Autumn School ›The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse‹ (SKAD)

 

Autumn School

›The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse‹

(SKAD)

 

University of Augsburg (Germany), September 22-24, 2022

Organisers: 

Prof. Dr. Reiner Keller (University of Augsburg) and 

Prof. Dr. Wolf Schünemann (University of Hildesheim)

 

Please visit www.diskurswissenschaft.de for up-to-date information and details concerning registration, venues, etc. 

 

Following the success of the last three international workshops with participants from different countries spanning from Indonesia to Brazil, from Japan to the Neth-erlands, from Scotland to Poland and from Canada to Russia, there will be a fourth introductory workshop in English on the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) at the University of Augsburg in September 2022. The organiser invites novice as well as experienced academics from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to sociology, ethnology, political science, cultural studies, linguistics, education, and other humanities, to explore the potential of this ap-proach to studying discourses in the context of their own projects and research. Please note that in case of overbooking the autumn school gives priority to partic-ipants without a strong German language background.

Discourse studies today cover a large field of approaches across the social sci-ences, ranging from work inspired by Foucault to Critical Discourse Analysis and through to hegemonic stability theory, corpus linguistics, and on to more interpre-tive approaches. The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse draws from Berger & Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge, the interpretive paradigm in prag-matist sociology, and core Foucauldian concepts in the analysis of regimes of power/knowledge, discourses & dispositifs. In doing so, SKAD re-directs discourse research towards Foucauldian research interests about questions of social relation-ships of knowledge & knowing and politics of knowledge & knowing. Doing dis-course research refers, according to SKAD, to elements of qualitative research designs (like theoretical sampling, sequential analysis, analysis by contrasting cases, category building, discourse ethnography) and interpretive analytics.

Since the late 1990s, the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) has been established in discourse & dispositif research in Germany and many other countries. Today, it informs a large amount of discourse & dispositif orientated research projects and publications across fields and disciplines. Workshops intro-ducing theory, methodology, and methods of SKAD research have been estab-lished in Germany for more than 20 years. Workshops in French and English have followed suit in the last years (e.g., in the United States, Switzerland, Austria, France, Denmark, Belgium, United Kingdom, Romania).

The Augsburg autumn school builds on the broad international interest in SKAD and introduces core issues of the concrete doing and practice of SKAD based dis-course research. It addresses colleagues from the Social Sciences and the broad range of the Humanities who are interested in learning about SKAD and its profile within the field of discourse studies as well as in doing SKAD research/using SKAD methodologies in their own discourse-oriented research.

 

The workshop will discuss the following topics:

•  What is at stake when using SKAD in discourse research?
•   SKAD theory: discourses & dispositifs – and how to conceptualise them
•   Research questions and conceptual tools in SKAD  
•   The methodology of interpretive analytics                                                       
•   Getting into the field: methods of data collection and analysing data              
•   Getting out of the field: from data analysis to comprehensive diagnostics
•   Digital data and analysis in SKAD based discourse research                              
•   Special interest sessions (optional): SKAD applications in sociology and the humanities & SKAD application in political science

Special interest session A: sociology & humanities (Reiner Keller)

The session discusses specific questions on SKAD based discourse and dispositif research (for example, the analysis of visualisations, materiality, the ethnography of dispositifs) and allows for an in-depth discussion of SKAD applications in various disciplines (subject to selection if necessary). Participants are invited to discuss SKAD in relation to their own research interests and work.

Special interest session B: political science (Wolf Schünemann)

Discourse-oriented approaches have gained relevance in political research. This in-depth section of the SKAD autumn school will provide space to discuss basic questions and approaches of SKAD based political research. It will cover all parts of the research process: from data collection via data management and analysis to the integration and presentation of results. All steps and phases will be illus-trated using examples from empirical research (previous SKAD research as well as participants’ presentations).

 

The workshop includes data analysis sessions. Furthermore, participants are in-vited to present their individual research project for group discussion.

The University of Augsburg is located in the city of Augsburg in southern Germany, which is 60 km/40 miles from the Bavarian capital Munich and can be easily reached by train or by flight via Munich (MUC) airport. Hotel rooms are available from 40-90 Euro per day. The workshop organisers will provide more information after registration.

 

The workshop

• The workshop starts on September 22/2022 at 4 pm and ends on September 24/2022 at 6 pm.

• The number of participants is limited to 25 people max. Depending on the number of participants who wish to present their work, the organisers may need to select amongst the individual projects for discussion.

• Special interest sessions “sociology & humanities” / “political science”

• Additional program: open space time slots for questions and discussion, dinner, pubcrawl

• Venue: University of Augsburg Campus; for more information see www.diskurswissenschaft.de , “Travel and Hotel Information”.

 

Workshop fee

The workshop fee is 70 Euro per person (includes refreshments during the work-shop). This fee does not cover travel, accommodation, or meals, which are the responsibility of each individual participant. A reduced fee (35 Euros) might apply for participants arriving from Non-European ‘low income’ countries without insti-tutional coverage of participation.

 

Registration

Please register by e-mail at skad@phil.uni-augsburg.de. This should include the following elements:

•  Last name, first name, e-mail
  
•  Private address or address at your institution
•  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.
•  Choice of special interest (A: sociology & humanities / B: political science) 

 

After your registration you will receive a preliminary confirmation. We will also send you an invoice for the participation fee to be paid. The registration becomes fully effective when the participation fee has been received on our booking account.

