After one and a half years in Notodden, a new home, a family and … full professorship! This, along with a three-month book-writing grant from Telemark University College should put me on firm tracks to finish the next big thing for me: the book with the working title From meaning to sense: Social science in motion. More on this here in this blog!
Tags: book, Norway
Posted in social science, telemark | No Comments »
Hier ein neuer Call for Papers, dieses Mal für eine über das Nachwuchsnetzwerk Stadt-Raum-Architektur organisierte kleine, feine Tagung, bei der ich im Organisationsteam mit dabei bin:
Deadline für Einsendungen: 1. Juli 2013
Jenseits von Stadtland/Diesseits des Dualismus von Stadt und Land
Positionen zeitgenössischer Sozialforschung zum Bauen und Leben im ländlichen Raum Tagung des Nachwuchsnetzwerks Stadt – Raum – Architektur in Bezau, Vorarlberg (Bregenzerwald) 4./5. Oktober 2013
Die Stadt und das Städtische sind Ziel, Bühne und Verhandlungsort moderner „Kultur“, seit dieser Begriff von seiner ursprünglich agrarischen Bedeutung als „Landbau“ abgelöst wurde. Mit dem Übergang zur Neuzeit werden Begriffe wie Kultur und Kultiviertheit den Erzeugnissen der Kunst aller Gattungen zugesprochen, via Referenzierung Sprache, Geist, Bildung und dem Habitus der Gebildeten einverleibt und seither von Akademien verwaltet.
Das Land und das Ländliche erhalten in diesem Vorgang ihre Rolle als Gegenmodell, welches seine Plausibilität jedoch nur in Abgrenzung vom Städtischen und dessen modernen Konnotationen gewinnt. Das Ursprüngliche, Eigentliche und Urwüchsige, das Unverbildete, welches dem und den Ländlichen zugeschrieben wird, in ihm und ihnen gesucht, gefunden, geschützt und bedichtet wird, hat nicht nur Pflegeformen städtischer Kultur im ländlichen Milieu, wie die „Kunst des Landlebens“ (Frühsorge 1993), sondern auch eine meist implizit bleibende Spaltung der wissenschaftlichen Befassung mit Gesellschaft hervorgebracht: jene in die Volkskunde (als „Bauernkunde“) zur Erforschung ländlicher und die Soziologie zur Erforschung städtischer Gesellschaften (von „Arbeiterkultur“ bis zu Eliten).
Spätestens seit dem Spatial turn in der Soziologie und der Hinwendung zum Alltag anstelle eines Raumes in der Volkskunde sind solch tradierte Territorialgrenzen der jeweiligen Gegenstandsverortungen durchlässiger geworden. Seither überwiegen in beiden Fächern die Auseinandersetzungen mit städtischen gegenüber ländlichen Phänomenen. Erst die breite Übernahme einer globalisierungskritischen Haltung in den Habitus akademischer Eliten hat im letzten Jahrzehnt auch den sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Blick wieder verstärkt auf ländliche Gesellschaften gerichtet. Speziell deren traditionelle, von Kleinräumigkeit, Subsistenz und Gemeinschaftseigentum geprägte und als Widerständigkeit gedeutete Praxen dienen nun (erneut) als Argumente gegen einen als hegemonial empfundenen Anspruch neoliberaler Wirtschafts- und Entwicklungspolitik.
Darauf aufbauend, wollen wir unser Treffen dazu nutzen, „das Ländliche“, seine Akteure, Gesellschaften und Räume, wie sie sich in aktuellen Forschungsansätzen spiegeln, neu auszuleuchten und zu diskutieren.
Mögliche Themen zur gemeinsamen Bearbeitung sind:
Andere Themenvorschläge sind willkommen. Das Treffen soll in offener Atmosphäre nicht nur die Diskussion von Ideen ermöglichen, sondern auch die Entwicklung weitergehender und fächerübergreifender Zusammenarbeit fördern.
Als Tagungsort steht uns, passend zum Thema, ein ländliches Berghotel in 1.220 m Seehöhe zur Verfügung. Wegen der begrenzten Bettenzahl bitten wir auch nichtvortragende Teilnehmer um frühzeitige Anmeldung. Wir empfehlen eine Anreise am 3. Oktober. Die Kosten für zwei Übernachtungen inkl. Bewirtung betragen etwa Eur 120.- pro Person.
