774151


Course
The Use of Concepts: Choosing and Unfolding Concepts in PhD Theses

Faculty

Thomas Dumm, Professor, Department of Political Science, Amherst College, USA

Mitchell Dean, Professor, Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy, CBS

Bent Meier Sørensen, Professor (mso), Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy, CBS

Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, Professor, Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy, CBS

Mads Peter Karlsen, Assistant Professor, Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy, CBS

Kaspar Villadsen, Professor (mso), Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy, CBS


Course Coordinator
Professor (mso) Kaspar Villadsen

Prerequisites

Only PhD students can participate in the course.

Participation requires submission of a short paper (see more below). Papers must be in English and deadline is 20 May 2016.

It is a precondition for receiving the course diploma that the PhD student attends the whole course.


Aim

The course will provide the participants with:

a)    An introduction to key epistemological discussions around the use of concepts in the humanities and social sciences. We will among other things discuss different approaches to the use of concepts, such as ‘the representational approach’, ‘conceptual activist’, and the reconfiguration and development of concepts

b)    The potentials and limits of the particular concept figuring in the participant’s research will be discussed. Hence, a range of analytical concepts will be explored and discussed in relation to the participants’ research

c)    Possibilities for supplementing a given conceptual apparatus with other analytical resources will be discussed
 


Course content

Concepts are the building blocks of academic research. And yet we often fail to understand properly how to use conceptual frameworks in order to advance our research. Max Weber made a conceptual breakthrough in his study on ‘the protestant Ethic’, Michel Foucault’s writings on ‘discipline’ and ‘governmentality’ and Ulrich Bech’s notion of ‘risk society’. The use of strong concepts makes a difference on the impact of our work in the research community and beyond.

Questions of the use of concepts are crucial in the discussions at Ph.D. defenses: Are the concepts the student is using relevant for the study in question? Are they carefully selected and defined? Could other concepts from alternative theoretical traditions have been chosen with better results? Are the concepts used in a manner that is sufficiently sensitive to the empirical material, or do they foreclose the complexities of the social or historical reality?

Schematically, it is possible to distinguish between three ways of utilizing concepts in academic work. First, one may use a concept to verify, generalize, or encapsulate empirical descriptions. A common strategy is to use a concept as a way to condense and present the overall findings of a research project, thereby advancing its relevance and traction beyond the particular case in question. The concept may serve to guide the choice of data, the focus points of attention, and the final presentation of the entire research project. For instance, a Ph.D. dissertation may set out to investigate the ‘governmentalization’ of Danish elderly care. In this case, this project may be critically questioned in terms of how well it reflects the content of Foucault’s original concept, while, at the same time, it may be asked: to what extent does the project succeeds in generating original, unexpected insights that extend the concepts beyond the original formulation? We immediately can see that the use of the concept becomes central to any evaluation of the quality of this research project. In sum, in this first usage, the concept serves to encompass and substantiate empirical descriptions. 

Second, a study may have as its key objective to critique, challenge and reformulate a particular concept. In this case, the criteria of success is not whether a concept is applied in an adequate manner (that both respects the original definitions of it and produces new empirical insights), but rather whether the study effectively succeeds in contesting a given concept. Such contestation may take place in different ways: factual data may be presented to contest the validity of a received, perhaps, self-evident concept; analytical work may demonstrate the logical contradictions and paradoxes inherent to a concept (formal deconstruction); and the recovering of historical material may display the fundamental contingency and instability of a given concept. Here, work by Derrida and Luhmann and scholars inspired by them would be relevant to the work undertaken.           

As a variant of the above approach, one may, third, mobilize a concept from an empirical archive and utilize it in one’s own writing, infusing it with new meanings, perhaps succeeding in redefining the concept altogether. This strategy could be termed ‘conceptual activism’ which rests on the recognition that constructing a concept is inevitably a performative act. This is so, because concepts are never neutral descriptors of reality but are always inserted into already conceptualized social domains. Here, they can have performative effects insofar as they re-describe, for instance, historical processes, the social order, what power is about, or how individuals achieve identity. This strategy of marshalling concepts for particular intellectual-political purposes can be found in some of Foucault’s work. He would often use concepts that he had found in the historical archive and begin using it for his own purposes, mobilizing it for historical descriptions of the emergence of modern ‘biopolitics’ or ‘the governmentalization of the state’. Such conceptual innovations were normally undertaken both as a means of narrating a historical development and as a tool for intervening in a particular theoretical-intellectual context. Historical description by way of concepts would be a tool for addressing or intervening in a particular present. In this case, then, the use of concepts needs to arbitrate between serving as a representational category and as a tool of intervention. 

This course addresses these issues by both exploring general problematics and potentials related to the use of concepts in writing dissertations. We shall also give examples of specific (state of the arte) uses of concepts in the work of prominent scholars. 

We wish to emphasize that clarifying the use of concepts is not only pertinent to philosophical and sociological research. It often becomes a crucial issue in ethnographic, anthropological research, for instance when guiding hypothesis are formulated or when findings are synthesized. 


