Please find the Call for Papers for the Conference: “Social Worlds, Arenas and Situational Analysis: Theoretical Debates and Empirical Research Experiences” attached. The conference will take place online on April 6th and 7th 2022. Submissions are possible both in English or German under methodendozentur@esit.uni-tuebingen.de.
Deadline for Abstracts: 30.10.2021 (1000 words)
Deadline for Work-in-Progress-Papers: 15.03.2022
Conference: 06.04.2022 (9-15 CEST) und 07.04.2022 (9-12 CEST)
From the call:
The aims of the conference are to debate the theory of social worlds and arenas and to collect researchers’ hands-on experiences from working with situational analysis. Questions that may arise include the following:
- For which empirical phenomena is social worlds and arenas theory suitable? What can it offer for the analysis of non-professional collectives?
- How much empirical work is necessary to define a phenomenon as a social world? What is the relationship between theoretical presuppositions and empirical elaboration if social world theory is to be a “sensitizing” rather than a “definitive” concept (BLUMER 1954)?
- What are the advantages, but also the challenges, of empirically analyzing social worlds and arenas? – How can relationships of social worlds and social movements and other social entities be grasped empirically and conceptually?
- How is the practice of situational analysis shaped by specific traditions of doing research, such as the German-speaking emphasis on hermeneutic traditions of interpretation?
- What distinguishes the conception of collectivity in the theory of social worlds and arenas? What significance do objects and materialities have in this context? What concept of the public sphere does this give rise to?
- How do the concepts of “boundary objects” and “boundary infrastructures” relate to this?
- To which conceptual stocks is the social worlds/arenas theory connectable? To what extent do basic assumptions such as relationality create connections to other theories and approaches (i.e. posthumanism, ethnomethodology, poststructuralism)?
- In what ways does social world and arena theory resemble and differ from other social theoretical proposals for the analysis of late modern societies, such as Bourdieu’s concept of field or the Deleuzian and Guattarian concept of assemblage?
- How does the theory of social worlds and arenas appear in light of debates of i.e. practice theory or posthumanist approaches? What is the relationship to ethnomethodological and other interactionist theoretical perspectives?
You can find more information here: Call-for-papers_Social Worlds_Arenas_Situational-Analysis