Tobias Müller
Biographic Data
| ID | 85061 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tobias Müller |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tobias |
| FAMILY NAME | Müller |
| SIGNATURE | MÜLLER T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1999-4370 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The gender dimension of refugees’ integration in the labor market
This paper examines the gender differences in labor market integration among refugees and their determinants. It focuses on a longitudinal dataset that covers the entire refugee population in Switzerland over 20 years. During the period examined, the majority of refugees came from low-income economies in Africa and Asia. The quasi-random allocation of asylum seekers across Swiss cantons, which differ in their socio-economic characteristics, provi…
Transboundary Spanning in Social Movements
This paper introduces transboundary spanning as a novel concept for social movement analysis. Using Extinction Rebellion (XR) in the United States as a case study, we examine the relational dynamics of social movement boundary spanning: processes wherein actors and organizations engage across symbolic boundaries. Drawing on a 3‐month ethnography of XR in the Northeastern US, 44 in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with US activists, and 199 interv…
Is religion a problem for intersectional theory? Muslim women, feminism, and varieties of patriarchy
Intersectional theory has been criticised for neglecting religion and for being unable to account for religion’s social complexities. This contribution interrogates this critique by disaggregating different relationships of Muslim women to secular and religious varieties of patriarchy. We argue that what demarcates the challenges of intersectional analysis are the political contestations not around religion, but around women’s pro-patriarchal age…
Towards a Regenerative Anthropology
In a time of escalating environmental, political and social crises, Anthropology has transformative potential yet faces existential threats. This article argues for a regenerative Anthropology – one that not only critiques the colonial-capitalist systems driving breakdown, but also actively contributes to alternative, life-affirming futures. Drawing on insights from regenerative agriculture, activism and multispecies ethnography, we explore how A…
Democracy and Religion in What State? State Projects, Sanitizing Politics, and Fracturing the Demos
The question of how to deal with religion is a central problem of the modern state. However, state effects on religious lifeworlds are rarely the object of critical theoretical inquiry. This paper seeks to remedy this lacuna by combining neo-Marxist, Foucauldian, and anthropological theories of the state with critical secularism studies to introduce the framework of state projects. Advocating for more bridge-building between political theory and …
Gendered extractivism in Uganda
Critical analyses of extractivism have demonstrated that it frequently involves interconnected gendered impacts on local communities. While gender equality has become an important concern in the literature on sustainability and economic development, more intersectional and decolonial feminist critiques of extractivism are only slowly entering mainstream debates even though they offer important perspectives for thinking about the socio-political c…
Political theories of climate temporality
The politics of climate change is also a politics of conflicting temporalities. However, we know little about how conceptualizations of climate and time shape political contestations on the ground. Similarly, we lack empirically grounded reflections on how different climate temporalities relate to each other and how they are shaped by histories of colonialism. This article addresses these gaps by developing an analytical framework of climate temp…
Sociology amid Climate Breakdown
We teach sociology on a dangerously heating planet. The first half of the 2020s has witnessed extreme heatwaves, devastating floods, catastrophic droughts, agricultural shocks and rampant wildfires: harbingers of a situation that is due to escalate towards the end of the century. In this article, we argue that for sociological education to meet the existential challenge posed by climate breakdown, we must do more than simply add climate to the cu…
Retirement and health plan choice
Many consumers exhibit choice persistence, often sticking with suboptimal or dominated health plans. We analyze the effect of retirement on health plan choice using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design that exploits Switzerland's old-age pension legislation. Drawing on insurance claims data from 84,731 individuals aged 61 to 68 over the years 2006-2014, we find that retirement significantly increases switching from the standard model to manage…
"Patriarchal "Love School
Many Pentecostal churches founded in the Global South are now rapidly growing in European cities. Although research is catching up with this development, we know little about how these processes affect gendered and racialized practices regarding sexualities, bodies, and masculinities in former colonial metropolises shaped by neoliberal capitalism. This article addresses this gap by interrogating the transnational movement of Pentecostal masculini…
Resurgent Religion, Resurgent Patriarchy? Strictly Observant Religion, Gender, and the State
A triple transformation is shaping societies around the world: the rise of strictly observant religion, the backlash against gender equality, and the growing influence of neoliberalism and authoritarianism in state affairs. While each of these phenomena has been intensively studied by social scientists, we know very little about their overlapping confluence. This introduction to the Special Issue "Strictly Observant Religion, Gender and the State…
