Thomas Marthaler
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| Faculty or Centre | Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences | ||||
| Department | Department of Education and Social Work | ||||
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Université du Luxembourg Maison des Sciences Humaines 11, Porte des Sciences L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette |
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| Campus Office | MSH, E03 35-010 | ||||
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| Telephone | (+352) 46 66 44 9248 | ||||
| Fax | (+352) 46 66 44 39248 | ||||
Thomas Marthaler is Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Luxembourg. After his studies in Educational Sciences/Social Work at TU Dresden/Germany he worked in research projects on care-leavers (youth welfare) in Saxonia, and on families in youth welfare in Germany. From 2002 to 2013 he worked as scientific assistant and lecturer at Kassel University focusing on Theories and History of Social Work, Regulations and Organization of Child and Youth Welfare/Child Protection in an international perspective as well as ‘Social Diagnosis’. He holds a PhD in Social Politics (Dr. rer. pol.) from Kassel University. His doctoral thesis was on paradigms of the family in German Law from 1900 to our days. He was principal investigator of the project ‘Law and transnational Social Work – legal norms of child protection in Africa.’ In 2010 he was guest lecturer in social pedagogy at Universidade Federal de Pelotas/Brazil.
His main research focus resides in the further development of the “Theory of Scales” within the Matrix-Research Project (see under “Current research”). More specifically, and with regard to social work, he is working, together with Claude Haas, on a concept of social work as relational, scaling-sensible bricolage work.
Last updated on: Monday, 21 March 2016
2002 – Diploma in Educational Sciences (Social Pedagogy and Social Work), TU Dresden
2008 – Doctoral Degree in Social Policy (Dr. rer. pol.), Universität Kassel
2010 – Oct-Dec. Visiting Lecturer at Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel), Brazil
Last updated on: 13 Dec 2013
Towards a "Theory of Scales": the MATRIX-Research Project
Claude Haas & Thomas Marthaler
The MATRIX-research project started by the end of the year 2013. The project’s point of departure was the project leaders’ dealing with the question of how to understand theoretically and operationalise methodologically the social work profession’s contextual embedment in what could be termed as person-related social service organisations and practise fields of social work. On the one hand, this raised further questions of what it means to assume a contextual embedment or ‘embeddedness’ – as it is generally referred to in organisation theory – of professional practise in so-called meso- and macro-environments. On the other hand, questions arose about the resulting implications on the enactment of professional knowledge as well as ethical principles of action with the idea of a context-reflexive professionalism in mind.
In the following theoretical and empirical work on the various facets of the topic, and drawing more specifically on neo-institutional organisation theories, even more questions arose regarding the analysis of actor- and field-related rationalities respectively institutional logics in their intertwining and contrariness: How to cartography or map collective actors and organisational fields? And what can we learn from such maps with regard to professional intervention and management?
While trying to map the so-called field of work integration through the conduct of a series of expert interviews and ‘falling short of abstraction’, as we would narrate it at a conference of the european network of neo-institutionalism, we started to look out for other perspectives. A very central source of inspiration was constituted right from the beginning of our exploration movement by the work of Marilyn Strathern, especially her considerations on the notion of scale or the plural modes of perceiving and cutting social reality into variously magnified, dichotomised and juxtaposed entities. In our endeavour to make sense about our ‘failing’, our relational life-world-bubbles, as we would currently put it, have gradually opened up towards more fundamental questions of a social theoretical kind.
What we have temporarily covenanted as a ‘Theory of Scales’ is basically about how in relationing to the ‘world’ as a recursive process of eversion of environments within, persons or life-world-bubbles-at-different-places-in-time, unremittingly (re-)invent and covenante scales of ‘animate’ (e.g. four-legged dogs and professional counsellor) and ‘inanimate’ (e.g. water and scientific texts) entity into ontological being in relational scaling work, i.e. ideal-emotional-material cutting. Through the spatio-temporal, recursive iteration of this basic movement, social reality or what could be termed as such, is ever-changing, leaving the ‘observer’ with a sense of brokenness or fractality. Thereby, the term of ‘fractality’ refers to the self-similarity of scales, with the singularity of the spatio-temporal relationality of (relational) persons as the so-called fractal parameter. The ‘scales-come-scale-through-relational-scaling-work-at-places-in-time’ in their fractal dimensionality, entanglement and relativity constitute ever renewed ‘cutouts’ of social reality, that, in turn, is self-similar to other cutouts because of the common basic movement. The terms of ‘eversion’, ‘entanglement’ and ‘environments within’ reveal that in a fractal and postplural theory perspective – if one chooses to make such a categorical classification – persons, places and relations do not ‘constitute’ ontologically separable entities, even though they are continuously cut as such. The theoretical entirety of social reality created through the basic movement of persons in relational scaling work is referred to as ‘matrix’. This term is a metaphor for the universe of fractal reality, which is – in our scaling mode – ontologically constituted out of (relational) persons-in-scaling-work-at-places-in-time.
