http://www.ifk.ac.at/index.php/imaginations-of-disorder.html
Senior Fellowships are intended to support excellent scholars of international reputation, who are well advanced in their academic careers. Research Fellowships are intended for post-doctoral scholars at an early stage in their careers.
Together with this call the IFK announces a new research focus entitled "Imaginations of Disorder" (http://www.ifk.ac.at/index.php/imaginations-of-disorder.html). The current research focus "Certainty Undermined - Life-worlds and Knowledge in Transition" (http://www.ifk.ac.at/index.php/certainty-undermined-109.html) remains unchanged.
"Independent" projects (i.e. projects not dealing with one of the two foci) will also be considered.
Application form: http://www.ifk.ac.at/tl_files/files/Application%20Forms/RF-SF-Antragsformular2012.pdf
Application deadline: 1 July 2012 (postmark)
Contact: PD Dr. Lutz Musner, e-mail: [log in to unmask]
IFK_Senior Fellowships are designed to support excellent scholars, who are well advanced in their academic careers. Qualified scholars are eligible without regard to nationality, institutional, or departmental affiliation; although preference is given to applicants of international repute who have published significant papers in recognized refereed journals and books that establish the author as a leading expert in his/her academic field.
Imaginations of Disorder
The research focus is dedicated to the concept of disorder as a metaphor for disintegration, change, and transformation. It speaks to a variety of contemporary and historical phenomena–the interplay between ordered micro- and disordered macrosystems; systemic crises of the economy and society; erosion of cultural and material reserves; breakdowns as catalyzers of historical and social change; the unavailability of history as a problem of collective self-understanding; shifts in the relations of geopolitical forces and the new constellations of power that emerge; models of evolution, variation, adaptation, and emergence in nature and culture as well as aesthetic figurations of loss of order and rupture.
The problem of order and disorder should also be thematized as a question from mutually contradictory perspectives. What are denoted as losses from a Euro-Atlantic view can mean gains from an Asian-Pacific view. What appears to one as the erosion of customary paradigms of welfare, stability, and justice can open unexpected chances for income and consumption for others. And what one sketches as a bleak image of crisis and decline can represent an optimistic scenario of uplift and unforeseen possibilities of development for others.
Imaginations of disorder should be depicted, described, and analyzed through various symbolic representations that have structural losses, but also structural gains, of the cultural, social, and political as their subject matter. The following complex of problems should be thematized:
“out of control” as metaphor for ruptures in economy and technology
rectification of disruptions as the precondition of social orders
phantasms of disorder as instruments of politics and domination
images of disorder as media of knowledge and perception or disburdening,
risk modeling as the attempt to make disorder masterable.
The IFK discourages proposals that are either exclusively theoretical or exclusively empirical in character. It supports projects that combine empirical investigation with thoughtful theoretical work. Research proposals that present a clearly formulated problem, demonstrate familiarity with the scholarly field(s), and develop an interdisciplinary methodological framework stand the best chance of approval by the International Advisory Board.
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