Labor market integration, local conditions and inequalities
The paper examines the patterns of economic integration of refugees in Switzerland, a country with a long tradition of hosting refugees, a top-receiving host in Europe, and a prominent example of a multicultural society. It relies on a unique longitudinal dataset consisting of administrative records and social security data for the universe of refugees in Switzerland over 1998–2018. This data is used to reconstruct the individual-level trajectori…
Labor Market Integration, Local Conditions and Inequalities
The paper examines the patterns of economic integration \n of refugees in Switzerland, a country with a long tradition \n of hosting refugees, a top-receiving host in Europe, and a \n prominent example of a multicultural society. It relies on \n a unique longitudinal dataset consisting of administrative \n records and social security data for the universe of refu- \n gees in Switzerland over 1998–2018. This data is used to \n reconstruct the indi…
The Politics of Mapping Religion
This article critically analyses the proliferation and production of what we call “religious maps” in Europe in recent years. Religious maps have emerged as a form of monitoring, describing, and representing spatial processes of (ethno-) religious diversification. Through the comparative empirical analysis of the cases of Barcelona, Hamburg, and Amsterdam, we demonstrate that maps and the knowledge formations they (re)produce have become key tool…
Conscripts of secularism
In the currently resurging contestation about religion and nationalism in the public sphere, secularism has become one of the most intensively contested political concepts. Even staunch advocates concede that across Euroamerica, secularism has in many ways failed to deliver on its promise to guarantee state neutrality and free exercise of religion. However, scholarship critically investigating the effects of secularism is often unclear about what…
The Emergence of a New Human Being
Prozess - Religion - Gott
Alfred North Whitehead bietet in seiner philosophischen Kosmologie einen Deutungsrahmen, mit dem Wirklichkeit primär von ihrer Prozesshaftigkeit begriffen werden kann. Eine solche prozesshafte Konzeption der Wirklichkeit hat folgerichtig auch Auswirkungen darauf, wie Religion und damit zusammenhängend das Gott-Welt-Verhältnis gedacht wird. Der Band möchte einen Beitrag zu einer systematischen Rekonstruktion von Whiteheads Religionstheorie und -ph…
State, space and secularism
Over the last decade, cities have become key sites of investigations into the politics of religious diversity. However, the vibrant scholarship on governing urban religion frequently suffers from conceptually thin understandings of the debate's key terms. This contribution critically engages with the conceptual underpinnings of this scholarship by discussing the interdependence of the dimensions of state, space and secularism. Regarding the state…
Six Months Follow-Up of Patients with Invasive Mechanical Ventilation Due to Covid-19 Related ARDS
Although patients who recovered from acute coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may have prolonged disabilities, follow-up data of those who have survived COVID-19 related acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is still very scarce. Therefore, COVID-19-ARDS survivors requiring invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) were followed six months after discharge. Pulmonary function tests (PFTs), 6-min walk test (6MWT) and echocardiography were perform…
It is in your face—Alexithymia impairs facial mimicry
Alexithymia is characterized by a reduced ability to identify and differentiate emotional aspects of social interaction. In this study we investigated, for the first time, whether alexithymia impairs facial mimicry in response to dynamic naturalistic facial affect expressions. Potential volunteers were recruited by means of an online survey ( N = 3503). Based on their Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 sum-score (TAS-20) probands were assigned to an al…
Islam and space in Europe
This introduction to the Special Issue “Rethinking Islam and Space in Europe” advocates for an analytical turn in the study of Islam in Europe by using space as a central conceptual lens. While spatial approaches are gaining traction in the study of religion, migration, ethnicity, and race, we argue that the critical potential of spatial approaches remains largely unexplored. This paper offers a threefold contribution. First, we show how combinin…
Secularisation theory and its discontents
Secularisation theory has been a central element of research and teaching in sociology since the middle of the twentieth century. This article discusses the current state of the art in secularisation research through the perspectives of decolonial theory, global sociology, feminist theory and the experiences of minority religions. Responding to Jörg Stolz, the article argues that current secularisation research suffers from conceptual shortcoming…
Reconsidering the spatiality of religion and the state
Interactions between religious groups and state actors in cities across Europe are increasingly marked by complex relations that transcend the limitations usually associated with ‘local’ context, religion, or politics. However, scholars often fail to adequately conceptualise the multiple connections between religion and the state across various spatial dimensions. This contribution addresses this lacuna by introducing a relational approach to und…
Constructing cultural borders