With regard to these basic assumptions, we refer to research as relational, scaling-sensitive bricolage work and have developed and are still developing - this is perhaps the most important aspect of our work so far - a research methodology that ‘allows’ us to follow how various-persons-and-different-places-in-time are related in scaling work and ‘catch’ the fractality of social reality. The basic movement of relationing and comparing implied, can be equally applied to all kinds of data including interviews, observations or documents. Since the beginning, we have also worked on alternatives to mapping and have developed a visualisation methodology. We are currently working on the refinement of our theory and methodology. In parallel we have begun to reinvent social work, management, counseling, teaching as well as other types of ‘human activity’ as other ‘forms’ of relational, scaling-sensitive bricolage work. In the upcoming months, we publish extensively on our ongoing work.
What is ‘new’ in the social theoretical conception we propose, is to be seen in particular in the ‘integration’ of theoretical perspectives respectively scales of social reality from scientists of different disciplines and schools. In this regard should be mentioned, besides Strathern, the works of the social anthropologists Holbraad and Pedersen, Henare, Holbraad and Wastell, Munro or Wagner, STS (Science and Technology Studies) researcher Jensen and Gad, sociologists Abbott, Schütz and Luckmann, as well as Klatetzki, mathematician Mandelbrot or physicist Nottale.
Last updated on: 18 Feb 2016
2017
Sulla nozione di “emergenza” e i suoi effetti sul lavoro sociale; ;
Scientific Conference (2017, June 28)
Politische, soziale und rechtliche Systeme und der "westkulturelle Pluralismus";
E-print/Working paper (2017)
2016
"Erwachsene" als relationale-Personen-in-Skalierungsarbeit-an-Orten-in-der-Zeit;
E-print/Working paper (2016)
Wissenschaftliches Schreiben als relationale und sklaierungssensible Erfindung von Wirklichkeiten;
E-print/Working paper (2016)
Elemente eines relationalen Konzepts des betreuten Wohnens von jungen Erwachsenen "im Übergang in die Autonomie";
E-print/Working paper (2016)
Relationality and scaling-sensitivity in action: About persons as 'clients' of 'human services'; ;
Scientific Conference (2016, August)
Text analysis reinvented: towards a scaling-sensitive approach; ;
Scientific Conference (2016, August)
Gemeinwesenarbeit als relationale skalierungssensible Örtlichkeitsarbeit; ;
E-print/Working paper (2016)
2015
From mapping to scaling fields: A narrative about a theory and methodology development process;
Scientific Conference (2015, March)
Skalierungen des Kindeswohls - fraktale Narrative zwischen Recht und MoralScientific Conference (2015, December 11)
Scaling-Reflexive Teaching for Scaling-Reflexive Professionalism;
Scientific Conference (2015, June)
2014
A propos des rapports entre économie sociale et solidaire et insertion professionnelle;
Presentation (2014, March 25)
2012
Rationalitätenvielfalt im Kinderschutz - eine Einführung; ; ;
in Marthaler, Thomas; Bastian, Pascal; Bode, Ingo; Schrödter, Mark (Eds.) Rationalitäten des Kinderschutzes. Kindeswohl und soziale Interventionen aus pluraler Perspektive (2012)
Zum Umgang mit dem Kindeswohl - ein Essay aus neoinstitutionalistischer Perspektivein Marthaler, Thomas; Bastian, Pascal; Bode, Ingo; Schrödter, Mark (Eds.) Rationalitäten des Kinderschutzes. Kindeswohl und soziale Interventionen aus pluraler Perspektive (2012)
Rationalitäten des Kinderschutzes. Kindeswohl und soziale Interventionen aus pluraler Perspektive; ; ;
Book published by Springer VS (2012)
2010
Kindeswohl und Rechtspluralismus - Herausforderungen für eine transnationale Soziale ArbeitScientific Conference (2010, September 18)
The 'best interests of the child-principe' (bem-estar da crianca) in Mozambique - a paradigmatic case of legal pluralismScientific Conference (2010, April 30)
2009
Familienleitbilder im Erziehungsrecht. Der Wandel familialer Leitbilder im privaten und öffentlichen Recht seit 1900Book published by Juventa (2009)
