The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse

Investigating the Politics of Knowledge and Meaning-making.

Reiner Keller, Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Wolf J Schünemann, Reiner Keller, Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Wolf Schünemann, Wolf J Schünemann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351690607
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) hasreoriented research into social forms, structuration and processes of meaning construction and reality formation; doing so by linking social constructivist and pragmatist approaches with post-structuralist thinking in order to study discourses and create epistemological space for analysing processes of world-making in culturally diverse environments.

SKAD is anchored in interpretive traditions of inquiry and allows for broadening– and possibly overcoming– of the epistemological biases and restrictions still common in theories and approaches of Western- and Northern-centric social sciences. An innovative volume, thisbook is exactly attentive to these empirically based, globally diverse further developments of approach, with a clear focus on the methodology and its implementation. Thus, The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse presents itself as a research program and locates the approach within the context of interpretive social sciences, followed byeleven chapters on different cases from around the world that highlight certain theoretical questions and methodological challenges.

Presenting outstanding applications of the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse across a wide variety of substantive projects and regional contexts, this text will appeal to postgraduate students and researchers interested in fields such as Discourse Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Qualitative Methodology and Methods.

This book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

1 Introduction

The sociology of knowledge approach to discourse in an interdependent world

Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Reiner Keller and Wolf J. Schünemann

The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (hereafter SKAD) has reoriented research on social forms, structurations, and processes of meaning construction and reality formation by linking social constructivist with post-structuralist thinking. It is especially well-suited for studying discourses and processes of sense-making in culturally diverse environments. SKAD offers a conceptual and methodological research program open to the pursuit of diverse research objects and issues. To do so, it allows issue-oriented modifications of its practices central to the specific questions of meaning-making, knowledge and knowledge society raised by a particular project. It thereby allows stretching and possibly overcoming the epistemological biases and restrictions still common in theories and approaches of Western- and Northern-centric social sciences. This book focuses precisely on such empirically based, globally diverse developments of the SKAD approach to date, providing clear articulation of the methodology and its implementation.

Studying discourses as world-making activity

In 2005, Adele Clarke stated in her book on Situational Analysis that today’s world is “awash in seas of discourses” and pointed out the high degree in which social scientific inquiry around the world strongly needs elaborated methodologies of discourse research (Clarke, 2005: 145). At about the same time, social scientists from different disciplines and backgrounds were developing decisive steps towards discourse research, presenting their new approaches at conferences, in books, etc. (e.g. Keller et al., [2001] 2011; Wetherell, Taylor and Yates, 2001; Jaworski and Coupland, 2002). What these new methodologies had in common was that they pioneered by going beyond the core linguistic issues and established discursive critiques of ideology characteristic of earlier approaches to discourses. Instead they argued for a legitimate social science and humanities space for research into questions of the social (discursive) making of realities.

A decade later, this pattern of innovation continues. The essential challenge posed to all such approaches concerns how to best proceed in an increasingly interdependent world. These challenges include the omni-presence of the Anthropocene era of human-made ecological and climatic risks in constant interplay with knowledge societies, and the mediatisation and digitalisation of social life, deeply reshaping both production and consumption patterns. These are accompanied by transnational or global circulations of knowledges, ideologies, religious belief systems and attached symbolisms. Such heterogeneous systems of meaning-making require theoretically and methodologically sound means of research to better grasp the complex discourses of our times.

Renewed conflicts between ideologies, religions and (scientific) claims to knowledge and symbolic ordering are occurring, especially in making sense of environmental, climatic and related socio-political processes of change on global to local scales. Such conflicts vividly illustrate the power of public discourses in shaping not only public opinion but, by means of guiding actors in their decision-making, also shaping everyday life. Social relations of knowledge and knowing, as well as politics of knowledge and knowing, are highly consequential structures and processes both within and between societies across the globe. In very fundamental ways, they shape the world and worlds, the “multiple realities” (Schütz, [1945] 1973) in which we dwell. In line with social constructivist theory, the discursive, communicative and social construction of reality can thus be empirically observed globally. Moreover, it needs to be analytically understood in its local to global workings of shaping social realities in a century of globally interdependent turmoil.

This edited volume addresses the methodological challenges ahead by diving into SKAD, an original social science approach to analysing discourse based on the sociological traditions of the interpretive paradigm, the sociology of knowledge and Foucauldian research. SKAD was established in Germany in the early 2000s in a series of well-received books and articles (e.g. Keller, 2005, [2005] 2011a, 2012, 2013, 2019; Keller and Truschkat, 2012; Keller, Knoblauch and Reichertz, 2013). It is now widely used across disciplines (e.g. see Herzig and Moon, 2013; Sommer, 2012; Gorr and Schünemann, 2013; Holmgren, 2013). While SKAD was initially taken up in Germany in the late 1990s (see references in Keller on SKAD, Chapter 2, this volume), there has been increasing transnational interest among scholars worldwide in recent years (e.g. Wu, 2012; Feuer and Hornidge, 2015; Hornidge, Oberkircher and Kudryavtseva, 2013; Hornidge, 2017).¹

Demonstrating SKAD’s transnational reach, this edited volume brings together empirically outstanding SKAD applications from a range of academic disciplines, geographic, socio-cultural and thematic contexts. The common aspects addressed in all the chapters include (1) using SKAD in generating the specifics of the research perspective and questions; (2) presenting analytical categories taken from SKAD; (3) describing the data selection process and sampling; (4) illustrating the concrete application of SKAD in data analysis; (5) describing the issue-specific analytical framework developed and its relation to SKAD; (6) demonstrating the integration and presentation of empirical findings; as well as (7) noting potential contributions to the particular research area addressed.