The recent migration of refugees from Muslim majority countries to Central Europe has prompted an almost unprecedented dynamic in the British and German public sphere and political culture. However, there exists a lack of understanding how the “refugee crisis” and Islam are linked to each other in public discourse. This paper addresses this lacuna by seeking to answer the question how the current refugee situation has been interpreted with regard…
Destabilizing Religion, Secularism, and the State
While over a long time the dominant trend in academia assumed the emergence and development of the state to be a process of secularization, current political developments around the globe have given rise to a renewed scholarly interest into, what has been called, the “resurgence of religion”. Interpretations of the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen as “sectarian” struggles abound in public discourse. The fate of Yezidis in Iraq and Rohingya in Myanm…
Reconsidering the spatiality of religion and the state
Interactions between religious groups and state actors in cities across Europe are increasingly marked by complex relations that transcend the limitations usually associated with ‘local’ context, religion, or politics. However, scholars often fail to adequately conceptualise the multiple connections between religion and the state across various spatial dimensions. This contribution addresses this lacuna by introducing a relational approach to und…
Secularisation theory and its discontents
Secularisation theory has been a central element of research and teaching in sociology since the middle of the twentieth century. This article discusses the current state of the art in secularisation research through the perspectives of decolonial theory, global sociology, feminist theory and the experiences of minority religions. Responding to Jörg Stolz, the article argues that current secularisation research suffers from conceptual shortcoming…
The rise of the BRICS in Africa
Additional informationNotes on contributorsTobias MüllerTobias Müller (BA, University of Munich) is an MPhil candidate in International Relations and Politics at Queens' College, University of Cambridge. His research interests include critical political theory, the politics of North Africa and the Middle East, as well as the politics of secularism and religion. Email: [email protected]
Labor market integration, local conditions and inequalities
The paper examines the patterns of economic integration of refugees in Switzerland, a country with a long tradition of hosting refugees, a top-receiving host in Europe, and a prominent example of a multicultural society. It relies on a unique longitudinal dataset consisting of administrative records and social security data for the universe of refugees in Switzerland over 1998–2018. This data is used to reconstruct the individual-level trajectori…
Islam and space in Europe
This introduction to the Special Issue “Rethinking Islam and Space in Europe” advocates for an analytical turn in the study of Islam in Europe by using space as a central conceptual lens. While spatial approaches are gaining traction in the study of religion, migration, ethnicity, and race, we argue that the critical potential of spatial approaches remains largely unexplored. This paper offers a threefold contribution. First, we show how combinin…
Engaging “Moderates” Against “Extremists” in German Politics on Islam
Extremist-jihadist terrorism has been propelled to the top of the political agenda in Germany. After the July 2016 axe-attack in a train and the suicide bombing in the Bavarian town of Ansbach, a rejected asylum seeker steered a truck into a crowd of people visiting the Berlin Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz on December 19th, killing 12 and injuring 56 people. These events intensified the political debate on how to deal with radicalization a…
Political theories of climate temporality
The politics of climate change is also a politics of conflicting temporalities. However, we know little about how conceptualizations of climate and time shape political contestations on the ground. Similarly, we lack empirically grounded reflections on how different climate temporalities relate to each other and how they are shaped by histories of colonialism. This article addresses these gaps by developing an analytical framework of climate temp…
Conscripts of secularism
In the currently resurging contestation about religion and nationalism in the public sphere, secularism has become one of the most intensively contested political concepts. Even staunch advocates concede that across Euroamerica, secularism has in many ways failed to deliver on its promise to guarantee state neutrality and free exercise of religion. However, scholarship critically investigating the effects of secularism is often unclear about what…
Migration
This 1999 volume takes a critical look at the current divide over immigration policies. It hopes to shed light on the debate by bringing together papers that investigate the link between trade and factor mobility, particularly labour migration, from theoretical and empirical perspectives. It examines the substitutability between trade and migration, the impact of regional integration on the location of economic activity, the role of public goods …
Subgroups of Refusers in a Disability Prevention Trial in Older Adults
Objectives. This study explored differences between refusers and participants in a longitudinal study with extensive baseline and follow-up information. Methods. Results of a trial comparing 791 participants and 401 community-residing older adults who refused to participate in a study concerning preventive home visits were examined. Information was collected from interviews, insurance records, and government files. Results. Despite similarities i…
Entfremdung. Zur Aktualität eines Sozialphilosophischen Problems
Ein Universum voller 'Geistestaub'?
