Settlements of unsettled places. On the importance of unique locations for social theory

Abstract

Theorizing takes place. But how do concrete places matter for these activities, and how do specific loci operandi of ambitious theoretical work come to be the way they are? In a three-case comparison of “Frankfurt,” “Bielefeld,” and “Vincennes,” this puzzle is examined. In each case, one can find a particular settlement of a unique spot that enables an unsettling of ambitious social theory. Comparing the three spots thus indicates a crucial enabling pattern of theorizing. It is by no means claimed that this is the only or a very significant enabling pattern. Rather, the argument should be understood as an invitation to further intensify research in this area. “Hanover” and “Starnberg” are mentioned as two obvious cases that are worth further research.

Introduction

Two strands of debate on how people work on theoretical statements in the social sciences and humanities received broader attention in recent years. The first strand—“the craft of theorizing”—focuses on the fabrication of sociological theories, largely as a result of a successful agenda setting by Richard Swedberg as chair of the ASA Theory Section in the late 2000s (see Krause, 2016; Sohlberg & Leiulfsrud, 2017; Swedberg, 2012, 2014, 2017). Although the debate was not without precursors in the history of science (and especially outside the US), these were mostly solitary contributions. Under the umbrella term “theorizing,” a comprehensive panorama of diverse working methods emerged within a few years. The focus was nevertheless on a specific type of theorizing, namely working on interpretation schemes for empirical data (Sparsam, 2015). Second, postcolonial and feminist epistemologies are significant here, which are, as it were, epistemological critiques (Bhambra, 2007; Go, 2016; Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1998; see Hoppe & Vogelmann, 2024 for an overview). The debate highlights how social theories are intertwined with imperial and male domination as well as social closure, especially regarding the universalization and reification of social-theoretical positions.

A comparison of the two strands of debate shows that postcolonial and feminist epistemologies localize social-theoretical claims to knowledge by discussing, questioning, and criticizing the positions of experiences, insights, and arguments in hierarchical social space. The theorizing debate, on the other hand, is peculiarly “placeless.” Hardly anyone explicitly addresses where researchers work on theoretical statements (apart from the fact that the distinction between contexts of discovery and contexts of justification has spatial connotations).

However, both debates have a blind spot when it comes to the significance of specific places for theoretical work, the “unique spot[s] in the universe” (Gieryn, 2000, p. 464), which not only have a specific physical layout, whether natural or artificial, and can be precisely located in geographical space, but to which people also attach specific meanings—although they do not necessarily agree on these meanings, nor are these meanings stable over time (Gieryn, 2000, 2018, p. 2; Harper, 2018; Knoblauch et al., 2025, pp. 12–15; Simmel, 2007). ¹ From this perspective, places are primarily to be seen as “loci operandi” (Beunza & Stark, 2003, p. 141; Stark, 2009, p. 125), which only become significant for participants and observers through concrete activities, for instance, working on theoretical arguments.

This investigation primarily focuses on such loci operandi. The key question is to what extent specific locations have explanatory value in understanding how statements in social theory are developed. How does a locus operandi matter for theorizing? And how do unique locations of theorizing come to be the way they are? ² By addressing these two questions, I situate my argument within a field of study that Camic and Gross (2004) have characterized as “new sociology of ideas,” focusing on “women and men who specialize in the production of cognitive, evaluative, and expressive ideas” and studying the social situations in which “their statements, claims, arguments, concepts, beliefs, assumptions, etc. … emerge, develop, and change” (Camic & Gross, 2004, p. 236). Over 20 years ago, they claimed that this field had been “quietly taking shape”—and in my view, little has changed in this regard, at least with respect to “an increased emphasis on localism” (Camic & Gross, 2004, p. 246) they outlined, i.e., a greater focus on specific locations of idea production. Camic and Gross drew on groundbreaking studies by Harding (1998), Abbott (1999), and Collins (1998), which remain unparalleled to this day. And for sure, a number of historical and sociological studies, as well as autobiographical accounts, have been published since then. To varying degrees, they explicitly address the local conditions of intellectual work in specific places (see only Asal & Schlak, 2009; Lenhard, 2024; Später, 2024; Steinmetz, 2023), highlighting just how fruitful such a “localism” in the social research of ides production can be. However, “place” as a category continues to play a negligible role in research, just as comparative or generalizing studies on local patterns of theoretical work remain rare (with the works on postcolonial and feminist epistemologies already mentioned being an exception).

