Research – Linus Westheuser

Publications

Book

Mau, Steffen; Lux, Thomas; Westheuser, Linus (2023): Triggerpunkte. Konsens und Konflikt in der Gegenwartsgesellschaft. Berlin: Suhrkamp. www.suhrkamp.de/triggerpunkte

⸺ SPIEGEL best seller list (48 weeks); best seller list of FOCUS / stern / Börsenblatt
⸺ Best Non-Fiction 2023 by DIE ZEIT / Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Welt / Neue Zürcher Zeitung
⸺ Prize “Best Political Book” 2024, Friedrich Ebert Foundation
⸺ Reviews see here

Coming: Moral Roots of a New Political Cleavage. Working and Middle Class Lives and the Transformation of Political Conflicts in Germany. Under contract at Oxford University Press.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

2025 – “Cleavage Theory Meets Bourdieu. Studying the Role of Group Identities in Cleavage Formation” (with Delia Zollinger). European Political Science Review 17(1), 110 – 127. DOI: 10.1017/S1755773924000249. [LINK]
2024 – “Cleavage Politics in Ordinary Reasoning. How Common Sense Divides” (with Koen Damhuis). European Societies 26(4), 1195–1231. DOI: 10.1080/14616696.2023.2300641. [LINK]
2024 – “‘Ja, aber’. Gesellschaftliche Konflikte verstehen.” (with Steffen Mau and Thomas Lux), Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 76, 207–220. DOI: 10.1007/s11577-024-00964-0. [LINK]
2024 – “The Sociocultural Approach to Populism. Toward a Cultural Class Analysis of Populist Appeals.” (with Pierre Ostiguy) In: Elgar Research Handbook of Populism, ed. Giorgos Katsambekis and Yannis Stavrakakis. Edward Elgar, 178–191. DOI: 10.4337/9781800379695.00025 [LINK]
2022 – “Verletzte Ansprüche. Zur Grammatik des politischen Bewusstseins von ArbeiterInnen” (with Linda Beck), Berliner Journal für Soziologie 32(2), 279-316. DOI: 10.1007/s11609-022-00470-0 [LINK]
2022 – “Class Without Consciousness. The Politics of Demobilized Class Society” (with Donatella della Porta), Berliner Journal für Soziologie 32(2), 165-172. DOI: 10.1007/s11609-022-00474-w [LINK]
2020 – “Populism as Symbolic Class Struggle. Homology, Metaphor, and English Ale”, in Participation & Conflict 13(1) 2020: 256-283. DOI: 10.1285/i20356609v13i1p256 [LINK]
2015 – “Männer, Frauen und Stefan Hirschauer: Undoing Gender zwischen Praxeologie und Rhetorischer Modernisierung”, GENDER – Zeitschrift für Gesellschaft, Geschlecht und Kultur 3: 109-125. DOI: 10.3224/gender.v7i3.20846 [LINK]

Report

2024 – Class consciousness and voting. Class as a political compass? (with Thomas Lux), Berlin: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. [LINK]
Deutsche Fassung: “Klassenbewusstsein und Wahlentscheidung. Klasse als politischer Kompass?”[LINK]

Other Publications

2025 – “The German Left Has Lost Its Monopoly on Class Consciousness” (with Thomas Lux), LSE European Politics Blog [LINK]
2024 – “Leute ohne akademischen Hintergrund sitzen kaum noch mit am Tisch. Politische Ungleichheit und die soziale Krise des Parteiensystems” (mit Lea Elsässer), Soziopolis. [LINK]
2024 – “Quanto conta la classe? Strutture e concezioni in mutamento.” (with Donatella della Porta), Parole-Chiave 1/2024. DOI: 10.7377/113871 [LINK]
2024 – “Migration as a Trigger Point?” (with Steffen Mau and Thomas Lux), German Research 1/2024, 8-11. [LINK]
2022 – “This is not America. Politische Polarisierung in Deutschland als Schimäre.”, Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen 35(2). [LINK]
2020 – “The Symbolic Politics of Populism Reflects the Class Alliances it Seeks to Assemble.”, LSE Politics Blog. [LINK]
2019 – “The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and the Great Recession.”, Mobilization 24(4): 531-2. [LINK]
2018 – “Doing Gender”. [Encylopedia Entry] Gender Glossar. [LINK]

Data sets

Mau, Steffen, Lux, Thomas, & Westheuser, Linus (2024). Survey Ungleichheit und Konflikt. GESIS, Köln. ZA8826 Datenfile Version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/10.4232/1.14419.

Mau, Steffen; Lux, Thomas; Westheuser, Linus (2025). Triggerpunkte: Konsens und Konflikt in der Gegenwartsgesellschaft. Transkripte der Fokusgruppeninterviews [dataset]. Qualiservice, PANGAEA, https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.975394

Work in Progress

“Politicizing Work. Changing Rhetorical Paradigms in the Reinventions of European Social Democracy”. Working Paper. With Koen Damhuis (Utrecht University), Susi Meret (University of Aalborg), and Paulus Wagner (European University Institute).

“Toward a Second Wave of Climate Social Policy.” Working Paper. With Laura Iozzelli (European University Institute) Michael Pahle, Simon Feindt, and Antonia Schwarz (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research).

“The Moral Economy of Fuel Prices.” Work in progress. With Till Hilmar (University of Vienna).

“Four Arenas of Inequality Conflicts”. R&R. With Steffen Mau and Thomas Lux (HU Berlin).

“Theorizing Cleavage Identities: The Contribution of Cultural Sociology”. Conditionally Accepted at European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology.