Exploding Method: A New Scholars Symposium
20 September 2007

Exploding Method: A New Scholars Symposium is a one day event being held by Goldsmiths Sociology Department on 20 September 2007. The event builds on the successful (Re)Creating: Methodologies, Concepts, Practices postgraduate symposium of 2005. The symposium aims to engage postgraduate students in discussion around key methodological debates, in a format that will encourage dialogue and constructive engagement amongst participants. We are pleased to welcome Prof. Howard Becker as key respondent, with Prof. Les Back (Goldsmiths, University of London) as facilitator.

Current debates around the ways in which methods not only represent but also shape social realities, have implications for the processes and politics through which our research is crafted, as well as for our own situated subjectivities as researchers. This event will address these ideas around the theme of explosion; unmaking in order to (perhaps) reconstruct and reconnect.

The etymology of 'explosion' reveals a history of rejection: the Latin ex-plaudere referring to the act of driving a bad actor from the stage through applause. This does, however, open up the possibilities for an ambiguous engagement with explosion, navigating the challenges of where and how to reject and approve. More particularly, Exploding Method is aimed at inquiring into recent debates on objects as assemblages and new materially innovative methods, the degree of our own reflexive engagement with reality-making processes, and the politics of our research objects / subjects.

Participants will be organised into small streams, which will aim to not only enable researchers to present their work, but also provide an opportunity to construct a series of combined responses to take forward into a final plenary. In addition, each participant will be assigned one paper prior to the symposium to which s/he will be encouraged to prepare a response.
How to attend

Papers are invited from current PhD students and from those who have completed their PhD in the last five years. Broad themes include, but are not limited to:

* The bracketing of knowledge through research
* Relations between researcher and researched
* Possibilities offered by new material practices
* Emergence of new sociological entities
* Messiness and uncertainty
* The politics of representation
* Interdisciplinarity
* Investigating socio-technical assemblages
* Reflexivity and self-referentiality
* Non-coherence and methodological failure

An abstract of 250-300 words should be submitted to www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/exploding/applications no later than 29 June. Successful applicants will be notified by 6 July. If accepted, you will need to email your paper (no more than 3000 words) to exploding@gold.ac.uk by 31 August.

Further information

Exploding Method has been organised by PhD students from Goldsmiths Sociology Department. They are:

Joe Deville (j.deville@gold.ac.uk)
Dellia Duna (css01dd@gold.ac.uk)
Yael Gerson (so201yg@gold.ac.uk)
Allan Day (a.day@gold.ac.uk)

The symposium organisers are grateful for the support they have received from Goldsmiths Department of Sociology and from Goldsmiths Graduate School.
If you require further information on the symposium, please email exploding@gold.ac.uk.