220035 BGHS Theory Class Understanding as a key concept in the humanities and social sciences (S) (WiSe 2023/2024)

Understanding is a key concept in the humanities and social sciences which goes hand in hand with ideas of the universality of academic knowledge production. At the same time, everyday experience in academic exchange shows that the researchers’ perspectives can very much vary, and that it is the multitude of perspectives that impacts the researcher’s understanding of the research object. In other words, taking a certain perspective allows the researcher to take a direction in order to pursue her project consistently. However, to solve research problems, we need many perspectives, which in turn makes an academic and interdisciplinary exchange a vehicle of innovation in research.

In the Theory Class we will put attention to core texts of hermeneutics from Johann Gustav Droysen to Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricœur, and follow up on understanding in historical sociology reading Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu and Kimberlé Crenshaw. Some methods such as discourse analysis have decidedly taken up the concept of 'analysis' criticizing both hermeneutics and understanding as fuzzy. However, since a few years there is a kind of come back to the concept. The question to be posed is how can this concept be defined and operationalized today, why is the researchers’ perspectives productive for the analytical approach of knowledge production and what is the gain in knowledge of the concept of understanding today?

Basic sources of situated knowledge production are personal experiences, i.e. cognitive experiences (like things learned), bodily or sensory experiences (like things we have gone through), and social or cultural experiences (like where we come from). In studying concepts of understanding, we will also explore the epistemological and social contexts of ‘subjective’ experiences and deliberate how they can be made fruitful for one’s own research.

The Theory Class will be based on two-days long workshop (1./2.12.2023, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.) preceded by a prior meeting (10.11.2023, 10-12 a.m.).

Requirements for participation, required level

This Theory Class is only accessible for participants who have successfully applied for the Blended Intensive Programme (BIP).