'Autumn
School': The
Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD)
University
of Augsburg, September 14.-16., 2017
Organisers: Prof. Dr. Reiner Keller, Dr. Saša
Bosančić, MA Matthias Roche
Please visit www.diskurswissenschaft.de for
up-to-date information and details concerning registration, venues, etc.
Discourse Studies today cover a large
field of approaches across the social sciences, ranging from work inspired by
Foucault to Critical Discourse Analysis and through to hegemonic stability theory,
corpus linguistics, and on to more interpretive approaches. The present workshop
will introduce participants to the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse
(SKAD). SKAD draws from Berger & Luckmann's sociology of knowledge, the
interpretative paradigm in pragmatist sociology, and core Foucaultian concepts in
the analysis of regimes of power/knowledge. In doing so, SKAD re-directs
discourse research towards Foucaultian research interests about questions of
social relationships of knowledge & knowing and politics of knowledge &
knowing. Concerning itself with ‘ways of doing’, it uses elements of qualitative
research design (like theoretical sampling, sequential analysis, analysis by
contrast cases, category building, discourse ethnography) and interpretative
analytics.
Since it first appeared in the late
1990s, the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) has experienced
considerable popularity in discourse research in Germany and several other
countries. Today, it informs a large amount of discourse research and publications
in the field of discourse studies. Workshops introducing theory, methodology
and methods of SKAD research have been established in Germany for more than a
decade now. Workshops in French and English have followed suit in the last few
years (e.g., in the United States, Switzerland, Austria, France, Denmark,
Belgium, United Kingdom, Romania).
The present workshop builds on the
emerging interest in SKAD in international contexts and will be the starting
event for an annually recurring series of SKAD workshops in English at the University
of Augsburg. SKAD workshops address core issues of the concrete doing and practice
of discourse research. It addresses colleagues from the Social Sciences and the
Humanities who are interested in learning about SKAD and its particular profile
within the field of discourse studies as well as in doing SKAD research/using
SKAD methodologies in their own concrete work in the context of discourse
research.
The two-day workshop will discuss the following topics:
- SKAD: what is at stake when using SKAD in discourse research?
- SKAD theory: discourses - and how to conceptualize them
- Research questions and conceptual tools in SKAD
- The methodology of interpretative analytics
- Getting into the field: methods of data collection and analyzing data
- Getting out of the field: from data analysis to comprehensive diagnostics
During the workshop, small data work sessions will be included, that is participants will work together on concrete data. Furthermore, participants might present and have discussed their own research project and data.
References:
Keller, R.: The Sociology of Knowledge Approach
to Discourse (SKAD), in: Human Studies 2011, 34 (1) S.43-65
Keller, R.: Entering Discourses: A New Agenda for
Qualitative Research and Sociology of Knowledge. In: Qualitative Sociology
Review 2012, Vol. VIII Issue 2, S.46-55
Keller, R.: Doing Discourse Research. An
Introduction for the Social Sciences. London: Sage 2013]
Keller, R.: Comparing Discourse Between Cultures.
A Discursive Approach to Movement Knowledge. In: Baumgarten, B., Daphi, P.,
Ulrich, P. (Hrsg.) (2014) Conceptualizing Culture in Social Movement Research.
Hampshire: Palgrave, p. 113-139 (with P. Ullrich).
Keller, R./Hornidge, A./Schünemann, W. (Ed.):
Doing SKAD research. London: Routledge 2018 (in prep.)
Keller, R.: The Sociology of Knowledge Approach
to Discourse. A Research Agenda. New York: Springer 2018 (translated from the
German, in prep).
The venue: University
of Augsburg
The University
of Augsburg is located in the city of
Augsburg in southern Germany, which is 60 km/40 miles from the Bavarian capital
of Munich and can be easily reached by train or by flight (via Munich (MUC)
airport). Hotel rooms are available from 30-80 Euro per day. The workshop organizers
will provide more information after registration.
The workshop: two full
days of discourse analysis
·
The workshop starts on September 14/2017 at 2:30 p.m.
and ends on September 16/2017 at 1:00 p.m.