Die Probleme der reduktiv-physikalistischen Ansätze in der Geist-Gehirn-Debatte führten zu einer Renaissance von Ansätzen, die man als nicht-reduktive Theorien bezeichnen kann. Darunter auch der sogenannte Panpsychismus, der in jüngster Vergangenheit einige prominente Fürsprecher gewinnen konnte. Zwar gibt es innerhalb des Panpsychismus verschiedene Strömungen, gemeinsam ist diesen Positionen, dass sie Vorstufen von Erfahrungsfähigkeit für alle E…
Ein Universum voller ‚Geiststaub’
The rise of the BRICS in Africa
Additional informationNotes on contributorsTobias MüllerTobias Müller (BA, University of Munich) is an MPhil candidate in International Relations and Politics at Queens' College, University of Cambridge. His research interests include critical political theory, the politics of North Africa and the Middle East, as well as the politics of secularism and religion. Email: [email protected]
Economics
Additional informationNotes on contributorsTobias MüllerTobias Müller (MPhil, University of Cambridge) is a visiting lecturer at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science at the University of Munich. His research interests include critical political theory and the politics of secularism and religion. Email: [email protected]
Europe entrapped, by Claus Offe
Since his early academic publications about the university system and democracy more than 50 years ago, Claus Offe has become an eminent figure in critical theory and critical policy studies. In Eu...
Engaging “Moderates” Against “Extremists” in German Politics on Islam
Extremist-jihadist terrorism has been propelled to the top of the political agenda in Germany. After the July 2016 axe-attack in a train and the suicide bombing in the Bavarian town of Ansbach, a rejected asylum seeker steered a truck into a crowd of people visiting the Berlin Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz on December 19th, killing 12 and injuring 56 people. These events intensified the political debate on how to deal with radicalization a…
Constructing cultural borders
The recent migration of refugees from Muslim majority countries to Central Europe has prompted an almost unprecedented dynamic in the British and German public sphere and political culture. However, there exists a lack of understanding how the “refugee crisis” and Islam are linked to each other in public discourse. This paper addresses this lacuna by seeking to answer the question how the current refugee situation has been interpreted with regard…
Destabilizing Religion, Secularism, and the State
While over a long time the dominant trend in academia assumed the emergence and development of the state to be a process of secularization, current political developments around the globe have given rise to a renewed scholarly interest into, what has been called, the “resurgence of religion”. Interpretations of the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen as “sectarian” struggles abound in public discourse. The fate of Yezidis in Iraq and Rohingya in Myanm…
Reconsidering the spatiality of religion and the state
Interactions between religious groups and state actors in cities across Europe are increasingly marked by complex relations that transcend the limitations usually associated with ‘local’ context, religion, or politics. However, scholars often fail to adequately conceptualise the multiple connections between religion and the state across various spatial dimensions. This contribution addresses this lacuna by introducing a relational approach to und…
Secularisation theory and its discontents
Secularisation theory has been a central element of research and teaching in sociology since the middle of the twentieth century. This article discusses the current state of the art in secularisation research through the perspectives of decolonial theory, global sociology, feminist theory and the experiences of minority religions. Responding to Jörg Stolz, the article argues that current secularisation research suffers from conceptual shortcoming…
Prozess - Religion - Gott
Alfred North Whitehead bietet in seiner philosophischen Kosmologie einen Deutungsrahmen, mit dem Wirklichkeit primär von ihrer Prozesshaftigkeit begriffen werden kann. Eine solche prozesshafte Konzeption der Wirklichkeit hat folgerichtig auch Auswirkungen darauf, wie Religion und damit zusammenhängend das Gott-Welt-Verhältnis gedacht wird. Der Band möchte einen Beitrag zu einer systematischen Rekonstruktion von Whiteheads Religionstheorie und -ph…
State, space and secularism
Over the last decade, cities have become key sites of investigations into the politics of religious diversity. However, the vibrant scholarship on governing urban religion frequently suffers from conceptually thin understandings of the debate's key terms. This contribution critically engages with the conceptual underpinnings of this scholarship by discussing the interdependence of the dimensions of state, space and secularism. Regarding the state…
