Malte Doehne; Katja Rost

University of Zurich

Max Weber’s description of Western modernity as prioritizing rationality, efficiency, and control draws heavily on his observations of the male monastic economy. However, women’s monasteries also had a vital part in shaping medieval society, a role broadly overlooked in Weber’s account. From the twelfth century onwards, they proliferated at remarkable rates, particularly in urbanizing regions where wealth accumulation and growing socioeconomic disparities intersected with broad efforts at internal Church reform. Their geographic concentration in urban spaces, encouraged by economic and political circumstances of the time, favored locally embedded institutions, close networks, and support relationships that created zones of female autonomy and accomplishment. We synthesize historical accounts with ecological analyses of a database of 8,629 monastery foundings spanning 1000–1900 CE to reconstruct two pathways for the proliferation of female monasticism. Thus, we illuminate how these institutions not only empowered women as economic actors but also contributed to the diversification of precapitalist organizational forms. Their legacy endures in contemporary institutions such as hospitals, schools, and NGOs, where stakeholder-oriented governance and mission-driven service continue to shape economic and civic life. By integrating female monasticism into a broader sociological framework, our findings challenge conventional narratives of capitalist development and highlight the gendered dimensions of institutional innovation.

Jan-Philip Steinmann¹; Gert Pickel²

¹ Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony; ² Leipzig University

This study examines the influence of religious factors on electoral behavior. Since the mid-1980s, a key finding of electoral research in Germany has been the transformation of the religious cleavage. Previously marked by a denominational conflict line, differences between Catholic and Protestant voters, it has increasingly shifted toward a religious-secular conflict line, separating church-affiliated voters from the unaffiliated or less religious. This study revisits the transformation of the religious cleavage and investigates whether it now primarily runs between those who attribute truth to all religions and those who recognize only their own. This potential new conflict line between inclusive and exclusive religious claims highlights the internal differentiation within the Christian electorate.

The analysis is based on data from the 2019 KONID Survey (“Configurations of Individual and Collective Religious Identities and their Potential for Civil Society”) and confirms that a denominational conflict line no longer plays a decisive role in voting behavior. A religious-secular conflict line still influences the decision to vote for a Christian party or to abstain but has no relevance in choosing an extreme right-wing party. Only the conflict line between inclusive and exclusive religious claims affects the decision to vote for an extreme right-wing or a Christian party, as well as the decision not to vote. Decomposition analyses show that voting differences between Christians with inclusive vs. exclusive religious claims stem largely from right-wing populist attitudes and perceived religious disadvantage among the latter. Overall, the findings suggest a renewed transformation of the religious cleavage in Germany.

Yevhen Voronin

University of Wuppertal

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought uncertainty to the lives of Ukrainian citizens. Despite the traumatic experiences caused by the outbreak of the war, Ukrainian theaters got a new life, benefiting from the unprecedented popularity, as noted by representatives of the theatrical community. This paper investigates the potential rising popularity of Ukrainian theaters and provides supportive evidence using Google Trends data on search interest. After that, we employ structural topic modeling (STM) on social media data from ten theaters on Instagram to investigate the main thematic focuses associated with theater-going. The main themes include theaters as spaces of passion, fascination, and deep gratitude toward theaters, troupes, performances and defenders, as well as (self-)reflection, support and solidarity, and socialization/bonding. Furthermore, this paper discusses how theater-going offers individuals an opportunity to escape the web of negative events, construct civic identities, and embrace authenticity amidst the challenges of wartime.