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Judith Gurr, née Kästner

Development and functionality of friendship and patronage in political systems, with special consideration of Great Britian from the 19th century to the present

Personal information

Born on September 20th 1979 in Pirmasens kaestner
E-Mail: judith.gurr@grk-freundschaft.uni-freiburg.de

Education

1999    graduation from Hugo-Ball-Gymnasium, Pirmasens

1999-2000 Studium Generale at Leibniz-Kolleg, Tübingen

2000-2006 studies in Political Science and History at Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg i. Br. 

June 2006   Master of Political Science and History (M.A.)

since December 2006  PhD candidate

topic of the PhD thesis: Development and functionality of friendship and patronage in political systems, with special consideration of Great Britian from the 19th century to the present

Further fields of interest

Political Theory, Political Philosophy and History of Ideas; British History; Monarchies

Further activities 

April 2004 - December 2006  Research Assistant at the Institute of Political Science, Department of Political Theory, Political Philosophy and History of Ideas (Prof. Dr. Gisela Riescher)

since July 2005 Research Assistant at the Uniseum (the museum of the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg i. Br.)

Publications in preparation

Amitai Etzioni: The Spirit of Community. Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda, in: Stammen, Theo / Riescher, Gisela / Hofmann, Wilhelm (eds.): Hauptwerke der politischen Theorie, 2nd edition, Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag 2007, 166-169.

Monarchie in Großbritannien, in: Riescher, Gisela / Thumfart, Alexander (eds.): Monarchien. Eine Einführung, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag (to be published 2007) 

PhD Thesis Project: Development and functionality of friendship and patronage in political systems, with special consideration of Great Britian from the 19th century to the present 

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Gisela Riescher

Tutor: Prof. Dr. Ronald G. Asch
My doctoral thesis will look at the development and functionality of friendship and patronage in modern political systems from a Political Science perspective.
Examining how political structures and processes depend on personal ways of reciprocal support and whether party leaders, heads of governments and heads of states have to know how to use pre-modern techniques of power, this research project will focus on the British political system with special regard to its political elite. Great Britain offers the possibility to analyze both monarchic and parliamentary-democratic stuctures in one system.
Firstly, a politological model of analysis has to be developed in order to introduce  the specific structural characteristics and the essential traits of the phenomena of friendship and patronage.
With the development of modern societies these non-familial close-range relationships came to be seen differently – a process which has been characterised by Guido O. Kirner as a transformation process, referring to their perception rather than to their actual impact.  In a further step the question when and why this change took place will be examined by using the example of the Victorian Period (1837-1901).
In contrast to traditional societies friendship and patron-client-relationships are mostly perceived as dysfunctional alien elements or sources of disturbance within the public discourse and they operate inside informal networks. Therefore the extent to which friendship and patronage are either sources of disturbance or complementary and functionally necessary informal practices in the political system of Great Britain today, is an essential third topic of the project.
Furthermore it will be of interest, whether and in what way the results are applicable to other Western parliamentary governmental systems like, for example, the Federal Republic of Germany.
The approaches of Functionalism and of Systems Theory represent the theoretical frame of my analysis. Furthermore, the theories of David Easton and Gabriel A. Almond and their input-output-models are relevant for a political science approach to the topic. From the perspective of Systems Theory, Niklas Luhmann discusses inclusion and exclusion mechanisms of interpersonal social relations and Shmuel N. Eisenstadt views the phenomen of friendship based on Functionalism and Systems Theory with its functionality lying in the construction of spheres of trust, solidarity and security.  These two theoretical concepts could serve as a further basis of analysis for my project.

Kontakt
  • Postadresse:

    Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
    DFG-Graduiertenkolleg 1288
    c/o Historisches Seminar
    Rempartstr. 15 - KG IV
    79085 Freiburg 
     
  • Besuchsadresse:

    Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
    DFG-Graduiertenkolleg 1288
    Erbprinzenstraße 13
    79098 Freiburg
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