At the same time, I limit this study to a specific type of such ideas by focusing on approaches where the emphasis is strongly on the theoretical perspective rather than on the empirical content, working on social theories that had fundamental theoretical or far-reaching diagnostic claims regarding their time (which is not the same as that they actually had this impact; Martus & Spoerhase, 2022, p. 122). By this, I do not mean that engagement with empirical research findings plays no role. Rather, it serves as a means, “gambit” (Abbott, 2004, p. 4, 84) or illustration to the end of generalizing theoretical work. So when I refer to theoretical work on the following pages, this is the type I have in mind. For heuristic purposes, I will call it “ambitious”—for sure, a highly simplified label. And on the other hand, I start from the observation that there is a kind of folkloric interest in places where intellectuals did or do ambitious theoretical work. “French Theory” and “Frankfurt School” are well-known examples (which, unsurprisingly, I will discuss in more detail). ³

This folklore essentially draws attention to a special connection between places and ambitious theoretical work, which is clearly worth exploring analytically. If place names are identity markers in social sciences and humanities that highlight a particular type of research (and its results), they imply concrete locations where theorizing actually happens. At the same time, it is not at all clear which specific locations are involved. Yet surely not an entire city. Places of ambitious theorizing are not self-evident. They require sociological explanation.

The aim is not to produce an exhaustive study. My goal is simply to explore the significance of specific locations for ambitious theoretical work. I will therefore limit myself to three cases: “Frankfurt” in the 1920s and early 1930s, about which Wolfgang Schivelbusch (1985, p. 28) claimed that it had to be this specific city where the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research IfS) began with its ultimately widely acclaimed work. As Später (2024, p. 45) puts it: “Where else could a connection like the ‘Frankfurt School’ have succeeded?”—“Bielefeld,” whose social history was quickly recognized as influential, especially among US colleagues, but which, particularly in sociology, quickly became regarded as a place of ambitious theoretical work after the university was founded in the late 1960s (Asal & Schlak, 2009, p. 9).—“Vincennes” on the outskirts of Paris, where numerous authors who are considered important representatives of “French Theory” worked temporarily or permanently in the 1970s (Cusset, 2008). “Frankfurt,” “Bielefeld,” and “Vincennes” are deliberately placed in quotation marks, as they are not simply geographical place names. Rather, they function as codes that refer to loci operandi, which insiders use in a highly abbreviated form to communicate what is happening or has happened there—in our case, certain types of theoretical work. What would have to be explained at length and in detail is condensed into a single word.

The case selection is based on the calculation that they are very similar (“most similar cases”; Gerring, 2017, pp. 79–83), in order to explore the loci operandi of theoretical work. I argue that such a pattern can indeed be found, which I characterize as a settlement of unsettled places. Following Abend (2022), this is an enabling pattern of ambitious theoretical work, not a causal one.

Beyond folklore: A space for place in the study of social theory

The absence of any significant focus on the loci operandi of theoretical work in the two most important recent debates on social theory (“craft of theorizing” on the one hand, postcolonial and feminist epistemologies on the other) is quite surprising. This is because place names often only function as identity markers, especially in theory-oriented sociology. When someone talks about “Frankfurt” in this context, this serves as an easily understandable code for insiders, allowing them to communicate in a highly condensed way about the provenance, premises, and positions of certain theoretical directions—often paired with expressions of approval or disapproval. Localizing codes such as these is an integral part of sociological folklore, through which widely scattered groups with vague membership boundaries affirm their shared and contested culture. However, as loci operandi, the locations in question receive little analytical attention.

This also applies to studies that deal with schools identified by place names in the history of science or, in a narrower sense, in the history of sociology. Either place names or descriptions serve only as a backdrop for an argument that locates events of interest but does not problematize the social gestalt of the place. Or the special features of the spot are highlighted in a landscape sense, but then not examined in terms of how they relate to specific theoretical work.

In addition, laboratory studies and the “manufacture of knowledge” (Knorr-Cetina, 1981) that takes place there provide a veritable model for examining, in microscopic detail, the specific places where theoretical knowledge is developed in the social sciences and humanities (see Liburkina & Niewöhner, 2017 for an overview). The now broad field of science and technology studies could also serve as a source of inspiration here for sociologists of social theory and its developments. But while some colleagues propose promising research programs that understand theorizing as situated practice (Armbruster, 2024; Schmidt, 2016), material investigations are still lacking.

However, there are some studies that deal with the loci operandi of social research, but not with the places where theoretical arguments are ultimately developed in writing. Nonetheless, they are methodologically instructive in two ways.

Patterns of interaction—Yacine (2004), Steinmetz (2023), and Erdur (2024) examine how experiences and observations made by later social theorists when they grew up in Tunisia ⁴ , Algeria, ⁵ and Morocco, ⁶ or spent longer or shorter periods of time there, have left their mark on the relevant theories. ⁷ The arguments in question point out that the respective places of residence are sites of particularly experiences because they are entangled in locally specific patterns of interaction, whose participation is inscribed in their bodies and which they explore in later years in conversation with others and, above all, in writing—not saying that the theoretical work of the authors in question is determined by their time in the Maghreb, as is often claimed with reference to Pierre Bourdieu (critically Pérez, 2024). The recursiveness of experiences and patterns of interaction is a commonplace in ethnography. But it sensitizes researchers to grasp locations not only, as Gieryn (2018, p. 2) suggests, as social entities with material, geographical, and narrative characteristics, but also as such patterns of interaction.