Wir freuen uns über Abstracts mit einer Länge von maximal 500 Wörtern, die bis zum 1. Juli 2013 an unsere Kontaktadresse gesandt werden. Bis zum 5. August erhalten Sie von uns eine Rückmeldung.
Organisation:
Stephanie Kernich (Zürich), Wiebke Reinert (Marburg), Lars Frers (Telemark), Günther Prechter (Bregenz)
Kontakt:
Der Call als PDF-Dokument: CfP-Jenseits-von-Stadtland.pdf
Tags: architecture, CfP, conference, landscape, rural, sociology, urban
Posted in social science | No Comments »
More good news. The session proposed to the 2013 conference of the RGS–IBG (28 – 30 August) by Lars Meier and me was accepted in full, so that we will have two consecutive time slots. This should allow for a good framing and many opportunities for discussion and shared development of our theme.
We are really happy that this worked out so well and are looking forward very much to going into more depth with the problematic sides of art and resistance in public spaces, which we really think is tremendously under-researched, as political and artist action seems quite prone to turning a blind eye towards its own reach and its potentials for exclusion.
Below you will find the program for both sessions. The final program is not yet set up, so we don’t know the exact date & time:
Resistance in public spaces – Questions of distinction, duration and expansion (1)
Convenor(s): Lars Frers (Telemark University College, Norway), Lars Meier (Technical University of Berlin, Germany):
Chair(s): Lars Meier (Technical University of Berlin, Germany)
· Questioning the limits of resistance
Lars Frers (Telemark University College, Norway), Lars Meier (Technical University of Berlin, Germany)
· Joubert Park Project: The limits of resistance in an urban public park
Ingrid Marais (University of South Africa)
· Independent Art Spaces in Egypt
Elisabeth Jaquette (Columbia University)
· Temporary use as perennial challenge: A case study of the grassroot’s role in re-establishing the right to the city in post-quake Christchurch
Suzanne Vallance (Lincoln University, New Zealand)
· Moral resistance: Performing Pro-Life and Pro-Choice resistance in public space
Lucy Jackson (University of Sheffield)
Resistance in public spaces – Questions of distinction, duration and expansion (2) – discussion & conclusions
Chair(s): Lars Frers (Telemark University College, Norway)
· The resistance of fun – fixed-gear cycling in public spaces
Roman Eichler (Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg)
· Tiananmen: The ‘Half-Life’ of the Event
Robert Emerton (Keele University)
· Spatial rights, aestheticisation of collective memories, and resistance to gentrification in Guangzhou, China
He Shenjing (School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-Sen )
· Discussant
Monica Degen (Brunel University)
Tags: art, conference, distinction, duration, practice, resistance
Posted in social science | No Comments »
Finally! My submission to cultural geographies has passed all reviews and is available “OnlineFirst”. The article is the opener for a special issue with the title Absence. Embodiment, materiality, resistance which is edited by Lars Meier, Erika Sigvardsdotter, and me. It seems as though we’ll have to wait until at least the end of 2013 for the special issue to appear in actual print, since there are a few other issues already in the pipeline before ours.
In any case, the production of this article has both been more rewarding and more challinging than many others. The first draft did not really go into much depth regarding the critiques of phenomenology that are being challenged in this article. I opted instead for a more “hermeneutic” constructions, where a problem is posited, developed in conjunction with a few descriptive episodes and then discussed in detail in the main part of the article. But the world of English-style publishing convention has of course caught up with me (again), and necessitated major changes. I was urged to begin with the deconstructivist critique of phenomenology as being obsessed with presence and oblivious of absence, since this is the basis for John Wylie’s widely cited critique of phenomenology in the name of absence. So I had to delve into the depths of Derrida’s critique of Husserl, necessitating more Husserl reading in turn and some venturing into Lévinas. This took a lot of time and even more effort and changed the tone of the article into a much more theoretical piece, but so be it.
The good thing is that I now feel quite confident about the epistemological basis of phenomenology and its perception in other schools of thinking, granting me a much better foothold than before. This also taught me – once again, actually – that a very clear introduction, which completely focuses on placing your research in relation to other publications (in the same channel), is of crucial importance in the english-writing world of academic publishing. No amount of problem-centric argumentation will help around this. I can understand where this comes from and also see the benefits of this procedure, but it doesn’t really fit my style of thinking, as I do not like to start an argument by telling people who is think was right and who was wrong and how my argument will be better than theirs. I much prefer to home in on a problem and then present arguments considering this issue.
