INVOLVEMENT AND DETACHMENT IN UNIFIED GER MANY - A RECONSTRUCTIVE PROCESS ANALYSIS WITH ELIAS AND SIMMEL

As the collapse of the GDR and the process of German unification were thoroughly unique occurrences of social transformation for which no no mological explanation exists, they should be reconstructed as the prod ucts of complex sociological mechanisms. To this end, it is proposed t hat Norbert Elias's figuration model of ''the established and the out- siders'' be used as the grid in mapping the political transformation p rocess in eastern Germany., The exchange of systems in eastern Germany is a case of the rules of established/outsiders figuration, as concei ved by Elias, being overturned. It is not least for this reason that t he Elias model is being modified and amended primarily in order to inc orporate the analytical work of Georg Simmel on the rule of the ''tria d.'' The application of both sociological process models allows for th e reconstruction of the interactions between various East German power groups and the West German power group and for a description of the f igurations which have formed and reformed several times in the course of German unification. In doing so, it becomes clear that it was the f igurational form of the east German transformation process itself that most shaped its own outcome.