Social Science Research Council

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL
DISSERTATION PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT FELLOWSHIP

RETHINKING EUROPE: RELIGION, ETHNICITY, NATION
SPRING 2007 WORKSHOP AGENDA

Research Director: John Bowen
Research Director: Rogers Brubaker

Radisson Hotel Denver Stapleton Plaza
Thursday, May 17 – Sunday, May 20, 2007

Throughout Europe – however one defines “Europe” – ethnoreligious, ethnoracial, ethnolinguistic, ethnoregional, and ethnonational heterogeneity are generating new political claims and counterclaims, new policy debates and initiatives, new organizational forms and discursive fields, new cultural practices and lived experiences.  Students and scholars have been addressing these phenomena in a variety of disciplines, asking a wide range of questions and employing a wide range of methods and data.  Participants in this workshop are drawn from anthropology, history, political science, sociology, and ethnomusicology.  Their diverse sites of analysis include tourism, musical and artistic performance, religious identifications, everyday social interaction, language and civics tests, and ethnic and religious organizations on local, national, and transnational levels and over various time scales in France, Germany, Spain, the UK, and Turkey. 

This workshop will seek to trace the contours of this emerging cross-disciplinary field and to help prepare fellows for their pre-dissertation summer research. The two goals stand in close relation to each other: through a sustained and structured discussion of student proposals and their component parts, we hope to contribute to the mapping of the research field itself.  The second workshop will focus on the mechanics and methods of writing a dissertation proposal.  Together, the two workshops are designed to help students prepare cogent and fundable dissertation proposals.

Workshop Readings and Resources:
Research Field resources have been placed on the secure DPDF web portal. 

Workshop Assignments

April 30, 2007: Each of you has prepared a 5-8 page statement specifying the research question(s) you are asking, describing the method(s) you will employ, and discussing the sources of data you will examine. 

By the beginning of the workshop: Read carefully the statements prepared by all the workshop participants.  These can be found on the secure DPDF web portal. Participants will not  present their projects at the workshop; it will be assumed that everyone has read closely all  the proposals. 

For our first workshop session [i.e., “Session 2”] : Please read the following methodological selections:
o Watts, “In Search of the Holy Grail”
o Bowen, “Beyond Migration”
o Briggs, “Leaning How to Ask”
o Brubaker et al, “Conclusion/Note on Data”  

At the workshop: Two fellows are assigned to introduce the discussion of each project; in other words, each fellow will discuss two projects. Fellows plan to speak initially for 6-7 minutes on the paper, and to set out in a concise way: what are the research questions (including general orienting questions and more specific questions)?  What are the methods? What sorts of evidence will be considered and assessed?  And how do questions, method, and evidence fit together?   Fellows may propose one or two suggestions for the author or pose one or two questions for the group (for example, concerning an additional method, or an alternative way to formulate the question). These discussions do not aim to evaluate or assess the project but rather to introduce our discussions by focusing attention on key issues of research questions, methods, and evidence.  
 

RETHINKING EUROPE: WORKSHOP SCHEDULE 

Session 1: Introduction and Purpose of Workshops
(Thursday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

Plenary Session: Presentations by Program Director Peter Sahlins and the Research Directors

Session 2:  Mapping Fields, Asking Questions, Choosing Methods, Assessing Evidence
(Thursday, 1:30 PM – 5 PM)  

The two project directors will discuss three closely-connected issues: the development of the field, formulating research questions, and developing appropriate methodology. We will draw on our own work and trajectories, and the work of others.

The field, for us, is built around new methodological emphases (such as micro-level analysis), critical analyses of analytical categories (such as ethnicity and transnationalism), and the appreciation of new social forms (such as religious movements and Europe-wide organizations). In some ways, our sense of the field builds on long-standing questions about ethnicity and state-formation, everyday forms of sociability, and debates about religion and politics, but asks whether new methods could not give us more valid understandings of the social processes that subtend key social categories.

As we discuss formulating research questions, we will distinguish between broader orienting questions and more specific research questions, alternative ways to fit your project into a research tradition, and legitimate disciplinary differences in formulation. How do you formulate questions that are general enough to allow you to situate your project in a tradition of inquiry or an ongoing controversy and align yourself with major figures in your field yet also specific enough to be well tailored to your specific research project?

Method, for us, stretches from formulating the question, through designing appropriate kinds of study (interviews, observations, archival work), to weighing whether (and how) the evidence gathered does indeed speak to the original question, or perhaps leads you to modify it. Please read the Briggs piece (under “reading materials” on the main Rethinking Europe page) about issues with interviews. We are especially concerned that you avoid the traps of looking only at “positive” (in the statistical sense) cases, where the phenomenon to be studied will be most evident— “looking under the lamp post” or “selecting on the dependent variable”—and we will talk through ways to avoid these pitfalls.

Sessions 3-6: Friday and Saturday

These sessions will focus on student proposals, which have been (roughly) grouped in thematic clusters.  We will have about an hour to discuss each proposal.  Discussions  will begin with two initiators, one drawn from outside the thematic cluster, the other from within.  Each initiator will be asked to speak for 6 or 7 minutes, focusing on research questions, methods, and evidence.

Session 3: (Friday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

- Sheila Nowinski: “Postwar French Catholic Political Culture, 1944-1958”
- Elayne Oliphant: Laïcité and Discreet Religiosity: Experiences of Catholicism in Secular France”
- Alexander Street: “The Politics of Language and Civics Tests in Europe”

Session 4: (Friday, 1:30 PM – 5 PM)

- Avi Astor: “Regional Variation and the (Re)Making of Islam in Modern Spain”
- Rebekah Tromble: “Framing Islam: Hizb ut-Tahrir’s Transnational Call to Action”
- Gulseren Kozak-Islik: “A Comparative Study of Islamic Legal, Religious and Political Institutions in Europe and the USA”

Session 5:  (Saturday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

- Susan Rottmann: “The Predicaments of Belonging to Europe: Ethnicity, Religion, and Class for German-Turkish Return Migrants”
- Zeynep Ozgen: “Rethinking the Role of Identity in Daily Life: Social Interaction in Antakya, Turkey”
- M. Nell Balthrop-Flynn: “Security, Embodiment, and Development in Euromediterranean Marseille’s Franco-Maghrebi Communities”

Session 6: (Saturday, 1:30 PM – 5 PM)

- Abigail Dumes: “Musical Citizenship: Race, Religion and the Politics of Belonging among African Gospel Performers in France”
- Crystal Fleming: “Cultural Boundaries and Public Performance: The Politics of Ethnicity in French and American Spoken Word Poetry Venues”
- Michael O’Toole: “Modeling Multiculturalism: Discourses of Multiculturalism and the Experience of German-Turkish Musicians in Berlin, Germany”

Session 7:  Looking Forward: From the Field to the Proposal
(Sunday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

In the first half of this final session, we will revisit the question of the shape and structure of our emerging interdisciplinary field in the light of our discussions of student projects.  We will also try to consolidate some of the lessons learned during the workshop, especially as these pertain to the fit between research questions, methods, and evidence. 

In the second half of the session, we focus on the question: where to go from here?  We consider some strategies for making the best use of the period of summer research, and ways of avoiding some common pitfalls.   We will also discuss the process of moving forward towards the preparation of a dissertation proposal.  And we will discuss our plans for the September workshop.