In case people don’t realise that this is a joke, I’ve underlined and emphasised in colour some of the key give-aways. I left out “doing discourse analysis” because I thought this was too unimaginative. As those interested in psychoanalytic approaches might say, It’s all a bit psycho-anal, though.
Hope this helps
Best wishes
Tom
P.S. Social science researchers interested in (BNIM): the biographic-narrative interpretive method. For a free electronic copy of the current version of the BNIM Short Guide and Detailed Manual , just click on <[log in to unmask]> . Please indicate your institutional affiliation and the purpose for which you might envisage using BNIM’s open-narrative interviews, and I'll send it straight away.
The BNIM Short Guide and Detailed Manual builds on and develops ch. 6 and 12 of my earlier textbook, Qualitative Research Interviewing: biographic narrative and semi-structured method (2001 Sage Publications) which has a more general approach to semi-structured depth interviewing, interpretation, and writing-up.
From: A forum for critical and radical geographers [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sean Tanner
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 12:18 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Second CFP, AAG 2012: Towards a Methods of Possibility
Apologies for cross-postings. Please share with anyone you think might be interested:
This session will be sponsored by the Graduate Student Affinity Group (GSAG).
CFP, AAG 2012: Towards a Methods of Possibility
This session invites papers that explore how the design, choice, and implementation of methods are informed by social theory. We are mainly interested in social theory that is characteristic of geography’s synthesis with the cultural turn (broadly collected under headings such as: Feminist, Post-Development Theory, Subaltern Studies, Queer Theory, Actor-Network Theory, Psychoanalitic Theory, Posthumanism, etc). As graduate students who are interested in rethinking and renovating the methods toolbox, we hope to gather others who, like us, find that our graduate training prepares us well to engage with complex ideas and philosophical problems, but dedicates much less time in the training of what exactly is to be done with these insights in the design of our research.
Many scholars interested in social theory feel there are no clear alternatives to the default of scientific positivism when formulating research questions, writing methods chapters, and especially while writing external funding proposals. While we feel that it has been well illustrated that positivism pushes toward closure, toward assurance and truth, and toward the elimination of possibility, it remains the framework for how we typically imagine “research.” On the other hand, we feel that social theory ought to push us in the opposite direction, toward openings, toward new ideas and questions, and toward an expansion of possibility. To this end, this session begs the question: how can we imagine innovations in our methods that allow for the same openings in our research that social theory has provided us in our framing of problems? And, just as important, how may we justify such methods to outside funding agencies, who frequently operate with a different set of assumptions about what research should do?
This session is an ideal opportunity for graduate students to present papers and ideas about methods while in the midst of the great efforts that methods chapters of dissertations require. Also, educators who have an interest in graduate training and engaging in the questions above will provide valuable insight. Topics for the paper session may include, but are not limited to the following:
- Formulating techniques such as genealogy and deconstruction into a coherent method
- Translating theoretical concepts such as overdetermination and anti-essentialism to methods
- Doing discourse analysis
- Participatory Action Research as a method of possibility
- Visceral Geographies
- Accounting for distributed agency and non-linear causality [Alan Sokal?]
- Working through questions of ethics, epistemology, and the normative orientation of knowledge claims
- The negotiation of professional expectations and alternative research programs (e.g. tensions between collaborative authorship and atomistic orientations toward “expertise”)
Please inform us of your interest as soon as possible and plan to send abstracts, no later than September 23, 2011, to both:
Sean Tanner – [log in to unmask]
Department of Geography
Rutgers University
Geoffrey Boyce – [log in to unmask]
School of Geography and Development
The University of Arizona