Call for Papers - The Complex Discursivity of Global Futures in the Making

The Complex Discursivity of Global Futures in the Making: Analyzing Transnational Orders of Discourse

Session organized by Reiner Keller at the III. ISA Forum of Sociology, July 10th - 14th, 2016, in Vienna, Austria

Deadline for submission:  September 30th, 2015

Global and transnational civil society, the proliferation of arenas and organizations involved in the definition of ‘world problems’, the burgeoning economic power of the BRIC-states as well as general recognition of a ‘post-colonial constellation’ together constitute a new and challenging reconfiguration of transnational or global orders of discourse. The joint session addresses sociological tools for analyzing the complex discursivity of such sites of discourse, communication, and knowledge production. This complexity is a result of the hybrid constellations of the actors and knowledge claims involved, interconnections of heterogeneous arenas of dialogue and negotiation, diverse cultural rationalities of factuality, evidence, and legitimation, and also of translation between epistemic cultures and languages from around the world.

In order to address these challenges, the session focuses on the reach of sociological tools for analyzing transnational and global discourses as knowledge- making activities which will profoundly shape the future. It intends to strengthen genuinely sociological methodologies of discourse research – a task which, according to sociologist Adele Clarke, is at the center of our discipline today.

The session welcomes contributions which refer to theories, methodologies, and methods of discourse research designed especially for sociological research as well as presentations of empirical research that are related to these questions.


Click here to view the full text of the call.

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Also, Reiner Keller's workshop on SKAD at the 11. ICQI at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (U.S.A.) is coming up next month (May 20 - 23). Read more about this SKAD workshop here.

Discursive Construction of Reality II / Die Diskursive Konstruktion von Wirklichkeit II

Second Augsburg Conference on Discourse Research

Location: University of Augsburg, Germany
Date: March 26, 2015 (begins 2:00 p.m) – March 27, 2015 (ends 5:00 p.m.)
Conference organizers: Reiner Keller, Sasa Bosancic

Registration is free of charge. Please register before March 20th, 2015 by sending an e-mail with your name or the name of participants in your group to: brigitte.ploner@phil.uni-augsburg.de

If you have any further questions, please contact: sasa.bosancic@phil.uni-augsburg.de

Over the last decade, the research programme outlined by the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD) has spread to many disciplines in social science. A common interest in discourse research has resulted in a widely distributed community that prevalently, but not exclusively, uses qualitative research designs to examine forms of 'discursive construction of reality'. Corresponding studies may be found in sociology, but also in neighbouring disciplines such as political science, historical science, educational science, theology, linguistics, and criminology, among many others. This approach to discourse research combines social constructionist and interpretive-pragmatic schools of thought with the theoretical concepts and lines of investigation of discourse in the tradition of Michel Foucault, with the intention of analysing knowledge relations and policies in society. Bearing these core tenets in mind, the original approach has nonetheless been successfully amended, expanded, and occasionally modified to meet the demands of different fields of study and forms of data.

Following the first Augsburg conference on interpretive / sociology of knowledge (SK) discourse research with over 150 participants and 40 contributions from different disciplines in March of 2013, the upcoming conference would like to continue in the spirit of an interdisciplinary discussion about the foundations and applications of SKAD and SK-inspired discourse research, as well as related perspectives.

Plenary Session at JOCAED 2015 (San José, Costa Rica) in April

Update March 6, 2015: due to unforeseen circumstances, Reiner Keller's Plenary Session at JOCAED 2015 has been cancelled.

Plenary Session by Reiner Keller on 

Discourse, power/knowledge and language: How discourse matters

at the

II. CENTRAL AMERICAN SYMPOSIUM ON DISCOURSE STUDIES:

"Societies, politics and discourses”

Universidad de Costa Rica, April 8-10, 2015

From the JOCAED Blog:

From different disciplines and theoretical perspectives, it has been affirmed that the relevance of socialization and, particularly, of the communicative interactions in the formation of subjects and society, and the construction of senses about reality. In this context, the concept of discourse becomes fundamental with its different meanings, given that this is the notion than can encompass those communicative interactions, the construction of common (or social) knowledge, and people’s actions. Independently of the meaning of “discourse” that is used, it is agreed that communicative interactions must be studied considering their semiosis (language, tongue, text, discourse), their sense (meaning), and their context (in the broad sense). Despite the fact that this is a webbed complex of interrelated elements, discourse studies have had a boom in the last twenty years around the world and, particularly, in Latin America. 

For more information and news, go to / subscribe to: http://jocaed2015.blogspot.de/p/plenary-sessions.html

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Actualización (06 de marzo 2015): Debido a circunstancias imprevistas, la conferencia plenaria de Reiner Keller ha sido cancelado.

