300113 Methodology of transcultural 'comparative global' social research (S) (WiSe 2005/2006)

Methodology of transcultural 'comparative global' social research
When studying processes of globalisation and localisation, fundamental questions of methodology and design will have to be asked in quite a new way than has been the case up to now in development research, sociology and social anthropology.
We have been quite sceptical and hesitating regarding the adequacy of doing comparative research between differen societies, first world and third world, between different cultures or civilisations, given the very heterogeneous and context specific developments. Given the long tradition of regional studies, case studies in social anthropology and fear of transfer of eurocentric concepts in development research, different voices have highlighted the necessitiy of fundamental methodological reconsidering approaches within a process of globalising social science.
Elements in this debate are the increasing interest in strengthening qualitative methodology (criticising e.g. populism of participatory planning methods) and empirically grounding certain theoritical fields such as sociology of Islam (Stauth), gender, social movements, global cities etc.. Social anthropology has developped into sociology of lifeworld. In both disciplines, theorizing is connected with theories and concepts connected to specific cases and regions, with more and more generalizing debates.
The question remains how to compare very different societies and phenomena and there is strong critique of recent standardised approaches on different regions or even global outlook regarding phenomena and concepts assumed to be context neutral such as election conduct, value systems etc. - on an extremely modernistic basis.
In this seminar, three different approaches will be followed up : qualitative analysis of concepts and phenomena considered to be constitutive of globalisation, such as social movements, networks, civil society within a framework of transcultural sociology, thereby avoiding dualisms of blocks, cultures etc. Second, globalisation is studies through its constitutional element of interlinking, global flows, translocal social spaces, networks and movements. Third, globalisation can so to speak be looked at regarding its building up from below, making use of knowledge accumulated by regional studies and looking at glocalisation and localisation.
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