Tokens, not types—Martus and Spoerhase (2022) describe in their praxeology of the humanities (“Geistesarbeit”) a variety of loci operandi where researchers work theoretically and theorize. The image of solitary work at a desk has never really been accurate (Martus & Spoerhase, 2022, p. 11). Typically, work in the humanities is “unbound,” precisely because it is not tied to experimental setups in laboratories (Martus & Spoerhase, 2022, p. 357). But it also has its places—which often raises organizational questions. Where are the necessary books located, how is access to the necessary sources organized, how should seminar rooms be designed? However, their understanding of places remains theoretically unclear. They constantly oscillate between concrete places such as the Library of the Seminar for Comparative Literature, which Peter Szondi began to build up at the Free University of Berlin in 1971, and abstract places such as the “university as an institution of presence.” In this way, they implicitly draw attention to the difference between places as types or as tokens—that is, as general and abstract concepts or as unique entities situated in space and time.

Settlements of unsettled places

It is an empirical question at which points in theoretical work a place is significant as an abstract idea and, in contrast, as a token, i.e., as a situated spot where the work takes place. This question becomes even more pressing when “Frankfurt,” “Bielefeld,” and “Vincennes” are not merely folkloric references. Analytically, I will take three steps. First, I will examine in more detail whether the three cases I am comparing are indeed places of ambitious theorizing. In a second step, I will ask how these places came into being. Third, I will examine what the loci operandi were like from the perspective of those involved and then draw some conclusions about the extent to which places have independent explanatory value for the theoretical work carried out there.

Theoretical work in “Frankfurt,” “Bielefeld,” and “Vincennes”

What happens in certain places usually becomes apparent to those who were not there in the form of the products created there. These works carry within their manufacturing processes and conditions, but no longer reveal them. In the humanities and social sciences, the focus is on texts and their authors. Alongside place names, it is texts that represent the diverse activities at the loci operandi where they were created. Philipp Lenhard (2024, p. 8) alludes to this in his study Café Marx about the IfS when he points out that those who were not there usually think of Max Horkheimer or Adorno, but pay little attention to the many employees, scholarship holders, cooperation partners, and administrative staff, even though they contribute significantly to the vitality of the place. So, if we take the works that were produced in “Frankfurt,” “Bielefeld,” and “Vincennes” and consider them far-fetching theorizing in the sense suggested above because they explore social structural moments and dynamics, then nothing is said about the conditions under which they were produced. Yet it is precisely these works that established their reputation. Friedrich Pollock's first publication can be considered the first study of fascism theory in “Frankfurt,” and his habilitation thesis from 1928 dealt with the attempts at a planned economy in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1927. Henryk Grossmann dealt with capitalist crises from an economic theory perspective, Karl August Wittfogel with the economy and society of China, and Max Horkheimer founded the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung in 1931 entangled with his programmatic inaugural speech as director of the institute.

In Bielefeld, not only did Luhmann continue his work on a systems theory of society. Claus Offe, Johannes Berger, and Jürgen Feldhoff also worked on late Marxist analyses of society, and a working group led by Joachim Matthes explored interpretative approaches to everyday social phenomena. Within walking distance, social historians Jürgen Kocka and Hans-Ulrich Wehler had their offices. Reinhart Koselleck also joined the institute in 1975.

In Vincennes, Michel Foucault was involved in setting up a philosophy department on Cixous’ initiative but left this experimental venue in 1970 to join the Collège de France. However, he played a key role in bringing together a who is who of left-wing social scientists and humanities scholars in France with an affinity for theory. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari met here for the first time and began their productive collaboration, which soon became publicly visible with their books on capitalism and schizophrenia. Cixous worked here on the foundations of difference feminism, Nicos Poulantzas on a Marxist theory of the state. Alain Badiou, Jean-Claude Passeron, Robert Castel, Jacques Ranciére, and Madeleine Rebérioux are among the many who shaped “Vincennes” as a location where critical social analysis took place in research and teaching (for further details, see Cohen, 2010, p. 213). When recruiting, Foucault had the idea that sociologists and philosophers should work closely together. ⁸ Passeron, on the other hand, emphasized that everyone in the sociology department should be very familiar with practical methodological work. Poulantzas suggested recruiting lecturers from every left-wing group so that they would neutralize each (Carin et al., 2012, pp. 320–322).

But to what extent should the location itself have shaped or influenced this theoretical work in “Frankfurt,” “Bielefeld,” and “Vincennes?” In this context, it is striking that the identity markers in question are intended to make us believe this. The three cases are remarkably similar in this respect. It is usually non-present third parties, rather than those who are present and working on site, who attach particular importance to the special features of these places of theoretical work and thus bring them to the attention of the public.

