INVESTIGATING CULTURES - STYLES OF INQUIRY: PROJECT DESCRIPTION
By Ton Otto

 
Organiser responsible

Ton Otto, Department of Ethnography and Social Anthropology
University of Aarhus, Denmark. E-mail: ton.otto@hum.au.dk
Homepage: http://www.hum.au.dk/etno/etnoto/
Tel.: +45-89424664

 
Co-organisers

Jørgen Østergaard Andersen (Centre for Cultural Research), Thorsten Borring Olesen (Department of History), Uffe Østergård (Centre for European Cultural Studies)

 
Summary description

The aim of this project is to reflect on changes in the humanistic disciplines from the perspective of research practices. In particular we want to present and compare different approaches, which in one way or another refer to or imply a concept of culture. We will cover a wide range of research strategies and draw on developments in a number of humanistic disciplines, in particular anthropology, history, and cultural studies. The project will be conducted as a series of one-day workshops focusing on the work of a leading scholar.

 
Description

Theoretical discussions within the humanities and social sciences often focus on ontological premises about the nature of social practice and about the place of culture and communication in social life. It is assumed that appropriate methods logically derive from specific theories and research problems. In the planned series of workshops we would like to turn this approach around by looking primarily at styles of inquiry in order to reflect on explicit and implicit assumptions that inform various approaches to social and cultural phenomena. We have two main reasons for this.

In the first place we would like to argue that there is not such a direct and logical relationship between theory and method as is generally assumed. There are reasons to believe that research practices have a development of their own, which is of course influenced by changing theoretical paradigms but which cannot be reduced to such theoretical shifts. Focusing more on research practices and styles of inquiry could perhaps throw an interesting new light on developments within the humanities and on the potential for further innovation.

Our second reason for focusing on processes of investigation is to create an alternative platform for discussing and comparing theories, in particular concerning culture. By analysing the various ways in which arguments about reality are supported by empirical research, we hope to create a vantage point from which to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different theoretical approaches to culture and society.

Our project can be seen as part of a recent tendency within the humanities to reflect more explicitly on the methodological, epistemological and political aspects of research. Inspired by the postmodern intervention there is not only a heightened awareness of the problems of presentation in ethnographic and historic narratives, but there is also an increased sensitivity towards the constructivist, inter-subjective, and political aspects of the research process itself. There is a fast growing body of literature focusing on aspects of methodology and qualitative research techniques: interviewing, note-taking, source criticism, discourse and narrative analysis. In the series of workshops we aim to cover a wide range of methodological-theoretical fields, including semiotics, phenomenology, interpretative approach, cognitive anthropology, network analysis, and post-modern culture critique.

 
Format of the project

The one-day workshops will follow a common pattern, namely:

09.15-11.00: lecture by guest scholar plus discussion
11.30-12.30: seminar on the basis of written material from the guest scholar
14.00-15.00: interview with guest scholar conducted by PhD-student and/or specialist in the field
15.00-16.00: consultation for PhD-students by guest scholar

The morning programme (9.15-12.30) is open for everyone who is interested. Prior registration is requested (especially for the workshop part). The series of workshops will also function as part of the common PhD programme 'Historical, anthropological and culture-historical research' presented jointly by the Historical Institute, the Department of Ethnography and Social Anthropology, and the Centre for European Cultural Studies.

The workshops are planned to take place every Wednesday in even weeks:
8 workshops in the spring of 2000 (9^th February – 31^st May);
6 workshops in the autumn of 2000 (6^th September – 29^th November) (excluding 18^th October)
Place: Centre for Cultural Research

 
Provisional programme

1.    February 9	Interviewing from a postmodern perspective Steinar Kvale, Aarhus.
2.    February 23	Phenomenological approaches Bruce Kapferer, London/Bergen
3.    March 8	Actor-Network approaches Bruno Latour, Paris
4.    March 22	The politicisation of 'culture', research and policy Susan Wright, Birmingham
5.    April 7	Post-modern challenges to history; the individual and the collective Richard J. Evans, Cambridge
6.    May 3	The subaltern studies approach to historical and anthropological research Ranajit Guha, Vienna
7.    May 17	Nature, mind, and culture: an ecological approach Tim Ingold, Aberdeen
8.    May 31	Cognitive approaches to culture Jürg Wassmann, Heidelberg
9.    September 6	Ethnography between multi-sited field experience and writing George Marcus, Houston
10.   September 20	Naturalism in ethnographic fieldwork and analysis Fredrik Barth, Oslo
11.   October 4	Semiotics, symbols and metaphors Per Aage Brandt, Aarhus
12.   November 1	Globalisation and the transformation of the subject-sociality-culture relationship Jonathan Friedman, Lund/Paris
13.   November 15	Identity and politics, the case of Europe Ole Wæver, Copenhagen
14.   November 29	Media research and cultural analysis Niels Ole Finnemann, Aarhus