Held annually between 2013 and 2019, the ISRF Annual Workshop provided a platform for ISRF Fellows to report on their research projects, and also to contribute to conversations and discussions around a theme. Each Annual Workshop was themed around a topic, methodology or debate of interest within (and across) the social sciences.
The question of violence hangs over our understanding of our human world. But what is violence and why does it matter? Ordinarily used to mean physical attack or disruptive intervention by which one individual or group damages another’s person or property, the term and its negative valence carry over into the social sciences to have broader application, with meanings ramified into the political and the personal domains. Active and covert disruption of social institutions manifest in financial, legal and economic forms of violence; colonisation and capture of language and culture, and constraints on informal ways of living, represent forms of violence framed as symbolic, epistemic, or psychological. In such ways and more, violence permeates our lives and raises many questions about how to live them.
What, indeed, is violence itself? Etymologically cognate with vis (force) it should interest us because, as we might say, ‘Force is the ontological condition of life’; in the Newtonian codification of nature force is fundamental. It is also, in that codification, tied theoretically to other concepts that have found their way into descriptions, explanations, and normative evaluations of the social. Mechanics systematically links force to power, work, change and action in ways that can be explored and exploited for their suggestive, metaphorical and heuristic contributions to the explanation of social process and change.
We might then see violence’s negative valence, especially in its relation to power, as tied to the effects of force applied in excess of what is needed to do work or achieve change, so as instead to harmfully interrupt human affairs.
This more Aristotelian conception might (with apology to The Philosopher) allow us to say that ‘to unleash force is easy; but to direct it in the right degree, on the right object, to the right end and in the right way is not easy, and not everyone can do it’. Another interesting question is, why not?
Against the background of the ISRF’s Fellows’ work in a format of short presentations, the 2019 Annual Workshop facilitated reflective sessions and discussion in groups and panels to pursue the question of violence through such questions as these.
Participants included:
The Workshop takes up a line of thought emerging from last year’s ‘Today’s Futures’ theme, reported on in the Autumn Bulletin; to plan intelligently for the future we need to pay attention to the past. But what happens when social scientists and historians meet and talk? Historians of knowledge at MPIWG and social scientists funded by the ISRF share a critical view of knowledge. Historians insist that what counts as knowledge and how it is produced and exercised, has been different at different times. Among social scientists, the anthropologist will remind us that this difference exists, too, in different places and cultures, while the critically-minded political scientist will point to the to the effects of power on forms of knowing. All this, as the philosopher of science will suggest, entails that it will be different again in the future.
What follows for the critical social scientist, generically, is that manifestly it needs to be constantly under review in the present; reflexivity is part of social science’s methodology.
Is knowledge then in a perpetual state of ‘crisis’? Here, a number of questions arise. The critical historian, the philosopher, the critical theorist, will ask, ‘what is ‘crisis’, anyway?’ The historian will challenge the univocity of the term and point to different usages informing different practices at different times, the philosopher will note the continuity in change that is the historian’s presupposition. We can pose the ‘anthropologist’s question’: if there is a present ‘crisis of knowledge’ is it a new problem, or a ‘new-old’ problem?
We might then see violence’s negative valence, especially in its relation to power, as tied to the effects of force applied in excess of what is needed to do work or achieve change, so as instead to harmfully interrupt human affairs.
The ISRF aims to support research which is interdisciplinary and reflexively critical, and seeks new theories and methods for understanding the conditions of life as it is lived by human beings now. With a format of short research presentations, thematic discussions, dialogues across disciplines, and participants’ creative responses, the Workshop aims at a wide-ranging exploration of how a sensibility to the history of knowledge might inspire thinking in social science and how critical approaches in social science might speak to the historian.
Participants included:
To our historic peers, the Future was a progressive place, a period to which everyone looked forward in anticipation of, for example, better medicine, improved social and economic prosperity, enhanced human rights – a fairer, more predictable world. But the Future does not look so bright from the first part of the twenty-first century. Trapped between narratives of the past in which Western hegemonies triumph and experiences of upheaval caused by heightened political instability, a global refugee crisis, increased poverty, war and extinction – Today’s Future collapses back upon us, threatening to be worse. So what is social science doing to prepare?
Social science is often considered to be too slow, too unwieldy and not robust enough to compete with ‘hard’ sciences, maths and economics. But the fact that social science is many things is precisely what makes it so adaptable, flexible and creative.