“Frankfurt School” was attached to the IfS and its affiliated researchers from outside in the 1960s (Albrecht, 1999, p. 32; Wiggershaus, 1994, p. 1). ⁹ The institute began its work in Frankfurt am Main in 1923, went into exile in Geneva in 1933, then to New York, and finally to Los Angeles. It returned to Frankfurt in 1950. The label refers to work on a dialectical and anti-authoritarian analysis of society, but in the 1960s, it is primarily associated with central protagonists such as Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. Wiggershaus (1994, p. 3, 658) suggested that it would probably make most sense to use it to characterize “older critical theory” between the late 1920s and early 1960s, without implying that a uniform paradigm can be found here. It began to be used at a time when critical theory was becoming popular among young people and in some public perceptions and was gaining recognition but had long since lost its critical edge (Jay, 1973, pp. 287–288). Nevertheless, Adorno (1969, p. 101; 1993: p.68, 185, 232; 2003, p.538) began to use the label himself, mostly with a slight distance, but quite affirmatively.

“Bielefeld” was also initially consecrated by external colleagues, primarily in the academic history community. According to Hans-Ulrich Wehler's recollection (Wehler et al., 2006), it was initially a US invention in the 1970s to talk about “The Bielefelders” as a “school,” which was then quickly adopted by British colleagues and eventually became a self-designation (Kocka, 2014). Writing theory-oriented social history quickly attracted professional attention. This marked the beginning of a trend that was to continue into the 1990s, namely that this East Westphalian reform university in Eastern Westphalia, founded in 1968, was attributed with a number of characteristics, including the reputation of representing the intellectual constitution of West Germany or of being a “secret capital” of theoretical work (Asal & Schlak, 2009). In addition to social historians, the conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck, the literary scholar Karl-Heinz Bohrer, and the sociologist Niklas Luhmann, for example, attracted not only professional but also journalistic attention. ¹⁰ However, even less than “Frankfurt,” this was a shared style of thinking. People were in the same building, but not in the same theoretical architecture.

Vincennes, on the other hand, was labeled a political university before a single stone had been laid. This university, which was initially aptly named Le centre universitaire expérimental de Vincennes and then officially renamed Université Paris 8 in 1972 (Binczak, 2009, p. 7), was a direct consequence of the Paris May 1968 protests. At the suggestion of Raymond Las Vergnas, then dean of the Paris Faculty of Arts and Humanities, ¹¹ the conservative Minister of Education Edgar Faure pushed through a decision in August of that year to build a university on the outskirts of Paris as quickly as possible, primarily to accommodate the rebellious students from the center of Paris. At the same time, he made the concession (hence the designation as an experimental center) that the forces among French academics and students pushing for educational and institutional reforms could decide on the concrete form of the university themselves. The founding act was a conservative decision to save authority, but at the same time, left-wing students in Paris were downright euphoric because it was clear to everyone that a decidedly left-wing project was emerging here. Organized cadres even broke off their agitation in front of Paris factories to be in Vincennes (Vincennes, l’université perdue, 2016).

Settlements in unsettled times

Attributions such as those outlined above tend to organize a wild jumble of mere events more strongly than they did while they occurred (Knöbl, 2022, p. 261). A few aspects come to the fore, e.g., certain protagonists (Adorno, Marcuse), a certain way of thinking (theory-laden social history), or a certain political profile (continuation of Paris May 1968 with institutional means), while most others fade into the background. This is particularly true for codes, especially location-based ones. But: “Place makes a poor abstraction. Separated from its materializations, it has little meaning,” anthropologist Clifford Geertz once pointed out (1996, p. 259), albeit in a different context, but nevertheless very aptly. According to the codes ambitious theoretical work is located, but where exactly? How does it materialize both physically and socially? Lenhard followed a simple and instructive formula for his study Café Marx: “Where exactly was ‘the institute’ and what happened there?” (Lenhard, 2024, pp. 8–9) This formula is equally instructive to compare “Frankfurt,” “Bielefeld,” and “Vincennes.”

A sociology of place, as proposed by Simmel and Gieryn, draws attention first and foremost to the fact that unique locations are not only “interpreted, narrated, perceived, felt, understood, and imagined,” but that “most are built or in some way physically carved out” (Gieryn, 2000, p. 265). And here we encounter another commonality between the three cases examined. In a physical and geographical sense, these spots of academic work (and all work that contributes to this intellectual activity in geographical proximity, as Martus and Spoerhase (2022, p. 93) emphasize) are first created from scratch.

After the “intellectual founding” (Später, 2024, p. 21) of the IfS during the First Marxist Working Week in Geraberg in the Thuringian Forest at Pentecost 1923, the staff moved into a new multi-story building in Frankfurt's Westend district at the end of November of the same year. ¹² It was a cubic building, sober in design and generously equipped with offices and seminar rooms, as well as its own library. It was designed for practicality, but at the same time had a “fortress-like character,” as Siegfried Kracauer noted in the Frankfurter Zeitung (Lenhard, 2024, pp. 87–101; Schivelbusch, 1985, p. 12; Später, 2024, p. 24). The building thus symbolized the scientific standpoint that its founders—above all, the benefactor Felix Weil—had intended for the IfS. In the bourgeois environment of Westend (which did, however, include all kinds of sympathizers with socialism and communism (Wiggershaus, 1994, p. 17)) and a bourgeois university, the aim was to conduct Marxist research while at the same time getting to the bottom of the problems of socialism independently of the Marxist orthodoxy of the time. In this context, settlement has not only a structural aspect, but also—and we owe this sociological argument to Andrew Abbott (1988; 2001)—the establishment of professional premises on which research work should be based.