·
The number of participants is limited to 25 people
max. Depending on the number of participants who wish to present their own
projects, the organizers may need to select which individual cases will be
discussed in the analysis sessions.
·
Additional programme: open space time slots for questions and discussion,
dinner
·
Venue: University of
Augsburg Campus; for more information see www.diskurswissenschaft.de , Travel and Hotel Information.
Workshop fee
The workshop fee is 50.00 Euro per person (includes refreshments
during the workshop). This fee does not cover travel, accommodation, or meals,
which are the responsibility of each individual participant.
Registration
Please register by
e-mail with Saša Bosančić (sasa.bosancic@phil.uni-augsburg.de). This should include
the following elements:
- Last name, first name, e-mail
- Address at your institution (or private address)
- Current position
- If applicable: your current research project in discourse analysis and whether or not you are interested in presenting and discussing your own research/data at the workshop.
You will receive a preliminary
e-mail confirmation including bank account details for payment of the workshop
fee (bank-to-bank transfer only; no credit cards, cheques, or cash can be
accepted). Registration is approved only if payment is received within four weeks
after the initial confirmation. You will receive final confirmation upon
receipt of the fee. Withdrawing from the workshop is possible until eight weeks
before the event; cancellations after this time will not be refunded. There
will be a waiting list in case the event is fully booked.
Preliminary Workshop Program
September 14/2017
2.30 pm Welcome
from the organizers
The ‘why?’ of SKAD
SKAD theory and
methodology
7.30 pm Dinner
September 15/2017
9 am Research questions & designs
10.30 am Break
11 am Research methods and data
analysis
1 pm Lunch
2.30 pm Data
analysis session
5.30 pm Break
6 pm Open
discussion session
7.30 pm Dinner
September 16/2017
9 am Discussion
of participants’ projects
11.30 am Open
discussion session
1 pm End of workshop
Additional activities (optional): tour of the city,
dinner, Augsburg pub crawl.
The Organizers
Prof. Dr. Reiner
Keller is Professor
of Sociology at the University of Augsburg; co-director of the Centre for
Transnational Studies and member of the executive board of the German Sociological
Association (DGS). From 2011 to 2016 he headed the sociology of knowledge division
of the DGS. He started working on and with SKAD in the 1990s. He has
longstanding experiences in discourse workshops as well as a long list of
publications in discourse research.
His work & research
interests include social science discourse research, sociology of knowledge and
culture, qualitative methods, and analysis of contemporary societies. He has a
longstanding experience in conducting and directing collaborative research
projects. Keller was a member of the Munich Centre for Reflexive Modernization
from 1999 to 2010 and has just finished co-directing a comparative research on
French and German history of sociological knowledge production since the 1960s,
funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Another recent DFG-funded
three-year project on politics of knowledge in the field of hydraulic
fracturing is set to begin in July of 2017.
Dr. Saša
Bosančić is
Assistant Professor at the University
of Augsburg and an editor of the Journal
for Discourse Studies. Besides his work in the field of discourse studies with
numerous workshops and lectures on SKAD, his research
interests include the theory, methodology and methods of subjectivation
analysis.
Matthias Roche, M.A. is a research assistant in sociology at the
University of Augsburg. His primary research interests are centered around
qualitative research methodology, discourse studies, and transnationalization. In
addition to considerable experience in teaching discourse theory and especially
SKAD, he has also translated several German-language texts on SKAD into
English.
General
conditions
1.
Participants who have received preliminary
confirmation must pay all fees associated with workshop participation within four
weeks after initial confirmation. Should payment not be received at this time, their
right to participate is forfeit.
2.
Paying the appropriate fee within the allocated
timeframe grants participants access to a workshop. Participants can transfer
their right to participate to another person with the organizers’ permission.
3.
Participants may withdraw from workshops up to 8
weeks before the event. Participants will receive a refund in this case. Fees
cannot be refunded if a participant withdraws after this time.
4.
In case that the workshop must be cancelled by
the organizers due to force majeure, all fees will be refunded.
5.
The organizers take no responsibility for damage
to or loss of electronic and other equipment.