Through cross-disciplinary critique – anthropology, psychology, sociology, political science, geography, archaeology – social science helps us to understand contemporary issues from the perspective of multiple temporalities. How does globalisation look from the hyper-temporality of climate change? How successful has the project of decolonisation been when we see imperialism re-emerging in Russia, China and the Middle East? What is there to celebrate about neo-liberal capitalism from the perspective of those who must compete for basic resources such as food, water and clean air? What are we doing to tackle issues associated with unrest and over-crowding in our towns and cities?
Through better understanding the ways in which people find meaning and value in the world, social science perspectives improve our chances of surviving the coming storms to live peacefully and sustainably on the small planet that we all call home.
At this, the fifth, annual ISRF workshop our theme asks: what are the practical ways in which the work we variously do as social scientists may be considered to take on the major challenges facing us in the twenty-first century? We invite participants to present their work whilst considering the ways in which it functions as a catalyst for or advocate of change. How does social science expose the fissures of power relations manifest in the world today? How do we assess different paradigms of value when there is increased competition for resources? How can we better apply the work we do to hold governments, politicians, corporations and other powerful elite, to account? What can we look forward to? How can may Today’s Future be characterised?
The title, ‘Discovery and Recognition’ prompts the researcher to question how their work disrupts the world. As social scientists, our work sets out to produce new knowledge but do we really seek something previously unknown or is it rather that we rediscover things which were intentionally or unofficially forgotten?
‘Good’ social science should be conscious of itself and its practices. But what surprises do we then face? Which methodologies are most useful? There was a Panel of cross-disciplinary guest speakers to consider these and other questions, and the Fellows were asked to bear the Workshop theme in mind when presenting their own work.
On Day Two, guest Panel members and Fellows came together in small discussion groups to identify key themes from the previous day and further unpack central topics. The groups then reported back to one another before a final plenary session.
At the 2015 ISRF Annual Workshop, the ISRF’s Fellows reported on their work, to each other and to a wider audience drawn from its host, the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh.
The Workshop focused on the ISRF’s requirement that the research should be interdisciplinary, innovative and critical. The topic for this year’s Workshop was ‘Social Science as Communication’.The title ‘Social Science as Communication’ was intended to provoke uncertainty.
Is one communicating when doing social science? Is one doing social science when communicating? Re-thinking social science as (being) communication? Re-thinking communication? What is being communicated? What counts as communication (anyway)? A panel of the ISRF’s Fellows were invited to consider these and other options, and Fellows were be asked to bear the Workshop theme in mind when presenting their own work.
On Day Two, the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Science hosted panels on ‘The Media, The Academy and The Referendum’ and ‘Digital Social Science’, and presented a lunchtime communication carnival: ‘a promenade presentation of creative and committed experiments in social science communication’.
What counts as critique varies across the disciplines; critical history, critical anthropology, critical theory and theories, critical philosophy and so on differ in theory and method. All are themselves subject to critique and, of course, the critique of the notion of critique presents a further complication. The Workshop is an opportunity to consider what the truly critical and intellectually innovative research sought by the ISRF, and aimed at by its Fellows, might look like. On Day One there will be short presentations by the ISRF Fellows of projects from across the social sciences, and a Roundtable discussion: ‘What is critique and (how) are we doing it?’
Day Two, bringing together researchers from York and beyond, focuses on contemporary forms of critical theory and its application in empirical research. As a body of thinking, analysis and research, critical theory problematizes superficial and complacent analyses of our contemporary human, social and economic condition. The day discovers the range of engagement in critical understandings of social change, progress, the impact of technology, our imbrication with economic rationalities and discourses, as well as deepening problems of ecocide, inequality and violence, in the work of the University’s social science scholars.
The Independent Social Research Foundation exists to fund social science research that is interdisciplinary and innovative. But what is the value of interdisciplinarity to the social sciences? What is interdisciplinarity? Does it imply a directive towards the ideal of a unitary social science, or a pragmatic attempt to reduce insularity and factionalism? Is its purpose to promote interchange of methods and concepts between existing disciplines, or to break down demarcations between them and allow ‘new’ disciplines to emerge? Distinct ‘logics’ of interdisciplinarity have been canvassed; has interdisciplinarity now become a ‘portmanteau concept’?
The intended result of interdisciplinary work is often said to be ‘innovation’.
Interdisciplinarity produces new theories and concepts: innovation results from applying new categories and new technologies – new ways of seeing the world and doing things in it. But is there anything more to this than re-describing what is there ‘anyway’ and putting it to better, more efficient, or just different use, always in pursuit of the same human goals? Are we condemned to re-discovery, of the old in a new guise? And (an old question) would we recognise the truly new if we had never encountered it before? Questions such as these ramify into many disciplines and invite many responses. The Workshop takes an empirical approach by considering the interdisciplinary research the ISRF is currently funding, presented by some of the ISRF’s Fellows.