The times of this double settlement, in terms of both structure and premises, were turbulent at least. It took place in a socio-political and socio-economic environment in Germany that was characterized by the question of reparations and the occupation of the Ruhr region, hyperinflation, and the introduction of a second currency (the Rentenmark), nationalist and ethnic upheavals from both the left and the right, coup attempts, and their suppression (Wildt, 2022, pp. 115–151). The Weimar Republic itself was by no means settled, but the IfS was, for the time being.

Just as sober as the IfS in 1923 was the architecture of the main building of Bielefeld University, which officially opened in 1976 after 5 years of construction. With a gross floor area of over 300,000 m², it was one of the largest buildings in Europe (Braungart, 2009, p. 51). The socio-historical environment in which the first professors were appointed in 1968, and the university officially opened its doors a year later, was similarly turbulent. The entire university's academic activities were to take place “under one roof,” with short distances between departments, high levels of communication, and nearby amenities such as a cafeteria, cafés, restaurants, and retail stores (also located under the same roof but not intended for long stays). It was more reminiscent of the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg than other universities; even at the planning stage, it was a “thought factory” (Baecker, 2023, p. 102) to come to terms with the industrial age, and to this day it still appears rather uninviting to outsiders. Architecturally, a “fortress-like defensiveness” (Braungart, 2009, p. 52) also characterized “Bielefeld,” but interactionally, the place did not develop as a fortress. The student unrest, particularly in Berlin, reached the university committees early on, and socio-political debates soon came to dominate local encounters within and between status groups (at least in the 1970s and 1980s).

However, it would be simplistic to refer only to student unrest to characterize the unsettled times in which “Bielefeld” began. Rather, the 1960s in West Germany were marked by social change and political reform, partly because influential voices described the education system as being in a “catastrophic” state and quickly found a receptive audience in institutionalized politics (Söllner, 2013, p. 103). The prevailing view was that the necessary changes could be planned in a targeted, quasi-technological manner. Helmut Schelsky, who was entrusted with founding the university by the North Rhine-Westphalian state government in 1965, also learned that such planning is subject to considerable limitations and restrictions, at least when it comes to turning the planned type into a token (Albrecht, 2009, p. 87). He developed the idea of a Theoretische Universität (“theoretical university,” see Bock, 1986; Korte & Schäfers, 1995; Söllner, 2013, p. 108), in which professors primarily develop theories and train students in constant contact and joint work, albeit primarily through research. The resulting theories were to be interdisciplinary, and the university institutions were not to be permanent, but could be modified on an ongoing basis. But a university in this style did not happen, partly because the state government's goal was to provide many young people with access to higher education, and it needed the corresponding teaching capacities, while resources were limited. Nevertheless, there was a settlement in the Abbottian sense (as a definition of professional premises) that at least took the idea of the theoretical university into account by recruiting mainly professors who promised strong research skills in theory.

I already mentioned that “Vincennes” emerged from a politically turbulent situation. Between August and December 1968, 30,000 square meters of net floor space were created at a breathtaking pace, surrounded by forest and accessible only by bus or car. When Hélène Cixous, Bernard Cassen, and Pierre Dommergues, who were responsible for the institutional development work based on verbal agreements with Las Vergnas, discovered during an inspection that a nursery for the students’ children had been forgotten, it was quickly set up. The rooms were designed for smaller seminar groups than was usual at the Sorbonne and were technically state-of-the-art, equipped with televisions and telephones, among other things. But that was not what was really remarkable; it was the professional settlements. When called by Michel Foucault, who was to take over the philosophy department and was recruiting staff, Henri Weber expressed his skepticism that this would only result in the professors taking the best subjects for themselves and leaving the unpopular topics to the assistants (Vincennes, l’université perdue, 2016). But Foucault assured him that there were no plans to continue the hierarchies between professors and assistants that were customary in France at Vincennes. Everyone would be free to teach whatever subjects they wanted. (Weber agreed immediately. And that is how it turned out.)

Not without conflicts, some of which were massive and rooted in political differences and differing views on teaching situations, there was a further substantive decision, namely—whether Marxist or not—to initially focus the university program largely on a critical examination of knowledge systems (Erdur, 2018, pp. 204–208) and transcending the usual disciplinary boundaries. Among the recruited philosophers and sociologists in particular, the focus was on Bachelard's “epistemological break” (Carin et al., 2012, p. 323). This was linked to an assertive break with the power structures and access regulations within the French higher education system. In terms of teaching and examination organization, Cassen, Cixous, and Dommergues, who were all familiar with North American universities, adapted the flexible US system with seminars and credits (Cohen, 2010, p. 208). To be admitted to study at Vincennes, it was no longer necessary to have a Baccalaureat, the general university entrance qualification in France. Anyone who was interested could enroll.

