Researcher's workshop: methodological inspirations and debates 1600-SZD-WM-ZWB
The aim of our seminar is to reflect upon and discuss seven methodological problems that most of social scientists need to face and decide about when it comes to their research – we will talk about our previous research experiences and current methodological dilemmas; various guests and more experienced researchers will speak about their own methodological “adventures” and discoveries.
The seven topics are:
1/ What is central, what is marginal: history, philosophy and modern practices of footnoting in scientific texts;
2/ Irreducible? The role of images in scientific texts;
3/ Autobiographical mode in scientific texts;
4/ Relation between science and politics;
5/ Micro and macro perspectives, the particular and the typical, discontinuities and generalizations, the question of representativeness;
6/ Testimony and the question of truth, strategies of writing/speaking and strategies of silencing, the silence of the archives;
7/ Researchers and ‘researched’. The position of a researcher, engaged research and militant research, coresearch (conricerca), the research as a social intervention.
attendance, participation in discussions,
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
deepening of methodological (self-)awareness, also concerning the social and political dimension of scientific research, first decisions about methodological approach.
Assessment criteria
as above,
Bibliography
1/ David Henige, “Being Fair to the Hounds: The Function and Practice of Annotation”, History in Africa, 28 (2001), 95-127; Joseph Bensman, “The Aesthetics and Politics of Footnoting”, Politics, Culture, and Society, 3 (Spring 1988), 443-469; Betsy Hilbert, “Elegy for Excursus: The Descent of the Footnote”, College English, 4 (Apr., 1989), 400-404.
2/ Georges Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008 (or in Polish: Georges Didi-Huberman, Obrazy mimo wszystko, Kraków 2012).
3/ Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey (eds), Autobiographical writing across the disciplines: a reader, Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. [And in Polish: Maria Reimann „Opowiadanie niepełnosprawności. Esej autoetnograficzny”, Studia de Cultura 1 (2018); Małgorzata Melchior „Wymiary złożonej tożsamości jednostkowej. Kategorie teoretyczne na przykładzie osób słabowidzących” in: Janusz Mucha, Bożena Pactwa (eds), Status mniejszościowy i ambiwalencja tożsamości w społeczeństwach wielokulturowych, Tychy 2008; Michał Mokrzyn „Dziesięć wyznań albo krępujący chiazm: od etnografii neoliberalizmu do neoliberalnej etnografii”, Kultura i społeczeństwo 1 (2017); Katarzyna Kaniowska, „Krótko o źródłach autoetnografii”, Kultura i społeczeństwo 1 (2017)]
4/ George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”; Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics”
5/ Carlo Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm”, in: Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, transl. J. and A.C. Tedeschi, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, p. 96-125 (or in Polish: “Tropy. Korzenie paradygmatu poszlakowego”, tłum. T. Sierotowicz, Zagadnienia Filozoficzne w Nauce 39 [2006], 8-65); Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms (Preface to the Italian Edition), transl. J. and A. Tedeschi, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, p. xiii-xxvi (or in Polish: Ser i robaki [Wstęp], tłum. R, Kłos, Warszawa: PIW, 1989, s. 7-24).
6/ Carlo Ginzburg, „Just One Witness”, in: Threads and Traces. True, False, Fictive, transl. A.C. and J. Tedeschi, Berkeley: University of California Press 2012, p. 165-179; selected essays in: Sybille Krämer, Sigrid Weigel (eds), Testimony/Bearing Witness: Epistemology, Ethics, History and Culture, London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017; additional reading: Aurélia Kalisky, „D’une Catastrophe épistémologique. La catastrophe comme négation de la mémoire”, in: Thomas Klinkert, Günther Oesterle (Hg.), Katastrophe und Gedächtnis, Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2013, p. 18-74.
7/ Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World. Social Suffering in Contemporary Society, transl. P. Parkhurst Ferguson et al., Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999, p. 1-22; Devi Sacchetto, Emiliana Armano, Steve Wright, “Coresearch and Counter-Research: Romano Alquati’s Itinerary Within and Beyond Italian Radical Political Thought”, Viewpoint Magazine online: https://viewpointmag.com/2013/09/27/coresearch-and-counter-research-romano-alquatis-itinerary-within-and-beyond-italian-radical-political-thought/
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: