaner Kriminalprävention

by Yannik Porsché, Thomas Scheffer, Christiane Howe, Eva Kiefer, and Negnal, Dörte

Thomas Scheffer, Christiane Howe, Eva Kiefer, Dörte Negnal, Yannik Porsché (2017) Polizeilicher Kommunitarismus. Eine Praxisforschung urbaner Kriminalprävention. Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag

In urbanen Ballungsräumen treffen Bevölkerungsgruppen, Szenen und Milieus mit unterschiedlichen P... more In urbanen Ballungsräumen treffen Bevölkerungsgruppen, Szenen und Milieus mit unterschiedlichen Praktiken und Wertvorstellungen aufeinander. Lokale Verhältnisse und Sicherheitslagen werden unübersichtlicher. Hier sieht sich die Polizei gefordert, mit Wissens-, Vertrauens- und Beziehungsarbeit Abhilfe zu schaffen. Neben ihrem Kerngeschäft, der Verfolgung von Straftaten und der Gefahrenabwehr, etabliert sie die Präventionsarbeit. Unterschiedliche Formen dieser spezifischen polizeilichen Arbeit werden in dem Band durch ethnografische Praxisforschung vorgestellt.

Adversarial Case-Making. An Ethnography of English Crown Court procedure.

Cases are not objects at hand for legal decision-making; cases are not echoes from a past crime. ... more Cases are not objects at hand for legal decision-making; cases are not echoes from a past crime. Cases are, first of all, made within compound discourse apparatus, here the English Crown Court and the procedure/s attached to it. This book reveals the legal production of cases including their relevant features. The socio-legal ethnography visits the natural sites of adversarial case-making: law firms, barristers’ chambers, and Crown Courts. It examines the role and dynamics of client-lawyer meetings, pre-trial hearings, plea bargaining sessions, and jury trials. It focuses on the lawyers’ case-making activities, their procedural contexts, and the resulting cases. As an ethnographic discourse study, the book develops a trans-sequential perspective on the interrelated events and processes of case-making – and by doing so, overcomes the shortcomings of talk-bias and text-bias. The trans-sequential approach pays out in detailed case studies on an alibi, on guilt, or the barrister’s notes; it pays out as well in cross-case studies dealing with legal care, procedural infrastructure, or the case system in the common law tradition. As a result, the book identifies three basic/general case-making mechanisms that are - different to US-American adversarialism - still balanced in the CROWN COURT's procedural culture.

A number of reviews of this ethnographic monograph:
- by John Flood here: http://legalpro.jotwell.com/the-micro-sociology-of-lawyers-actions/ and here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2011.00546.x/abstract.
- by John Gibbons here: http://das.sagepub.com/content/23/6/773.full.pdf+html?rss=1
- by Lisa Vanhala here: http://www.gvpt.umd.edu/lpbr/subpages/reviews/Scheffer1211.htm"

Criminal Defence and Procedure. Comparative Ethnographies in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States.

Procedure is not just a programme or a nexus of formalities. It is something done by legal expert... more Procedure is not just a programme or a nexus of formalities. It is something done by legal experts and lay participants in a highly concerted ensemble. Procedure frames and advances all law-relevant activities. This book, written by three authors from different disciplinary backgrounds, provides an in-depth comparison of criminal defence work in different legal cultures. Via an ethnographic comparison, this book also shows how defence work responds to the challenges of different procedural regimes and how it contributes to their individual outcomes. Criminal Defence and Procedure opens up new horizons for legal comparison, inviting novel understandings of procedural law as well as possibilities of legal reform.

Asylgewährung. Eine Ethnographische Verfahrensanalyse. [Granting Asylum. An Ethnographic analysis of procedure]

This institutional ethnography asks how a state apparatus - including the procedural events and i... more This institutional ethnography asks how a state apparatus - including the procedural events and infrastructures - fabricate deniability for 'all kinds of' asylum cases. Its trans-sequential studies show how especially the asylum hearing achieves certain kind of truth tests and examinations due to techniques of translation, record-keeping, and accounting. The micro-strategies of state agencies compete with tactics (learning and adapting) by the asylum seekers who try to obtain a minimum of chance to be granted asylum. The ethnographic monography is written in German.