Sponsorship

Weber had good reason to be skeptical of Foucault's offer. Until then, he had only known the rigid patron system with its clusters around one or two chairs that controlled everything centrally, as Terry Clark (1973, pp. 66–92) characterized it in the early 1970s. ¹³ “Vincennes,” on the other hand, was from the outset an experimental site against such patronage. A striking feature was the relationship between those responsible for the organizational structure of the university center and external authorities. The usual form of centralized and hierarchical control was replaced by a sponsorship model typically found in sports, which Faure introduced in the wake of the Paris May events (Krause, 2021, p. 41). Las Vergnas came up with the idea and brought in people he believed could build it up (first and foremost Cixous), while Faure provided the resources and ensured rapid construction. Otherwise, everyone who got involved had free rein. This even went so far that the French government had no executive powers on campus. ¹⁴ And while deans and institute directors had previously been appointed by the French government, all faculty, staff, and students elected Vincennes’ president, deans, and governing committees (Cohen, 2010, p. 208).

“Frankfurt” and “Bielefeld” also had their intellectual and financial sponsors. The proposal for the IfS came from sociologist Kurt Albert Gerlach, who died suddenly in October 1922, shortly after a sponsoring organization had been founded for the institute (Später, 2024, p. 21). The foundation money came from the Weil family of entrepreneurs; Felix was able to persuade his father to contribute. “Bielefeld” was an initiative of North Rhine-Westphalia's Minister of Science, Paul Mikat, who granted Schelsky extensive power of attorney because he believed that Schelsky's numerous statements on an appropriate university system for the industrial age meant that he had an adequate concept—and the necessary address book (Albrecht, 2009, p. 67). At the time, Schelsky was a professor at the University of Münster and headed the Sozialforschungsstelle in Dortmund, one of the largest social science research institutes in Europe at the time.

The fact that neither case developed into a patronage system with a single figure at the center exercising extensive control was mainly because the individuals in question relatively quickly stepped down from positions that would have allowed them to create such a network of dependencies. The first director of the IfS, Carl Grünberg, a “luminary” in the field of the history of the German socialist workers’ movement (Lenhard, 2024, p. 59), had health problems and wanted to exercise “dictatorial control” (Jay, 1973, p. 11), but was unable to do so. The younger generation, led by Friedrich Pollock, who had a certain authority due to his friendly relationship with Felix Weil, took over the institute's fortunes—a generation that also included Max Horkheimer, who became director in 1930 after repeatedly advising Weil on the institute's founding alongside Pollock during the initial phase (Lenhard, 2024, pp. 48–49). Schelsky, in turn, was confronted with his Nazi past because conservative circles in Paderborn would have preferred the university to be in their city rather than in Bielefeld. He withdrew from the chairmanship of the founding committee, which he had nevertheless played a key role in establishing. However, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the developments in higher education policy in the late 1960s. In 1970, he was still director of the Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung in Bielefeld but resigned from this position in 1971. He no longer attended faculty conferences. At this point, younger members had long since begun to take charge of the sociology department, led by Franz-Xaver Kaufmann and Joachim Matthes, both former employees of the Sozialforschungsstelle and protégés of Schelsky. What they soon had to deal with was less a system of patronage than “system-influencing legislation” by the state government, which meant that “Bielefeld” remained a research university in its basic features, but at the same time became a mass university (Kaufmann, 1992, pp. 31–33).

Unsettled places

In an autobiographical interview, Cixous once described how she found “freedom and shelter” in Vincennes. Had this institution not been founded, she would have had to give up university, as she had felt so “imprisoned” during her previous studies (Cixous & Engelmann, 2017, p. 28). Freedom and shelter—Cixous is metaphorically alluding to a social quality of buildings that Gieryn (2002, p. 35) sums up: “Buildings stabilize social life. They give structure to social institutions, durability to social networks, persistence to behavior patterns.” As a result of their settlements, they are at the same time a permanent object of social design and appropriation; the question of who can be in which part of a building at any given time is one that must be constantly clarified. And the fact that this shelter is also accompanied by free space is something that first needs to be created. The relationship between the form of buildings and their design in continuous interaction with the same or changing participants is recursive. They shape the concrete use of the building, while at the same time the building gives their interaction and the possible scope for action and avoidance a specific design. ¹⁵

Certainly not everyone shared Cixous’ assessment when they were active in Vincennes. After several months of fundamental criticism from students, Foucault was not particularly sad to move to the Collège de France (Vincennes, l’université perdue, 2016). Balibar was annoyed that students constantly denounced his membership in the Communist Party, so he also left Vincennes quickly (Cohen, 2010, p. 210). Raymonde Moulin, a close confidante of Raymond Aron, also returned to the CNRS as director of research in 1970 due to the rough customs (Carin et al., 2012, p. 324). Passeron, who was already an established sociologist when he came to Vincennes, having worked with Pierre Bourdieu, once said that he did not find or was unable to create the conditions he needed for his work in Vincennes—even though he was enthusiastic at times about being able to meet psychoanalysts (Passeron et al., 1996 ¹⁶ ; Carin et al., 2012, p. 324, 328). We should also remember all those who, caught up in their political activism, failed to see that Vincennes could only defend its autonomy if it excelled in the academic field and in education (Carin et al., 2012, p. 322).

