Please go to: https://events.ruc.dk/transnationalfields/sociological-analysis-of-transnational-fields.html to sign up. Please sign up no later than March 1st.

Professor George Steinmetz is the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan and a Corresponding Member of the Centre de Sociologie européenne, Paris. He is a social theorist and a historical sociologist of states, empires, and social science. He is currently working on two main projects. The first is a project on the emergence of sociology in the former British and French overseas colonies between the 1930s and the 1960s. The second is a reconstruction of sociology as historical socioanalysis. He has also worked on Germany and several of its former colonies (Namibia, Samoa, and Qingdao, China), on social policy at the local and central levels in imperial Germany, on visual sociology, on the rise and fall of the city of Detroit, on the epistemology of the human sciences, and on political and cultural theory.

Associate Professor Kristoffer Kropp is a sociologist of science and knowledge focusing in his research on the relation between social science knowledge production and political power. His first book was on the history of Danish sociology. In this current work he analysis the social and cognitive organization of social sciences at a European level and the entanglement between social sciences and European political institutions and processes.

Workshop

Each of the participants must produce a paper about their PhD-projects. It must be no longer than teen pages. The paper should present your research topic and question or problem, your methods the empirical materials. Central to the paper should be a discussion of how a field theoretical approach could be used in relation to your project, what concepts and models that would be central, how it would influence the design and choice of empirical material and how it would contribute to your project. The papers can be drafts for articles or thesis chapters or papers written for the workshop.

All participant are expected to read the papers and act as discussant for two papers.

2 for participants presenting a paper. 1 without presentation.

Aim and scope:

Among sociologist and other social scientists there is a growing awareness that local practices are in various ways tied to or entangled with social processes and structures exceeding beyond local configuration such as the nation state. For example, organization of national school systems entangles with transnational processes and institutions such as the OECD and the EU, in the social sciences knowledge production are increasingly relates to transnational academic fields and in the economy the production are increasingly entangled in global and regional networks of firms and trading. Among the most interesting and productive approach suggested to understand social processes and social structures that goes beyond national boundaries is the field analytical approach inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu and developed in the interactions with new transnational empirical objects. The claim is that in order to understand local situated practices we need to think about relations on different scales. How local practices relate to structures beyond well-defined boundaries such as regions, countries or cities, but also how global structures and practices are enacted and produced in ‘local’ situations. Understanding processes and changes of social practices call for empirical sensitive sociological concepts capable of directing and framing empirical analysis of social phenomena at different scales.

The course provides the PhD students with a field theoretical approach to understanding the relation between local social practices and transnational processes and how to theoretical and empirically think about scales (local, national, regional, global etc.) in relation to their specific research focus. Combining lectures and discussions of PhD-student papers, the course focuses on how to think with a field theoretical approach in empirical studies of transnational issues and struggles over scale. It thus provides students with knowledge about central concepts and how to mobilize and use field theoretical concepts and modes of thinking in analyzing empirical problems that goes beyond the boundary of the nation state and to think about how apparently local social practices can be understood as related to processes of scaling, struggles over and circulations of social resources, ideas, people and institutions. We will work in a workshop format combining lecture introducing central ideas and discussion of papers from PhD-students. The participants are expected to have or acquire before the course a fundamental knowledge of Bourdieu’s field theory and sociological theory (see suggested readings).

The workshop is free for PhD students enrolled at Dept. of Social Science and Business at Roskilde University. For PhD students enrolled at other departments at Roskilde University or other universities in Denmark (ex. CBS) will pay 500 kr, which will cover breakfast and lunch the 2 days as well as a common dinner on the first day. PhD students from outside Denmark (and CBS) will pay 5000 kr.

12

Assigned literature:

(Bourdieu 1992, 1996; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1999; Dezalay and Garth 2002; Georgakakis and Weisbein 2010; Go and Krause 2016; Heilbron, Guilhot, and Jeanpierre 2008; Kauppi 2010; Kauppi and Madsen 2014; Krause 2017; Mudge and Vauchez 2012; Steinmetz 2013, 2016, 2017b, 2017a; Swartz 2013)

Introduction to field theory (if you are not familiar with field theory):

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The Rules of Art. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Swartz, David. 2013. ‘Metaprinciples for Sociological Research in a Bourdieusian Perspective’. Pp. 19–35 in Bourdieu and Historical Analysis, edited by P. S. Gorski. Duke University Press.