Articles, peer-reviewed by Thomas Scheffer

Responding before responseability: the delayed realisation of climate change as discrepant discourse formation

London Review of International Law, 2024

This article situates public statements by governments and political leaders in a contingent proc... more This article situates public statements by governments and political leaders in a contingent process of building the capacity to respond to rapid climate change. How do these statements work and how do they contribute to an adequate response to this overwhelming existential problem in the future? How is this done before the capacity to respond has been achieved, and to what effect? The article outlines the stages of these pre-response responses, reconstructing the emergence of climate policy, climate law, and a global climate regime, as well as the multiple struggles and inevitable gaps along the way. I use a question-response pairing drawn from the work of Harvey Sacks to capture the asynchronicity of climate discourse, including climate knowledge and governance, and the pull factors that evolve with each preliminary response. The thickening of accountability plays a central role in this tortuous course, increasingly employing and judging governance at the same time.

Apparate und Apparaturen: Für eine soziologische Kasuistik de/stabilisierter Problemarbeiten

Special Issue: Apparate. In: AdminiStudies. Formen und Medien der Verwaltung, 3, 2024

Der Beitrag legt den Grundstein für eine neomaterialistische Kasuistik von Apparaten als lokal ei... more Der Beitrag legt den Grundstein für eine neomaterialistische Kasuistik von Apparaten als lokal eingerichtete Unternehmen, die verschiedene Komponenten für stabilisierte Formen der Problemlösung integrieren. Anhand von drei Fallstudien (John Laws »portugiesische Schiffe«, Karin Knorr-Cetinas »Laboratorien«, Anna Tsings »Plantagen und Wälder«) wird der Begriff des Apparats von übermäßig machtkritischen Verwendungen des Begriffs (Apparat als Hegemonie des Staates oder als Wissens-/Machtkonstellation) abgegrenzt. Stattdessen wird ein Begriff von Apparat (Apparate / Apparatur) als lokal stabilisierte Problemlösung in einem durch Arbeitsteilung gekennzeichneten Gefüge vorgeschlagen. Der zweite Teil skizziert das analytische Potential dieser Unterscheidung. Sie erlaubt die Diagnose der bedingten Mobilisierung apparativer Kapazitäten angesichts existenzieller Probleme, wie etwa des Klimawandels. Es wird gezeigt, dass der Zugang von Apparaten – wie Bürokratien oder Märkten – zu den zu de/mobilisierenden Apparaten einerseits nötig wird, aber gleichzeitig begrenzt und vorläufig bleiben muss.

Trans-sequenzierend codieren

by Thomas Scheffer and Ronja Trischler

Sozialer Sinn, 2023

Angesichts der Schlüsselrolle des Codierens in den qualitativen Methoden behandeln wir in unserem... more Angesichts der Schlüsselrolle des Codierens in den qualitativen Methoden behandeln wir in unserem Beitrag die grundlegende Frage, was eigentlich zu codieren sei? Welche Einheiten erhalten einen Code und was bringen wir damit auf einen Begriff? Wir rekapitulieren diese Fragen ethnomethodologisch und explizieren ein Codierverfahren, das von der sequentiellen Ordnung sozialer Praxis ausgeht und das Codieren zugunsten weiterer Formationen ausdehnt. Beim trans-sequenzierenden Codieren wird ein Vollzug jeweils sequenzanalytisch nachvollzogen. Das Tun wird-Aktivität für Aktivität-so codiert, dass seine regelmäßige Hervorbringung hervortritt. Das Vorgehen bleibt in dieser Weise sozialtheoretisch fundiert: Eine Aktivität erwächst Zug-um-Zug; eine Praxis setzt sich aus einer Anordnung von Aktivitäten zusammen. Wir führen systematisch in diese mindestens doppelte Bewegung ein, indem wir zentrale sozialtheoretische Voraussetzungen und Schritte im Codierverfahren benennen und das Vorgehen anhand der Ankündigung und der Eröffnung einer Klimakonferenz der Vereinten Nationen (COP27) demonstrieren.

