'The Challenge to Global Social Inquiry: inclusion, exclusion, and participation'

University of Birmingham
Conference Room, European Research Institute, Pritchatts Road

Edgbaston, Birmingham

Friday 18th November 2005

This joint workshop/conference of the Universities of Sussex and Birmingham is linked to a research seminar series in comparative and cross-cultural research methods funded under the National Research Centre for Research Methods short term research projects.

The increasing globalisation of social research is creating new problems of research that require innovative solutions. This occurs at a time of fundamental re-ordering in disciplinary social science, when a generic and interdisciplinary social science (with common methods applied to social problems) is challenging pre-existing disciplinary formations. The increasingly cross-cultural nature of social inquiry is also opening up areas of commonality in approach with the studies of culture and community developed within the humanities. The 'democratisation' of the research process and calls for research subjects to have a voice within the research process have challenged traditional epistemologies of social science and their associated methodologies.

This workshop/conference will address the frequently polarised arguments concerning the relationship between social theory and social inquiry. It does so in the context of public concerns about the role of science and the operation of expertise within democratic and increasingly globalised societies. National social science must also be global social science and national problems set in an international and comparative context. To this end, the conference focuses on four themes:

1) disciplines: a limit to global social inquiry?

2) subjects or objects: power, participation and social inquiry

3) secularism: a necessary condition for social inquiry?

4) national social science: a limit to global social inquiry?

To register please contact one of the conference organisers: John Holmwood (j.holmwood@bham.ac.uk) or Gurminder K. Bhambra (g.k.bhambra@sussex.ac.uk).

Attendance is limited to eighty participants. Some funding is available to support postgraduate student attendance. Anyone wishing to apply for funds should send a paragraph stating the benefit of the conference to their research together with a statement from their supervisor supporting their attendance. An email from the supervisor to the student forwarded with the email application will be sufficient. The supervisor's statement will be expected to comment on the availability of local funding and possibilities of part support from the department. For further details contact John Holmwood (j.holmwood@bham.ac.uk).