Teaching style

The goal is to sharpen the conceptual apparatus in the dissertations. To that end we will set aside sufficient time to carefully examine and discuss the papers submitted by the participants.
The course will consist of both lectures/presentations by scholars who are specialist in a series of key thinkers’ use of concepts. The goal of the lectures is, first, to clarify the ways in which the thinker in question defined and employed their most significant concepts and, second, to suggest and demonstrate how to put the concepts at work in specific analysis. In the afternoon, there will be workshops that aim to explore how concepts function in each participant’s research/dissertation – with the aim of strengthening, deepening and nuancing the conceptual dimension of the dissertations/research (articles). 

Each participant is required to submit a paper that deals with the place of concepts in the PhD project in question. Papers that apply concepts to empirical problems in a variety of domains are welcomed, but so are papers that seek to contest, reformulate, or develop one or several concepts. A paper should be of approx. 5 pages. It is expected that the PhD student states the main analytical challenge/concern of the project in the paper, which we will then discuss in the light of conceptual challenges and potentials.

Papers/abstracts must be in English. Deadline is 20 May 2016.


Lecture plan

Tuesday 31 May    
10.00 - 12.30 Kaspar Villadsen From a ‘modern’ to a ‘postmodern’ use of concepts. Weber and Foucault
 
12.30 - 13.30 Lunch
  
13.30 - 15.00 Mitchell Dean Concepts and signatures with Agamben

15.00 - 17.00 Kaspar Villadsen, Thomas Dumm & Mitchell Dean Papers from PhD scholars

Wednesday 1 June    
10.00 - 12.30 Thomas Dumm The impossibility of a clear distinction: concepts with Derrida

12.30 - 13.30 Lunch
  
13.30 - 15.00 Bent Meier Sørensen Conceptual Activism: Taking the lead from Deleuze

15.00 - 17.00 Kaspar Villadsen, Thomas Dumm & Bent Meier Sørensen Papers from PhD scholars

Thursday 2 June    
10.00 - 12.30 Mads Peter Karlsen Concepts, examples and Zizek’s ideology critique

12.30 - 13.30 Lunch
  
13.30 - 15.00 Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen Auto-logical concepts and second order observation

15.00 - 17.00 Kaspar Villadsen, Mads Peter Karlsen & Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen Papers from PhD scholars

Friday 3 June    
10.00 - 12.30 Mads Peter Karlsen & Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen "Irrational" ideology critique versus "rational", analysis

12.30 - 13.30 Lunch
  
13.30 - 15.00 Mitchell Dean, Thomas Dumm & Kaspar Villadsen Papers from PhD scholars

15.00 - 17.00 Concluding discussion and evaluation                 


Learning objectives

Exam

Other

Start date
31/05/2016

End date
03/06/2016

Level
PhD

ECTS
5

Language
English

Course Literature
Agamben, G. (2009) “Theory of Signatures”, in The Signature of All Things: on method. New York: Zone Books, pp. 33-80Agamben, G. (2015) “Leviathan and Behemoth”, in Stasis: civil war as political paradigm. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 19-54Andersen, N. Å. (2011) “Conceptual History and the Diagnostics of the Present”, Management & Organizational History, 6(3), 248-267Dean, M. (2013) The Signature of Power: Sovereignty, governmentality and biopolitics. London: Sage (especially chapters 2, 3, 4 & 7)Dean, M. (2015) “Foucault must not be defended”, History and Theory 54 (3)Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1994) What Is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press (especially chapters 1-4)Deleuze, G. (1992) “What is a dispositif?”, In: T. J. Amstrong (ed.) Michel Foucault philosopher. London: Harvester WheatsheafFoucault, M. (1991) “Questions of Method”, in: Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, & Peter Miller (eds.) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 73-86Koselleck, R. (1985) ‘Space of Experience' and 'Horizon of Expectations': Two Historical Categories,’ In R. Koselleck: Futures Past, pp. 267-88Johnsen, C. G. & Sørensen, B. M. (2014). ‘It's capitalism on coke!’: From temporary to permanent liminality in organization studies. Culture and Organization, 21(4): 321-337Pfaller, R. (2007) “Why Žižek? Interpassivity and Misdemeanors: The Analysis of Ideology and the Žižekian Toolbox”, International Journal of Zizek Studies, 1(1): 33-50Villadsen, K. & Wahlberg, A. (2015) “The Government of Life: Managing populations, health, and scarcity”, Economy and Society, 44(1)Villadsen, K. (2015) “Michel Foucault and the Forces of Civil Society”, Theory, Culture and Society (early online)Weber, M. (2011) Methodology of Social Sciences. Edward Shils: Henry A. FinchŽižek, S. (1989) “How did Marx Invent the Symptom?” in The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: verso). pp. 1-53Žižek, S. (2008) “Preface to the Classic Routledge Edition” I Enjoy Your Symptoms! (London: Routledge). pp. 9-16 (Literature to be developed a bit further)

Fee
DKK 6,500

Minimum number of participants
15

Maximum number of participants
25

Location

Copenhagen Business School
Porcelænshaven 18B
2000 Frederiksberg
Room: S.023


Contact information

Katja Høeg Tingleff
kht.research@cbs.dk
Tel.: +45 38 15 28 39


Registration deadline
18/04/2016

Please note that your registration is binding after the registration deadline.

In case we receive more registrations for the course than we have places, the registrations will be prioritized in the the following order: Students from Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies (OMS), students from other CBS PhD schools, students from other institutions than CBS.

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