Seminar

Revisiting Research Methods in Social Sciences

Organised jointly by Sambalpur University and CISCA / Aarhus University
Sambalpur in Orissa, India on 25th – 27th of November 2010

Download the programme pdf here

Download seminar pdf here

To see the abstracts click here

Almost 25 years ago James Clifford and George E. Marcus in their book “Writing Culture” explicitly questioned
and challenged the existing research paradigm by arguing that ethnography faced a crisis of authority – a
diagnosis that indeed plunged the discipline into a debate on such the crisis if not into a crisis. Yet, the volume
highlighted and reemphasized important issues – first and foremost the entanglement between power and
representation - and argued for paying closer attention to epistemological issues in representing “others”,
particularly when Western ethnographers write about non-Western cultures.

However, revisiting these issues in a workshop in India with its own distinctive anthropological tradition
immediately questions such Western / non-Western dichotomies and alerts us to constructions of otherness
based on regional identities, caste and class issues, gender biases etc. Central questions such as “Who is
represented by whom and how?” or “What can and shall we document and represent – being aware of our
own limits in experiencing, describing and analysing ethnographic contexts in an all-encompassing way?” keep
puzzling and troubling researchers – also in view of a relatively higher frequency and intensity of cultural and
face-to-face encounters.

One development in the discipline has been an intensive discussion and development of research methods.
The debate over authenticity has led to challenging the traditional ‘black box’ of field work and called for new
and more transparent ways of dealing with data, linked to various analytical strategies and epistemological
stances such as social constructionism, neo-realism, narrative analysis, etc. Also, changes in global society and
changes in the ways we as researchers engage in it when doing field work have required development of new
approaches such as multi-sited ethnography and cyber-research. Finally, development of tools such as software
for qualitative analysis (e.g. Nvivo) has opened up for new ways of managing and analyzing data, like being able
to work with larger data sets or new types of doing comparative analysis.

We propose to look at the following issues:

• The issues of time: “deep ethnography versus short-term fieldwork” as we are aware that substantial
ethnography is increasingly under pressure from funding agencies.

• The challenges of multi-sited fieldwork appropriate in new contexts, yet under the above-mentioned
constraints.

• The role of interdisciplinarity in approaching topics and fields.

• The potential of auto-ethnography and the ways it can enhance, challenge or supplement the research
of foreign researchers entering the field.

• The continuing question of subjectivity and objectivity – a question that is intrinsically linked to
situation and location of the self in the research as well as the written “product”.

• Approaches to and ethical dimensions of doing research with particularly vulnerable groups and/or
sensitive issues.

• The inclusion of new aids in research such as visual or audio devices and qualitative analysis software.
The intention of the workshop is not only to look at these vexed issues of research methodology, but also to
pay attention to the question of how to apply the research results in the teaching process – taken it for granted
that a high quality teaching is always research based. Thus, we also ask how to teach research methods at
departments in Denmark and India and how to design curricula on methodology in a joint Indo-European
teaching approach.

Convenors: Prof. Deepak Kumar Behera, Dr. Jens Seeberg, Dr. Uwe Skoda

Please send your abstract to CISCA@hum.au.dk. Deadline for submission of abstract is 10th of October, 2010

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