[Interpretationandmethods] Methods Workshop: Narrative, Numbers and Social Change

[Dvora Yanow]

CRESC Methods Workshop: Narrative, Numbers and Social Change

http://www.cresc.ac.uk/events/narrativenumbers.html

1 & 2 November 2007
University of Manchester

As part of our interest in nurturing methodological expertise for the
study of socio-cultural change, we are holding a workshop which explores
how the relationship between quantitative and qualitative methods should
be re-configured to address issues of change. Our point of departure is
that traditional social science methods, which erect strong barriers
between quantitative and qualitative research, are no longer appropriate
in a digital age, and we need to recognize the increasing interplay
between numbers and narrative.


Our interests pick up on the idea that methods are themselves implicated
in socio-cultural change. Rather than being neutral tools which can be
deployed to study change, we focus on how they define their own realms of
being, and how they construct the very objects that they claim to know. We
are interested in how, in an information saturated environment, different
arrays of numbers and narrative are mobilized and constructed - whether in
company accounts, the 'evidence' demanded by government policy, in media
stories, in defining measures and indicators, in graphs, diagrams, maps
and pictures. To explore these configurations, we are interested in the
possibilities of the 'descriptive turn' in allowing a new potential for
quantitative and qualitative methods to be deployed in critical encounters
with these new methods.

Proposed Speakers:

Prof John Law, Lancaster
Prof Nik Rose, LSE
Prof Penny Harvey, CRESC, Manchester
Prof Mike Savage, CRESC, Manchester
Workshop Timetable
Note: This is not the final Timetable

Thursday, 1 November

9:00 - 9:30 Registration and Tea/Coffee

9:30 - 10:15 Keynote 1 Mike Savage (CRESC, Manchester) Numbers, Narratives
and the Visual in the History of Social Science Methods

10:15 - 11:30 Session 1 Panel- The Use of Mixed Methods for Analysing
Culture: THE CULTURAL CAPITAL AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION PROJECT

Elizabeth B.Silva, Tony Bennett, Mike Savage, Alan Warde, David Wright
(CRESC, Manchester and OU)
The use of mixed methods for analysing culture: the Cultural Capital and
Social Exclusion project

11:30 - 11:45 Break

11:45 - 1:15 Session 2 Methods

Farida Vis (CRESC, OU), With a specfic focus on frame analysis, how have
narratives and numbers recently featured within a range of media studies
methods?

Sujatha Sosale (The University of Iowa, USA), An expanation of
Appreciative Inquiry for Media and Social Change

Barbara Demel, Katharina Chudzikowski, Wolfgang Mayrhofer
(Interdisciplinary Unit for Management and Organisational Behaviour
Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, The tails that wag the dogs? How tools of
analysis influence research - reflections based on a culture-comparative
study on careers

1:15 - 2:30 Lunch

2.30 - 4.00 Session 3 Narrative and Numbers I

Chris Bear and Micheal Carrithers (Durham University), Making Anglers: The
rhetoric of quantification in English fishery management

Till Geiger (University of Manchester), The adoption of national income
statistics and the emergence of new narratives of economic change after
1945

Andrew Russell and David Chappel (University of Durham), Tobacco Control -
an over-quantified debate?

4:00 - 4:30 Break

4:30 - 6:00 Keynote 2 Nikolas Rose (LSE) CRESC ANNUAL LECTURE

6:00 - 6:30 Reception

8:00 Dinner

Friday, 2 November

9:30 - 10:15 Keynote 3 Penny Harvey, Digital Visualization : Between
Narrative and Number (CRESC, Manchester)

10:15 - 11:15 Session 4 Narrative, Numbers and Visualization

Tony Bennett (CRESC, Open University), Seeing like a novel

Tim Strangleman (University of Kent), Images and the life and death of an
English factory: Visualising modernity, the organisation and working life

11:15 - 11:30 Break

3.30 - 4.00 Session 5 Narrative and Numbers II

Evelyn S. Ruppert, Trent University (Canada) & CRESC (OU), The Census as
Narrative and Practice of Double Identification

Huub van Baar (University of Amsterdam), Segregated by Numbers? Statistics
on the Roma and the Politics of European Minority Integration

Michael Carrithers (Durham University), Luxurious expansiveness in a
shrinking world: the narrative of experience, governance and prediction in
East German cities

1:00 - 2.00 Lunch

2:00 - 3:30 Session 6 Narrative and Numbers III

Jean Shaoul, Anne Stafford and Pam Stapleton (Manchester Business School),
Effective or selective numbers? Implementing the UK's Private Finance
Initiative

Heike Mensi-Klarbach (Vienna University of Economics and Business
Administration), Diversity Management: are accounting practices able to
evaluate its benefits?

Julie Froud, Sukhdev Johal, Adam Leaver and Karel Williams (CRESC,
Manchester), 'A good story to tell': narrative, numbers and private equity

3:30 - 3:45 Break

3:45 - 4:30 Keynote 4 John Law (Lancaster)

Registration

If you are interested to register for this workshop please fill out the
booking form and send it to the CRESC Office. If you wish to make your
payment with a credit card you also need to fill out a credit card form.

This workshop is free for CRESC members.

Booking fees (incl. lunches): Full - £45, Concessions - £20, Day - £25


Accommodation can be booked through CRESC at the Manchester Business
School, University of Manchester at a rate of £50 for B&B inlcuding VAT
per person per day. Please use the booking form to book your
accommodation.

For more information on how to get to the Manchester Business School
Accomodation please go to http://www.mbs.ac.uk/aboutus/mbs-campus.aspx

Venue Infomation:
The Venue is Harold Hankins Building

Harold Hankins building is number 30 on the campus map [pdf, new window].

Finding the Harold Hankins Building
The building can be a bit tricky to find if you aren't familiar with the
university campus. Look out for a pedestrian bridge over Oxford Road (the
main road from the city centre and train stations) which is has
'University of Manchester' written on it.

The Harold Hankins building is through the shopping precinct on the same
side of the road as Blackwells. Enter the Precinct Centre via the
escalator or the ramp on Oxford Road.

Go through the precinct and go past Delta Travel on your left and NatWest
on your right. The entrance to Harold Hankins is opposite the Legal Advice
Centre.

Please note that there are two 10th floor conference suites (!). The
porters on the reception desk should be able to help you.