“Vincennes” was an unsettled place. Students were able to influence the curriculum in regular plenary assemblies, but at the same time, constant conflicts between the various left-wing organizations were the order of the day. There was also a conflict with the government. From 1969 onwards, Olivier Guichard, an opponent of Vincennes, was at the head of the Ministry of Education. He used the Marxist and political course titles of the philosophy department to announce that degrees obtained at Vincennes would not be recognized by the state (Cohen, 2010, p. 211; Erdur, 2018, p. 208).

Not only “Vincennes,” but also “Frankfurt” and “Bielefeld” were unsettled places. Neither were they peaceful and contemplative settlements, as some would have liked. At the IfS, despite its commitment to unorthodox scientific Marxism, the specific methodological direction of research remained in limbo for a long time (Lenhard, 2024, p. 94). Added to this were Grünberg's illness and the partial politicization of the staff, even though party political interests had no place at the IfS. In Bielefeld, it quickly became apparent that the state government did not want to allow the university to develop the autonomy it had secured for itself in a provisional constitution. In the Faculty of Sociology, some professors had obvious difficulties with the fact that the status groups of research assistants and students also wanted to have a say in the formal structure of the institution. According to many of those involved, the situation escalated when it came to filling a chair in social psychology and the students and some assistants preferred a different candidate than many of the professors (‘Fall Holzkamp’; Kaufmann & Strulik, 2019, pp. 94–95; Tyrell & Kruse, 2019, pp. 43–44). Anyone who reads the minutes of the faculty conferences will discover that threatening or even resigning from a faculty position was a popular means of asserting oneself. As was his wont, Luhmann (1975) processed his experiences with “Wabuwabu”—harsh practices used by groups against each other—at the university in an article of the same name. Distant, but with subtle irony.

Regarding the question of the loci operandi of theoretical work, the freedom that Cixous retrospectively sees as a central feature of “Vincennes” and the local unrest are not mutually exclusive. Many, though by no means all, work on ambitious theories despite or precisely because of this ambivalence. For in all three cases, there are patterns of interaction that enable it—individually or in teams—or, as Cixous would say, make it possible in the first place. (And many younger colleagues in Vincennes from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds would agree with her (Carin et al., 2012)). But my argument does not depend on everyone seeing it this way, but rather on the place they not only found, but actively shaped to their advantage. At the IfS, the library and archive developed into the two central loci operandi of theoretical work in the 1920s because, although a common research direction was only vaguely emerging, everyone was involved in source work because so much of what had been written in Marxist terms was, from the institute's point of view, unsuitable for understanding the world war that had just ended and the revolution that had failed to take place in Germany (Lenhard, 2024, p. 101). They did not meet as colleagues who shared research topics, but rather the dual settlement of a building and a conceptual idea—and they did so in full recognition that they needed the others not only to maintain the place as such in its fundamental form, but also to pursue their own topics. “Solitary action,” e.g., working alone at a desk or library table, is something that a single person cannot achieve on their own, but whose temporary or permanent location must be recognized by others so that they do not intervene (Cohen, 2016).

A similar pattern can be found in Vincennes and Bielefeld. The participants at each do not see themselves as a research collective, but they share a fundamental settlement: they are reform-oriented and experimental, breaking with university traditions, and they are research-oriented and research-intensive universities. Despite all their differences, they are united in this. They do not compete with each other for topics and theses but allow each other to do what they intend to do individually or in their networks. Freedom of choice of topics is a top priority, regardless of status. Special arrangements are possible, as requested by Deleuze, for example, who asked to reduce his teaching load significantly for a while due to health reasons (Lapoujade, 2025, p. 10). As for Luhmann in Bielefeld, courses are laboratories for Deleuze to prepare publications. Like Luhmann, who cultivated a “sociology among those present” (Kieserling & Schmidt, 2024, p. 640), Deleuze pursued a “philosophy among those present,” which he needed and enjoyed because the atmosphere and the participants were extraordinary for him. Those present came with their individual areas of interest, not because the curriculum required it (Deleuze in Lapoujade, 2025, pp. 11–12). This parallel also draws attention to the fact that in “Vincennes” and “Bielefeld” there is no single central locus operandi where everyone comes together, if only for reasons of size. Rather, they are conglomerates of diverse loci operandi of theoretical work, shaped by individuals or groups according to their needs. What stands out in particular is that the shared commitment to prioritizing research and theory allowed many to operate as solitary figures—an aspect that Richard Münch (2025, p.118) recently highlighted once again in reference to “Bielefeld” and colleagues such as Luhmann and Knorr Cetina, as well as Richard Grathoff and Jörg Bergmann. Those who wanted had the necessary freedom (Erdur, 2024, pp. 180–181; Tyrell & Kruse, 2019). And it should not be forgotten that at all locations protagonists created additional infrastructure once they are up and running, e.g., by founding journals (the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt, the Zeitschrift für Soziologie in Bielefeld, Poétique in Vincennes) or degree programs and research centers (Vincennes was the first place in France where it was possible to study film or gender studies). In doing so, social theorists not only worked at unsettled places but also created this unrest themselves: theoretical unrest in a quasi-bourgeois university environment and against Marxist orthodoxy (“Frankfurt”) and as a multiplication and complication of theoretical thinking in the 1970s in “Vincennes” and “Bielefeld” (Erdur, 2018, p. 329). The sponsored but anti-patronal settlements of locations of research and teaching in unsettled times created the conditions.