Conferencia plenaria de Reiner Keller: 

Discourse, power/knowledge and language: How discourse matters

(Discurso, poder/saber, y lengua - discurso: ¿por qué es importante?)
 a las

II JORNADAS CENTROAMERICANAS DE ESTUDIOS DEL DISCURSO:

“Sociedades, política y discursos”

Universidad de Costa Rica, 8-10 de abril de 2015

Desde la página web de JOCAED:

Desde distintas disciplinas y perspectivas teóricas se ha afirmado la relevancia de la socialización y, particularmente, de las interacciones comunicativas en la formación de los sujetos (ciudadanos) y de la sociedad y en la construcción de sentidos sobre la realidad. En este contexto, se vuelve fundamental el concepto discurso con sus diferentes acepciones, por cuanto es la noción que puede abarcar esas interacciones comunicativas, la construcción del conocimiento compartido (o social) y las actuaciones de las personas. Independientemente de la acepción que se utiliza de “discurso”, hay acuerdo en que se deben estudiar las interacciones comunicativas considerando su semiosis (lenguaje, lengua, texto, discurso), su sentido (significado) y su contexto (en el amplio sentido). A pesar de este complejo entramado de elementos interrelacionados, los estudios del discurso han tenido un auge en los últimos veinte años en el mundo y, particularmente, en Latinoamérica.

Informaciones adicional a http://jocaed2015.blogspot.de/p/conferencias-plenarias.html

SKAD Workshop at ICQI 11

Workshop on SKAD at the

Eleventh International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, May 20-23, 2015,

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (U.S.A.)

http://www.icqi.org/

Reiner Keller

Workshop Title: Doing Discourse Research

Discourse Studies today cover a large field across the social sciences, ranging from work inspired by Foucault, Critical Discourse Analysis through Hegemonics Analysis, Corpus Lingustics and more interpretive approaches. The present workshop on “Doing Discourse Research” will introduce participants to the main positions in the heterogeneous field of discourse research (including Foucauldian perspectives, CDA, Hegemonics and the Sociology of Knowledge approach to discourse SKAD). As there is no one best way to discourse research, each of the positions mentioned allows for dealing with particular questions in critical inquiry into discourses. The first part of the workshop therefore discusses the relationship between theoretical groundings, analytical potential and methods of doing discourse research in these diverse approaches. Second, the workshop will present in more detailed ways the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse developed by Reiner Keller. SKAD draws on Berger & Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge, but includes major Foucauldian concepts and research interests. Integrating both re-orientates discourse research towards questions of social relationships of knowledge and politics of knowledge, referring in its concrete ‘ways of doing’ to qualitative research design and interpretative analytics.

Part 1: The arena of discourse studies

• Discourse Research – which approach, what for?

• How to find good questions?

• The analytical process: Deconstruction, reconstruction or co-construction?

• Multiple ways of doing and multiple outcomes

Part 2: How to do it: The example of SKAD

• Looking for discourses and ‘dispositifs’: Texts and beyond

• Strategies for analyzing data

• Getting Lost/Getting Found: From analysis to story telling.

Call for Submissions - Augsburg Conference on Discourse Research, March 2015

The Discursive Construction of Reality II

Interdisciplinary perspectives on a sociology of knowledge approach to discourse research

Location: University of Augsburg, Germany
Date: March 26, 2015 (begins 2:00 p.m) – March 27, 2015 (ends 5:00 p.m.)
Conference organizers: Reiner Keller, Sasa Bosancic

Concept

Over the last decade, the research programme outlined by the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD) has spread to many disciplines in social science. A common interest in discourse research has resulted in a widely distributed community that prevalently, but not exclusively, uses qualitative research designs to examine forms of 'discursive construction of reality'. Corresponding studies may be found in sociology, but also in neighbouring disciplines such as political science, historical science, educational science, theology, linguistics, and criminology, among many others. This approach to discourse research combines social constructionist and interpretive-pragmatic schools of thought with the theoretical concepts and lines of investigation of discourse in the tradition of Michel Foucault, with the intention of analysing knowledge relations and policies in society. Bearing these core tenets in mind, the original approach has nonetheless been successfully amended, expanded, and occasionally modified to meet the demands of different fields of study and forms of data.
Following the first Augsburg conference on interpretive / sociology of knowledge (SK) discourse research with over 150 participants and 40 contributions from different disciplines in March of 2013, the upcoming conference would like to continue in the spirit of an interdisciplinary discussion about the foundations and applications of SKAD and SK-inspired discourse research, as well as related perspectives.

Areas of focus for contributions may include:

• theoretical-methodological explication of the research programme and methodology of SKAD, including the question of how SKAD fits into the current landscape of discourse research or into the specific discussions within the scope of individual disciplines
• concrete methods and ‘modus operandi’ in empirical research contexts, focusing less on the respective object of research but instead on analytical procedures involved in these studies. Especially when going beyond the ‘classic’ text-based or qualitative approaches (including audiovisual, ethnographic, or interview material // quantitative applications), how do we proceed, in practice, when researching discourse?
• the ‘power effects’ of discourses, specifically the relationship between discourses and practices or between discourses and subjects/biographies/identities
• presentation of active or completed empirical discourse and dispositive studies that include a substantial reference to SKAD. A number of different disciplinary perspectives are possible and welcomed. These contributions should show what role SKAD plays in these studies, and how their results are relevant for the ongoing discussion on SKAD.

Please send your submissions to Sasa Bosancic (sasa.bosancic@phil.uni-augsburg.de) in the form of an abstract (max. 2,500 characters).

Deadline for submissions: September 15, 2014