[Interpretationandmethods] Exploding Method: Call for Papers

[Wilkinson, C]

CALL FOR PAPERS
Exploding Method: A New Scholars Symposium
20 September 2007

Exploding Method: A New Scholars Symposium is a one day event being held by
Goldsmiths Sociology Department on 20 September 2007. The event builds on
the successful (Re)Creating: Methodologies, Concepts, Practices postgraduate
symposium of 2005. The symposium aims to engage postgraduate students in
discussion around key methodological debates, in a format that will
encourage dialogue and constructive engagement amongst participants. We are
pleased to welcome Prof. Howard Becker as key respondent, with Prof. Les
Back (Goldsmiths, University of London) as facilitator.

Current debates around the ways in which methods not only represent but also
shape social realities, have implications for the processes and politics
through which our research is crafted, as well as for our own situated
subjectivities as researchers. This event will address these ideas around
the theme of explosion; unmaking in order to (perhaps) reconstruct and
reconnect.

The etymology of 'explosion' reveals a history of rejection: the Latin
ex-plaudere referring to the act of driving a bad actor from the stage
through applause. This does, however, open up the possibilities for an
ambiguous engagement with explosion, navigating the challenges of where and
how to reject and approve. More particularly, Exploding Method is aimed at
inquiring into recent debates on objects as assemblages and new materially
innovative methods, the degree of our own reflexive engagement with
reality-making processes, and the politics of our research objects / subjects.

Participants will be organised into small streams, which will aim to not
only enable researchers to present their work, but also provide an
opportunity to construct a series of combined responses to take forward into
a final plenary. In addition, each participant will be assigned one paper
prior to the symposium to which s/he will be encouraged to prepare a response.

How to attend

Papers are invited from current PhD students and from those who have
completed their PhD in the last five years. Broad themes include, but are
not limited to:

* The bracketing of knowledge through research
* Relations between researcher and researched
* Possibilities offered by new material practices
* Emergence of new sociological entities
* Messiness and uncertainty
* The politics of representation
* Interdisciplinarity
* Investigating socio-technical assemblages
* Reflexivity and self-referentiality
* Non-coherence and methodological failure

An abstract of 250-300 words should be submitted at
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/exploding/ no later than 29 June. Successful
applicants will be notified by 6 July. If accepted, you will need to email
your paper (no more than 3000 words) to exploding at gold.ac.uk by 31 August.
There is no charge for attending the event should your application be accepted.

If you require further information on the symposium, please visit the
website or email exploding at gold.ac.uk.


-- 
-- 
C. Wilkinson

http://kyrgyzstan.neweurasia.net  - Blogging Central Asia

Room 354
+44 (0) 121 414 8242 (work)
+44 (0) 7904 185135 (mobile, no voicemail)

Ph.D candidate
Centre for Russian & East European Studies (ERI)
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK.

www.crees.bham.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/wilkinson.htm