Sandra Mauler
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Scholar of the IRTG from November 2017 till June 2018 |
Dissertation project
‘The idle self. Procrastination between discourse and practices’(translated working title) explores the ways in which selves are constructed to appear lazy or unproductive by using the spreading term ‘procrastination’. Procrastination commonly denotes actions of repeatedly putting off work or decisions by taking care of less important work or more enjoyable activities instead. The thesis focuses on analyzing current discursive formations since the beginning of the century in the German language area while considering sociocultural changes and related historical discourses for example on the appropriate use of time or work ethics in general.By combining a discourse analysis on self-help literature and diverse pop cultural artefacts referring to the concept of procrastination on one hand and qualitative interviews on the other the project seeks to investigate discursive regularities as well as its resistant acquirements and reformations. Important perspectives are expected to include for example the economization of the private sphere as well as currently trending efforts to constantly optimize one self.
Sandra Mauler held a scholarship at the Collaborative Research Centre 1015 “Otium” from November 2017 until June 2018. She focused on performing a discourse analysis of self-help literature during her time in Freiburg. Sandra Mauler is doing her PhD in European Ethnology at the University of Innsbruck (thesis supervisor Timo Heimerdinger).
Her research centers on analyzing the phenomenon procrastination under the perspective of being constructed by sociocultural discourses.