Soziologie im Klimawandel. Protokoll des Revisionsbedarfs.

WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung., 2022

Im Aufsatz möchte ich die existentielle Frage der Realisierung des Klimawandels meinem Fach, der ... more Im Aufsatz möchte ich die existentielle Frage der Realisierung des Klimawandels meinem Fach, der Soziologie selbst, antragen. Der Klimawandel fungiert als Prüfung, die nicht nur »really new ways of thinking« (Shove 2010: 278) verlangt, sondern auch die ›Realitätsangemessenheit‹ (Elias 2003 [1983]) ihrer Fragestellungen und Forschungspraktiken auf die Probe stellt. Nach einer Analyse der gängigen Problem-Distanzierungen in der post-positivistischen Soziologie erläutere ich den Fokus auf die Problemschwere, um im Lichte derselben für die verschiedenen Forschungsansätze Revisionsbedarf zu spezifizieren.

Jenseits der Konversation

The paper discusses the basics and the limits of CA for studying procedural events. Certain utter... more

Übergänge von Wort und Schrift: Zur Genese und Gestaltung von Anhörungsprotokollen im Asylverfahren.

The article introduces different modes of bureaucratic writing. It analyses in detail one specifi... more The article introduces different modes of bureaucratic writing. It analyses in detail one specific mode: the recording of an oral examination. Here, the article distinguishes various ways by which talking and writing are interlinked in the course of asylum hearings. The article can be understood as an early example of trans-sequential analysis. It displays how institutional talk is fed into the spatially and temporally extended bureaucratic apparatus based on archived cases.

Kritik der Urteilskraft- Wie die Asylprüfung Unentscheidbares in Entscheidbares überführt

This paper is about the German asylum hearing and the bureaucratic methodology and techniques/str... more

Trial and Error. Failing and Learning In Criminal Proceedings

by Thomas Scheffer and Kati Hannken-Illjes

International Journal for …, Jan 1, 2007

This paper addresses the selective mechanisms by which criminal proceedings produce strong argume... more This paper addresses the selective mechanisms by which criminal proceedings produce strong arguments. It does so by focusing on the failing of argument themes (topoi) in the course of criminal proceedings, rather than on their career. In a further step, the notion of failing is bound to learning: different forms of failing point at different ways and places of learning. The study is comparative, relating cases from four different legal regimes (England, USA, Italy and Germany) that are taken from four extensive ethnographic studies in defense lawyer's firms. We will track down the failures of topoi at three different stages (pre-trial, trial, and deliberation) in our different legal regimes. Failing occurs in all proceedings in various modes and at different stages. We argue that those modes as well as the different stages at which they occur point at the spots in the respective procedures that allow for learning about the inherent conceptions of ''good reasons.''

Bound to One's Own Words? Early Defenses and Their Binding Effects In Different Criminal Cases

by Thomas Scheffer, Kati Hannken-Illjes, and Alexander Kozin

Law & Social Inquiry, Jan 1, 2007

This article explores the binding forces that emerge in criminal cases. Using ethnographic data, ... more This article explores the binding forces that emerge in criminal cases. Using ethnographic data, we explore how defendants are bound to their initial defenses. In addition, we ask whether the binding effect works similarly or differently in three distinct procedures. Our research is rooted in the analytical concepts of "procedural history" and "discourse formation" as presented by Niklas Luhmann and Michel Foucault. Both theories describe past statements as "virulent" in present stages: participants have to take their own histories into account when engaging in current dealings; current statements must confront past statements, generating inconsistency and contradiction. Empirically, the three authors explore variations of binding in the light of eight microhistorical case narratives collected during fieldwork in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. These microhistories trace the binding effects of early defenses through pretrial Thomas Scheffer studied Sociology at the Bielefeld University and received his Ph.D. for his work on the German Asylum Procedure. Scheffer is the head of the Emmy-Noether-Group, Comparative Micro-Sociology of Criminal Proceedings (www.law-in-action.de) situated in Berlin at the Free University. His record of publication includes works on migration politics, social work, public administration, legal culture, talk-text relations, qualitative methods, and ethnographic discourse anaylsis. You can reach him at [email protected].

format_quoteEight ethnographic microhistories from various court procedures reveal how binding mechanisms differ across criminal cases in England, the U.S., and Germany.format_quote

File Work, Legal Care, and Professional Habitus - an Ethnographic Reflection on Different Styles of Advocacy

International Journal of the Legal Profession, Jan 1, 2007

This article contrasts two English solicitors' styles of file work and aims to spell out some of ... more This article contrasts two English solicitors' styles of file work and aims to spell out some of the styles' respective practical and ethical implications. What I call ‘elaborate style’ relates to the file as the primary means of casework, while the ‘minimalist style’ relates to the file in terms of a compulsory exercise. The contrasts in style are further explored by attempting a set of explanations for them. The paper seeks explanation by relating the styles to the respective cases filed, to gender differences in the legal profession, and to the professional habitus of either solicitor. In conclusion, the inquiry suggests an explanation involving the legal discourse served. There are good reasons for either style under certain pre-trial and trial procedures. To stick habitually to one style while moving towards another procedure may cause unwanted consequences.

format_quoteThe legal file is a proper object of care, crucial for client-centered advocacy and necessary for the legal profession's development.format_quote

Event and Process: An Exercise In Analytical Ethnography

Human Studies, Jan 1, 2007

Analytical ethnography does not presume a principal analytical frame. It does not know (yet) wher... more Analytical ethnography does not presume a principal analytical frame. It does not know (yet) where and when the field takes place. Rather, the ethnographer is in search for appropriate spatiotemporal frames in correspondence with the occurrences in the field. Accordingly, the author organizes a dialogue between conceptual frames and his various empirical accounts. He confronts snapshots of English Crown Court proceedings with models of event and process from microsociology and macro-sociology. A range of-more or less early or late, relevant or irrelevant, contingent or predetermined-processual events serves as the vantage point to access event and process relations. In this line, Crown Court proceedings serve as an introductory and exemplary field for analytical ethnography, because they involve both: (strong) events and their process and (strong) processes and their events.

Courses of mobilisation: Writing systematic micro-histories on legal discourse

Theory and method in socio-legal research, Jan 1, 2005

How Courts Know. Comparing English Crown Court, U.S. - American State Court, and German District Court

by Thomas Scheffer and Kati Hannken-Illjes

Space and Culture, Jan 1, 2009

On procedural discoursivation-or how local utterances are turned into binding facts

Language & Communication, Jan 1, 2007

The article deals with a fundamental mechanism here referred to as 'discoursivation' meaning the ... more The article deals with a fundamental mechanism here referred to as 'discoursivation' meaning the transformation of local utterances into available and binding discursive facts. Discoursivation, it is claimed, lies at the heart of (legal) discourse formation since it provides the basic material for all the operations to follow such as defining, assessing, and deciding. The basic mechanism is explored in light of two models: Luhmann's ''procedural past'' and Foucault's ''field of presence''. Do these models grasp the mechanism of discoursivation? Three criminal cases provide the empirical reference for the conceptual endeavour. In each of these cases, the analysis traces the suspect's early defence and the multiple reappearances and references to it in the procedural course. On these grounds, the article distinguishes three modes of discoursivation. Utterances are turned into discursive facts by ways of staging, reiteration, and mobilisation. By using only one of these modes, an analysis of legal discourse unavoidably mistakes the subject-and power-position of the contributor vis-à-vis the procedure.