Examples of transnational field theory (articles marked with * are expected readings):

Dezalay, Yves and Bryant G. Garth. 2002. The Internationalization of Palace Wars. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

*Georgakakis, Didier and Julien Weisbein. 2010. ‘From above and from below: A Political Sociology of European Actors’. Comparative European Politics 8(1):93–109.

*Go, Julian and Monika Krause. 2016. ‘Fielding Transnationalism: An Introduction’. The Sociological Review Monographs 64(2):6–30.

Heilbron, Johan, Nicolas Guilhot, and Laurent Jeanpierre. 2008. ‘Toward a Transnational History of the Social Sciences’. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 44(2):146–60.

*Kauppi, Niilo. 2010. ‘The Political Ontology of European Integration’. Comparative European Politics 8(1):19–36.

Kauppi, Niilo and Mikael R. Madsen. 2014. ‘Fields of Global Governance: How Transnational Power Elites Can Make Global Governance Intelligible’. International Political Sociology 8(3):324–30.

Krause, Monika. 2017. ‘How Fields Vary’. The British Journal of Sociology n/a-n/a.

Mudge, Stephanie Lee and Antoine Vauchez. 2012. ‘Building Europe on a Weak Field: Law, Economics, and Scholarly Avatars in Transnational Politics’. American Journal of Sociology 118(2):449–92.

Steinmetz, George. 2013. ‘A Child of the Empire: British Sociology and Colonialism, 1940s–1960s’. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 49(4):353–378.

*Steinmetz, George. 2016. ‘Social Fields, Subfields and Social Spaces at the Scale of Empires: Explaining the Colonial State and Colonial Sociology’. The Sociological Review Monographs 64(2):98–123.

*Steinmetz, George. 2017. ‘The Octopus and the Hekatonkheire’. Pp. 369–94 in The Many Hands of the State: Theorizing Political Authority and Social Control, edited by A. S. Orloff and K. J. Morgan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

*Steinmetz, George. 2017a. ‘Sociology and Colonialism in the British and French Empires, 1945–1965’. The Journal of Modern History 89(3):601–48.

Literature:

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The Rules of Art. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic Wacquant. 1999. ‘On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason’. Theory, Culture & Society 16(1):41–58.

Dezalay, Yves and Bryant G. Garth. 2002. The Internationalization of Palace Wars. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Georgakakis, Didier and Julien Weisbein. 2010. ‘From above and from below: A Political Sociology of European Actors’. Comparative European Politics 8(1):93–109.

Go, Julian and Monika Krause. 2016. ‘Fielding Transnationalism: An Introduction’. The Sociological Review Monographs 64(2):6–30.

Heilbron, Johan, Nicolas Guilhot, and Laurent Jeanpierre. 2008. ‘Toward a Transnational History of the Social Sciences’. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 44(2):146–60.

Kauppi, Niilo. 2010. ‘The Political Ontology of European Integration’. Comparative European Politics 8(1):19–36.

Kauppi, Niilo and Mikael R. Madsen. 2014. ‘Fields of Global Governance: How Transnational Power Elites Can Make Global Governance Intelligible’. International Political Sociology 8(3):324–30.

Krause, Monika. 2017. ‘How Fields Vary’. The British Journal of Sociology n/a-n/a.

Mudge, Stephanie Lee and Antoine Vauchez. 2012. ‘Building Europe on a Weak Field: Law, Economics, and Scholarly Avatars in Transnational Politics’. American Journal of Sociology 118(2):449–92.

Steinmetz, George. 2013. ‘A Child of the Empire: British Sociology and Colonialism, 1940s–1960s’. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 49(4):353–378.

Steinmetz, George. 2016. ‘Social Fields, Subfields and Social Spaces at the Scale of Empires: Explaining the Colonial State and Colonial Sociology’. The Sociological Review Monographs 64(2):98–123.

Steinmetz, George. 2017a. ‘Sociology and Colonialism in the British and French Empires, 1945–1965’. The Journal of Modern History 89(3):601–48.

Steinmetz, George. 2017b. ‘The Octopus and the Hekatonkheire’. Pp. 369–94 in The Many Hands of the State: Theorizing Political Authority and Social Control, edited by A. S. Orloff and K. J. Morgan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Swartz, David. 2013. ‘Metaprinciples for Sociological Research in a Bourdieusian Perspective’. Pp. 19–35 in Bourdieu and Historical Analysis, edited by P. S. Gorski. Duke University Press.