Conclusion

The three locations of theoretical work examined—“Frankfurt,” “Bielefeld,” “Vincennes”—are similar in that they are settlements of unsettled places. In each case, during turbulent socio-historical periods, a geographically closely connected conglomerate of loci operandi emerged within a few months or years, offering some of the social scientists and humanities scholars active there, individually and in groups, the opportunity to develop theoretical creativity—largely through their own involvement in shaping these spots. At its core, this is a specific temporal pattern of intellectual “localism” (Camic & Gross, 2004, p. 246). It starts in (1) unsettled times with (2) sponsorship and (3) physical and conceptual settlements of unique locations that develop themselves as (4) unsettled places, which are turbulent but conducive to theoretical work that claims new and often unconventional ideas on “the social.” In short, in the cases of “Frankfurt,” “Bielefeld,” and “Vincennes,” unsettled places facilitate both high degrees of individual autonomy as well as a collective infrastructure of social thought “outside the box,” as I described in detail in the chapter on unsettled places.

My argument is that the mentioned temporal pattern is an enabling pattern of ambitious theorizing—and not a pattern that asserts a strict causality between two phenomena X (loci operandi) and Y (theoretical work). Terminologically, I am following a recent suggestion by Abend (2022), who, however, focuses on enabling relations between X and Y, not transitive chains of events as outlined above. Transitive means that the individual processes are constitutive for each other to have enabling consequences as the chain's outcome. It should be noted that the individual “stations” are highly condensed descriptions of a variety of interactions and experiences of specific participants. In this generalized perspective, as I have developed it, “Frankfurt,” “Bielefeld,” and “Vincennes” stand for a specific type of how places of theoretical creativity emerge. Taken on their own, they are tokens, and methodologically, it is necessary to examine these tokens in as much detail as possible to avoid analytical shortcuts between a place and “its theories.”

At least two questions remain—First, the argument developed here largely disregards the fact that the locations of theoretical work under examination have often developed their shape in explicit contrast to or in competition with other sites. I only touched on this aspect when I argued that many colleagues at the sites under study organized theoretical unrest against the existing conventions in their intellectual and socio-cultural environments. Thus, the relationship between “Sorbonne” and “Vincennes” deserves more attention, as does the so-called Habermas-Luhmann debate (Füllsack, 2010; Harste, 2021), which can also be understood as a theoretical tension between “Frankfurt” and “Bielefeld” (at least in the 1970s). An explicitly relational perspective seems promising here (cf. Collins, 1998; Camic, 2015)—A second open question is the scope of the argument developed here. I do not claim that this is the only or a very significant enabling pattern of ambitious theorizing. Rather, the argument should be understood as an invitation to further intensify research in this area. The continuations of “Frankfurt” in other places, which Jürgen Habermas began in 1971 in Starnberg at a social science-oriented Max Planck Institute and which Oskar Negt started in 1972 at the University of Hanover, are now generally considered to have failed (Leendertz, 2010; Später, 2024, pp. 324–370). However, both made significant theoretical contributions from there (Habermas, 1984; Kluge & Negt, 2014), both operated in unsettled times, both were sponsored (in Hanover by the Marxist-oriented Minister of Science Peter von Oertzen, in Starnberg by the Max Planck Society)—and employees enjoyed considerable freedom. In short, they are obvious candidates for further research on the importance of unique locations for ambitious theoretical work. Regarding the enabling pattern proposed here, my argument should also be understood as an invitation to take a closer look at various spots where ambitious theoretical work took and takes place, while also possibly modifying the argument presented here considerably. One can think of such prominent candidates as “Chicago,” “Stanford,” or “Harvard” which are potentially contrasting cases—and which at the same time raise the question why postcolonial thought typically is not part of social science folklore to identify ambitious theoretical thinking through place names.