Six Months Follow-Up of Patients with Invasive Mechanical Ventilation Due to Covid-19 Related ARDS
Although patients who recovered from acute coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may have prolonged disabilities, follow-up data of those who have survived COVID-19 related acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is still very scarce. Therefore, COVID-19-ARDS survivors requiring invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) were followed six months after discharge. Pulmonary function tests (PFTs), 6-min walk test (6MWT) and echocardiography were perform…
It is in your face—Alexithymia impairs facial mimicry
Alexithymia is characterized by a reduced ability to identify and differentiate emotional aspects of social interaction. In this study we investigated, for the first time, whether alexithymia impairs facial mimicry in response to dynamic naturalistic facial affect expressions. Potential volunteers were recruited by means of an online survey ( N = 3503). Based on their Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 sum-score (TAS-20) probands were assigned to an al…
Islam and space in Europe
This introduction to the Special Issue “Rethinking Islam and Space in Europe” advocates for an analytical turn in the study of Islam in Europe by using space as a central conceptual lens. While spatial approaches are gaining traction in the study of religion, migration, ethnicity, and race, we argue that the critical potential of spatial approaches remains largely unexplored. This paper offers a threefold contribution. First, we show how combinin…
Labor Market Integration, Local Conditions and Inequalities
The paper examines the patterns of economic integration \n of refugees in Switzerland, a country with a long tradition \n of hosting refugees, a top-receiving host in Europe, and a \n prominent example of a multicultural society. It relies on \n a unique longitudinal dataset consisting of administrative \n records and social security data for the universe of refu- \n gees in Switzerland over 1998–2018. This data is used to \n reconstruct the indi…
The Politics of Mapping Religion
This article critically analyses the proliferation and production of what we call “religious maps” in Europe in recent years. Religious maps have emerged as a form of monitoring, describing, and representing spatial processes of (ethno-) religious diversification. Through the comparative empirical analysis of the cases of Barcelona, Hamburg, and Amsterdam, we demonstrate that maps and the knowledge formations they (re)produce have become key tool…
Conscripts of secularism
In the currently resurging contestation about religion and nationalism in the public sphere, secularism has become one of the most intensively contested political concepts. Even staunch advocates concede that across Euroamerica, secularism has in many ways failed to deliver on its promise to guarantee state neutrality and free exercise of religion. However, scholarship critically investigating the effects of secularism is often unclear about what…
The Emergence of a New Human Being
Labor market integration, local conditions and inequalities
The paper examines the patterns of economic integration of refugees in Switzerland, a country with a long tradition of hosting refugees, a top-receiving host in Europe, and a prominent example of a multicultural society. It relies on a unique longitudinal dataset consisting of administrative records and social security data for the universe of refugees in Switzerland over 1998–2018. This data is used to reconstruct the individual-level trajectori…
"Patriarchal "Love School
Many Pentecostal churches founded in the Global South are now rapidly growing in European cities. Although research is catching up with this development, we know little about how these processes affect gendered and racialized practices regarding sexualities, bodies, and masculinities in former colonial metropolises shaped by neoliberal capitalism. This article addresses this gap by interrogating the transnational movement of Pentecostal masculini…
Resurgent Religion, Resurgent Patriarchy? Strictly Observant Religion, Gender, and the State
A triple transformation is shaping societies around the world: the rise of strictly observant religion, the backlash against gender equality, and the growing influence of neoliberalism and authoritarianism in state affairs. While each of these phenomena has been intensively studied by social scientists, we know very little about their overlapping confluence. This introduction to the Special Issue "Strictly Observant Religion, Gender and the State…
Politics (18 works) · Political science (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Secularism (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (7 works) · Social science (6 works)