Withdrawing from the workshop is possible until four weeks before the event; can-cellations after this time will not be refunded. There will be a waiting list in case the event is fully booked.

Please note that depending on the Corona situation in September 2022, particu-lar university campus regulations (such as proof of vaccinations, obligatory mask wearing) might apply.

 

 

Preliminary Workshop Program

 

Thursday (22/9/2022)

 

4.00 pm	Registration
4.30 pm	Welcome from the organisers + Introduction of the participants
	The Arena of Discourse Studies
	SKAD: What’s it all about?
7.00 pm	Welcome reception with food & drinks
Friday (23/9/2022)
9.00 am	SKAD: Theory & Methodology
10.45 am	Break
11.00 am	SKAD: Research process and methods
12.30 am	Lunch (not included)
1.45 pm	SKAD goes digital
3.15 pm	Break
3.30 pm	Data analysis sessions I & II (parallel sessions)
5.30 pm	Break
5.40 pm	Open Space
6.15 pm	---End of Day 2---
7.00 pm	Dinner (not included)
Saturday (24/9/2022)
9.00 am	Data analysis sessions I & II (parallel sessions)
11.00 am	Break
11.15 am	Discussion of participants projects
12.30 am	Lunch (not included)
1.45 pm	Special interest sessions A (sociology & humanities) or B (political
	science) (including discussion of participants projects)
3.00 pm	Break
3.15 pm	Special interest sessions A (sociology & humanities) or B (political
	science) (including discussion of participants projects)
5.00 pm	Break
5.20 pm	Open Discussion
6.00 pm	---End of Workshop---
7.00 pm	Dinner & optional pubcrawl (not included)

 

 

The Organisers

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 inter-ests include social science discourse research, sociology of knowledge and culture, qualitative methods, and analysis of contemporary societies. He has a longstand-ing 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 Ger-man Research Foundation (DFG). Current projects include DFG-funded research on politics of knowledge and knowing in the field of hydraulic fracturing (2017-2021), energy transition (2018-2022) and regulatory conflicts surrounding prosti-tution (2018-2022), respectively. See http://www.uni-augsburg.de/keller

 

Prof. Dr. Wolf Schünemann is a political scientist, he currently holds a position as assistant professor for Internet and Politics at Hildesheim University. He is the founder and leader of the Data Science Lab and a member of the directorate of the Center for Digital Change at Hildesheim University. His research interests cover various questions concerning the governance of digitalisation, including data pro-tection, AI regulation or the fight against hate speech and disinformation. In recent works, he has presented a theoretical explanation for re-nationalisation in online content control and developed measurement techniques for transnational commu-nication flows. Since his doctoral studies, Wolf has applied SKAD in a successive number of studies to different research objects in the realm of politics. In an at-tempt to drive methodological development further, he combines SKAD with quan-titative discourse analysis as well as network analytical methods for the empirical inquiry into online discourse and communication, using large amounts of data. See https://www.uni-hildesheim.de/fb1/institute/institut-fuer-sozialwissenschaf-ten/politikwissenschaft/mitglieder/professorinnen-und-professoren/poli-tikschuenemann/

 

 

References

 

Keller, R. (2011): The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD). In: Human Studies, 34 (1), pp. 43-65.

 

Keller, R. (2012): Entering Discourses: A New Agenda for Qualitative Research and Soci-

ology of Knowledge. In: Qualitative Sociology Review, Vol. VIII Issue 2, pp. 46-55.

 

Keller, R. (2013): Doing Discourse Research. An Introduction for the Social Sciences. London: Sage.

 

Keller, R. (2014): Comparing Discourse Between Cultures. A Discursive Approach to Move-ment Knowledge. In: Baumgarten, B., Daphi, P., Ulrich, P. (Eds.): Conceptualizing Culture in Social Movement Research. Hampshire: Palgrave, pp. 113-139 (with P. Ullrich).

 

Keller, R./Hornidge, A./Schünemann, W. (Eds.) (2019): The Sociology of Knowledge Ap-proach to Discourse. Investigating the Politics of Knowledge and Meaning-Making. London: Routledge.

 

Keller, R. (2023): The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse. A Research Agenda. New York: Springer (translated from the 3rd German edition, in prep).

 

Focus on political science:

 

Schünemann, W. (2017). Almost the same stories: Narrative patterns in EU treaty refer-endums. National Identities, 19(2), pp. 199-214.

 

Wu, A.X. (2012). Hail the independent thinker: The emergence of public debate culture on the Chinese Internet. International Journal of Communication, 6, pp. 2220-2244.

 

 

General conditions for participation

 

1. Participants who have received preliminary confirmation must pay all fees as-sociated with workshop participation within four weeks after initial confirma-tion. 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 may transfer their right to participate to another person with the organisers’ permission.
3. Participants may withdraw from workshops up to 4 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 organisers due to force majeure, all fees will be refunded.
   
5. The organisers take no responsibility for damage to or loss of electronic and other equipment.
6. Exceptions for international applicants: Non-EU residents may ask to pay their fees in cash upon commencement of the workshop if the costs incurred by in-ternational money transfers are unreasonably high. Please indicate that you require this exception within 10 working days of receiving your preliminary con-firmation. The organisers may require further information or guarantees to be provided for participants to qualify. The decision to grant this exception lies solely with the organisers.
7.  Please note that depending on the Corona situation in September 2022, partic-ular university campus regulations (such as proof of vaccinations, obligatory mask wearing) might apply.