Discussing New Materialism: Methodological Implications for the Study of Materialities

210 Pages·2019·4.546 MB·English

by  Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann, Joost van Loon

Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann
Joost van Loon Editors
Discussing New
Materialism
Methodological Implications
for the Study of Materialities
Discussing New Materialism
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann · Joost van Loon
Editors
Discussing New
Materialism
Methodological Implications for the
Study of Materialities
Editors
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann Joost van Loon
Institut für Sozialwesen Fachbereich Soziologie
Universität Kassel KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Kassel, Hessen, Germany Eichstätt, Bayern, Germany
ISBN 978-3-658-22299-4 ISBN 978-3-658-22300-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018967710
Springer VS
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Contents
Part I Introduction
New Materialism and Its Methodological
Consequences: An Introduction .................................. 3
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann and Joost van Loon
Part II Postphenomenology and Actor-Network-Theory
What Makes Sensation of a Sentient Thing Possible:
The Concept of Time in the Work of
Maurice Merleau-Ponty ........................................ 21
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann
Historical Materialism and Actor-Network-Theory ................. 39
Joost van Loon
Part III Cyborg and Agential Realism
The Cyborg, Its Friends and Feminist
Theories of Materiality ......................................... 69
Anne-Jorunn Berg
“Cutting Together/Apart” – Impulses from
Karen Barad’s Feminist Materialism
for a Relational Sociology ....................................... 87
Susanne Völker
v
vi Contents
Part IV Praxeology and Communicative Constructivism
Rethinking Bodies and Objects in
Social Interaction: A Multimodal and
Multisensorial Approach to Tasting .............................. 109
Lorenza Mondada
Materiality, Meaning, Social Practices:
Remarks on New Materialism ................................... 135
Robert Schmidt
New Materialism? A View from Sociology of Knowledge ............. 151
Reiner Keller
Part V Algorithmic Culture and Doing Science
From Hardware to Software to Runtime:
The Politics of (at Least) Three Digital Materialities ................ 173
Jan-Hendrik Passoth
Of Rabbits and Men, or: How to Study
Innovation in Nanomedicine .................................... 191
Wiebke Schär
About the Contributors
Anne-Jorunn Berg was Professor and Director of the Center for Gender Research
at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has been central in the development of
gender and technology studies in Scandinavia. Her work is based at the inter-
section of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and feminist theory and she
has been involved in several national and international research projects explor-
ing implications and possibilities given this vantage point. She has worked
extensively with Donna Haraway’s theorizing on the material-semiotic and
conceptualizations of nature. Her research interests are varied: smart homes,
intersectionality, innovation, whiteness studies, digital feminism, materiality,
research methods or housework, always with a keen eye on gendered processes,
formations or relations. Currently, she is Professor at the Faculty for Social Sci-
ence at Nord University, Norway.
Address: Faculty for Social Science, Nord University, PO box 1490, 8049 Bodo,
Norway
e-mail: [email protected]
Reiner Keller is Professor of Sociology at Augsburg University (Germany) since
2011. Currently, he is Scientific Director of the Jakob-Fugger Center for Transna-
tional Studies, Augsburg University, and, since 2015, a member of the executive
committee of the German Sociological Association. He has developed the Sociology
of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) since the late 1990s. His research
centres on sociology of knowledge and culture, discourse studies, sociological the-
ory, qualitative methods, risk and environment, politics of knowledge and knowing,
and French sociology. He has published extensively on these areas and subjects.
Address: Philosophisch-Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Augsburg,
Universitätsstr. 10, 86135 Augsburg, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
vii
viii About the Contributors
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann is Professor of Sociological Methodology of Qualita-
tive Reconstructive Research at the University of Kassel, Germany. Since 2018,
she is Director of the Center of Empirical Research Methods at the University
of Kassel. Her research focuses on the interpretive paradigm of Alfred Schütz
and its further development. With reference to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, she has
made other forms of intentionality such as fleshly habituality fruitful for phenom-
enology, moving beyond the classic model of interaction with two human actors,
limited to their content of consciousness. On this basis, she has developed a meth-
odology and method for video hermeneutics that take into account the special
content of fleshly behavior. With her work, she brings Merleau-Ponty’s ontology
of the flesh into sociology of knowledge and expands classical hermeneutics. She
has been involved in numerous important studies such as the analysis of video-
recorded interactions of doctor-patient consultations or the effect of computerized
knowledge in the operating theatre (funded by the German Research Associa-
tion). Currently, her research is located in the field of child welfare and the con-
struction of violence.
Address: University of Kassel, Department of Social Welfare and Social Work,
Arnold-Bode-Str. 10, 34127 Kassel, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
Lorenza Mondada is Professor for Linguistics at the University of Basel and
Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Helsinki. Her research deals
with social interaction in ordinary, professional and institutional settings, within
an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective. Her specific focus
is on video analysis and multimodality, integrating language and embodiment in
the study of human action and sociality. Her work on multimodality in interaction
studies how the situated and endogenous organization of social interaction draws
on a diversity of multimodal resources such as, beside language, gesture, gaze,
body posture, body movements, objects manipulations as well as multisensorial
practices such as touching, tasting and seeing. She has extensively published in
J. of Pragmatics, Discourse Studies, Language in Society, ROLSI, J. of Sociolin-
guistics, and co-edited several collective books (for Cambridge University Press,
Benjamins, Routledge, De Gruyter).
Address: University of Basel, Department of Linguistics and Literature, Maiengasse
51, 4056 Basel, Switzerland
e-mail: [email protected]
About the Contributors ix
Jan-Hendrik Passoth is Privatdozent at European University Viadrina in Frank-
furt (Oder) and Research Group Leader of the Digital/Media/Lab at the Munich
Center for Technology in Society (MCTS) at Technische Universität München.
His group of doctoral and post-doctoral researchers study digital transformations
in ethnographic cases studies on industrial production, borders and migration or
public broadcasting. He studied sociology, computer science and political science
at Hamburg University where he also completed his dissertation on “Technology
and Society” in sociology. He has worked in Hamburg, Bielefeld and Berlin and
has been a visiting scholar at Indiana University, Pennsylvania State University
and a fellow at ZIF in Bielefeld and the Locating Media Group at the University
of Siegen. His research draws on insights from science and technology studies
(STS) and focusses on the use of standardized and interconnected software tech-
nologies in popular culture, politics and the media and the changing role of com-
puter science for contemporary societies.
Address: Technische Universität München, Munich Center for Technology in
Society, Digital Media Lab, Arcisstr. 21, 80333 München, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
Wiebke Schär is Senior Researcher at Sine-Institute Munich. Her research
interests include STS, health studies, studies of innovation and sustainabil-
ity as well as studies of risk. She is a qualitative researcher, specialised in ANT
(Actor-Network)-analysis. She worked on the following issues: the social impact
of infectious diseases such as SARS, the natures-cultures of the Danube River, the
risk of dietary supplement, controversies and participatory tools and visualization
tools in social sciences. Her doctoral thesis is concerned with an ethnography of
innovation in nanomedicine. Currently she works in a project in cooperation with
the City of Munich, which is focused on health promotion and prevention.
Address: sine – Süddeutsches Institut für empirische Sozialforschung e. V., Schwan-
thalerstr. 91, 80336 Munich, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
Robert Schmidt is Professor for Process-Oriented Sociology at Catholic Uni-
versity Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. After studying sociology and theatre in Erlangen,
New York and Berlin, he completed his doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin
and his habilitation at Technical University of Darmstadt. From 2000 to 2010
he was a research fellow at the Collaborative Research Centre “Performing Cul-
tures” at Freie Universität Berlin. He held visiting professorships at the Institute
for Advanced Studies in Vienna (2011), the Technical University of Darmstadt
x About the Contributors
(2011–2012) and was Interim Professor for Sociology and Qualitative Methods in
Empirical Social Research at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürn-
berg (2012–2013). His research focuses on the sociology of social practices,
the ethnography of organization, and process-oriented methodology. His recent
publications include: “Soziologie der Praktiken. Konzeptionelle Studien und
empirische Analysen”, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2012 and “Reflexive Knowledge in
Practices”, in “The Nexus of Practices”, edited by Ted Schatzki, Elizabeth Shove
and Allison Hui, pp. 141–154, Routledge 2017.
Address: Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Kapuzinergasse 2, 85072
Eichstätt, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
Joost van Loon is currently Chair of General Sociology and Sociological The-
ory at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. He has published exten-
sively on issues related to sociological theory, media- and cultural studies, science
and technology and risk. He is author of among others Risk and Technological
Culture (2002) and Media Technology: Critical Perspectives (2008) and is Editor-
in-Chief of the transdisciplinary journal Space and Culture.
Address: Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Kapuzinergasse 2, 85072
Eichstätt, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
Susanne Völker is Professor of Methods and Methodology for Social and Edu-
cational Sciences and Gender Studies at the University of Cologne, Germany.
She is Scientific Director of the Centre for Gender Studies at Cologne Univer-
sity (GeStiK). As a qualitative researcher in social sciences, she has entangled
the praxeology of Pierre Bourdieu with feminist new materialist approaches. Her
areas of research are located in the field of queer theory, gender studies, theory of
precarization, practice theory and research on social inequality.
Address: University of Cologne, Faculty of Human Sciences, Department for
Educational and Social Sciences, Richard-Strauss-Str. 2, 50931 Köln, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]