In any case, what was nice indeed was to see how helpful journal editors can be in communicating the often conflicting feedback given in peer review. This is a very difficult job that calls for a difficult combination of sensitivity and clear judgement at the same time. Not easy to achieve.
Here is the link to the article: http://cgj.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/02/14/1474474013477775.abstract
As usual for publications managed by Sage, the article will be available exclusively through their site for one year, after which I am allowed to host the last manuscript form on my own website. (Until then: send me an e-mail if you don’t have access and would like to take a look at the article.)
Tags: absence, phenomenology, publication, writing
Posted in social science | No Comments »
Lars Meier and I are planning to host a session at this year’s conference of the Royal Geographical Society – Insitute of British Geographers in London. The title for the session is:
Resistance in public spaces – Questions of distinction, duration and expansion
In this session, we want to discuss the limits of resistance in public places in the context of artistic practice and political movements. While actions such as impromptu performances, entities such as flash mobs or practices like street art are often referred to as instances of opportunities for social change, their actual effects remain understudied. If the ‘right to the city’ is at stake here, however, it is necessary not only to reflect about possibilities for alternative development or about artistic ideals. It becomes necessary to study the manifold ways in which such practices, entities or events enter the practices of those who are in the places where they occur. We would propose that three distinct dimensions are important in this undertaking:
Distinction: Understood in a Bourdieuan sense, what are the positions of those who enact and those who perceive artistic expression or countercultural performance? Where in the social and cultural fields are they located and how do they present themselves in relation to everyday culture and the avant-garde? How will people with different taste be emotionally affected by performances and will the experience change or stabilize their aesthetic preferences? Do artists/protesters bridge social distinction or do they perhaps even enforce or solidify it?
Duration: How long does the event last? When do the last traces of an act of resistance disappear? Here, it becomes important to think both about the materiality of places and about memory, the duration of sensual impressions, both on a social and individual level. In addition, the role of recording technologies is complex: while they do serve to extend the time frame in which the event can be ‘witnessed’, they also fundamentally change the access to an event, which is now mediated in a different way and also accessed by a different set of people (youtube users instead of passers-by etc.).
Expansion: What is the spatial scale of the act, entity or performance? Does it affect only a very limited space or is the reach much wider? The geography of resistance is of crucial importance if one wants to understand its spatial implications. Accordingly, we would like to invite presentations to examine the sensual and material extension of practices of resistance.
We especially want to encourage people to consider connections of art and resistance with current political movements and protests like in Arabian countries, Russia or China or the economical and political crisis in Europe.
We would like to invite presentations that use concrete instances as the basis of arguments about how resistance plays out in public places and where it fails to bridge socio-cultural divisions. We are particularly interested in the limits of resistance and in the ways in which these limits could be extended. At the same time, it remains an open question to us if an extension of limits is actually to be wished for or not, since such an extension might also serve to water down the intended effect itself. In short, we are looking forward to explore the ambivalences of resistance together with the other presenters and with the audience.
Please send abstracts of around 200 words to Lars Frers (lars.frers@hit.no) until 27th of January 2013.
Tags: art, conference, failure, geography, public space, resistance
Posted in social science | No Comments »
Aber alles hängt davon ab, wie man den Fortschritt auffaßt. Man könnte ihn darin sehen, daß da die berühmtendafürsauftauchen: ein Säufer, dafür aber ein ausgezeichneter Spezialist, ein Wüstling, dafür aber voller genialer Ideen, ein Dieb zwar und ein Gauner, dafür aber ein erstklassiger Verwalter! Ein Mörder, dafür aber diszipliniert und der Sache treu ergeben… Man könnte den Fortschritt aber auch so verstehen, daß alle zu guten und ehrlichen Menschen werden. Und dann werden wir irgendwann einmal die Zeit erleben, daß man sagen wird: ein Spezialist ist er, das stimmt, und er hat auch wirklich viel Ahnung, aber es ist ein schmutziger Typ, so was können wir hier nicht brauchen.
everyday. periphery. is proudly powered by
WordPress
Entries (RSS)
and Comments (RSS).