In short, it is the aim of this volume to discuss SKAD and its further development through its recent implementation in highly varied research settings. SKAD is a global yet not hegemonic tool which becomes local in the process of being interpreted and adapted to the local context, theme, and the specific discourse at hand.

Methodology, not method. Frame, not recipe

In studying processes of the institutionalisation and transformation of symbolic orderings, SKAD adopts Berger and Luckmann’s perspective on the dialectical relationship between objective and subjective reality. This is constructed through the employment of different knowledges, while additionally drawing on Foucault’s call to regard discourses as practices of power/knowledge, discursive formations, statements, dispositifs and discursive battles. SKAD is in some ways close to certain ideas in social studies of sciences and technology (e.g. Law 1986, 1993, 2008). But instead SKAD brings to the fore the broad traditions of sociologies of knowledge and meaning, as well as poststructuralist Foucauldian perspectives. It argues for inquiry into the production, circulation and performance of processes of meaning making all across society and societies – far beyond the core science fields initially studied in Science and Technology Studies (STS) research.

SKAD offers a comprehensive conceptual and methodological framework, but no pre-defined, static or prescriptive set of methods to be implemented as part of the empirical and practical operationalisation of the research (Keller, [2005] 2011a; 2011b; Christmann and Mahnken, 2013; Hornidge, 2013). Instead, and in line with Berger/Luckmann’s definition of knowledge as everything that is regarded as knowledge in and by society (1966/1984: 16), SKAD emphasises context-specific conceptualisations of discourse. Discourses are explicitly understood as historically established, identifiable ensembles of symbolic and normative devices, all of which are context- and case-specific in nature. They are performed through social actors’ (often competing or conflictual) discursive practices, with high impacts on the reality of the world we encounter, see, and feel.

SKAD’s implementation depends on the particular discourse being studied, its main advocates or contestants, the communication platforms housing it, its underlying rationalities, logics, languages and power structures. SKAD thus emphasises the importance of defining afresh the concrete methods for studying a particular discourse using SKAD as research lens on each occasion, while also reflecting on the positionality of the researcher in relation to the discourse itself (e.g. both emic and etic to the discourse itself).

Discourses socially construct, communicate, legitimate, and objectify structures of meaning which have social consequences for the institutional, organisational and social actors’ levels. As detailed elsewhere in this volume (Chapter 2), Reiner Keller therefore stresses the study of discourses as knowledge/power complexes that exist through and in practice(s) and dispositifs. Practices are broadly defined as conventionalised patterns of action, based on collective stocks or repertoires of knowledge about proper ways of acting (Keller, 2011b: 55; [2005] 2011a: 255–257).

A dispositif is defined as an infrastructure established by social actors or collectivities in order to resolve a particular situation. A further distinction is also made between dispositifs of discourse production and dispositifs or infrastructures emerging out of a discourse (Keller, 2011b: 56; [2005] 2011a: 258–260). This distinction of discourses constituted in social practices as well as the resulting dispositifs also underlines the material and immaterial character of discourses, while bearing in mind the role of social actors in constructing and reconstructing realities. Therefore SKAD discourse research, according to its concrete purpose, makes use of textual analysis as well as ethnographic inquiry (see contributions to this volume).

Not for simple causal explanation

While SKAD can and must be adapted by every researcher wanting to use it, its adaptability is nevertheless limited. The choice of a discourse approach always implies the foregrounding of certain features while backgrounding others. The same is true for SKAD as it does not pretend to be an all-comprehensive strategy for discourse studies and should not be mistaken for a one-size-fits-all approach. First and foremost, integrating discourse as conceived by SKAD in any kind of causal-mechanic theoretical model makes no sense and would not work conceptually. In contrast, SKAD assumes that no single explanatory factor for social behaviour can be isolated from the complex processes of meaning-making through discourse. SKAD therefore refuses to include “the discourse” as another variable in a formula, which mainstream positivism might demand in taking discourse research seriously. Indeed, some social-constructivists or discourse-oriented scholars who attempt to seize “the middle-ground” try and fail to do this in hopes of fulfilling positivist demands.

As SKAD provides a theoretically grounded research methodology, it does not include any predefined schemes of explanation (see Keller on SKAD, Chapter 2 this volume). In particular, SKAD does not claim to be able to reveal any causal mechanisms for any empirically observable outcome. Nor does SKAD legitimate the application of a “hermeneutics of suspicion” (Ricœur, 1970; Keller and Clarke, Chapter 3, this volume). Applying SKAD is not about explaining certain outcomes by certain factors, but centres instead on reconstructing the dynamics of knowledge orders and revealing power/knowledge relations, processes and effects in socio-historically specific settings.

What is true for SKAD in relation to mainstream social science can also be said in contrast to other discourse analytic approaches. While SKAD is theoretically grounded, it does not arrive (over-)loaded with theoretical baggage, instead remaining open to fruitful combinations with other substantive theories depending on the research object under study. Like interpretive research in general, SKAD suggests developing and adapting research strategies across the processes and progress of inquiry. If a researcher is seeking a quick empirical substantiation of certain claims and assumptions, then SKAD is probably a bad choice of method as it is intended for intensive, profound and detailed interpretive analysis of social communication. Such analyses are sorely needed and SKAD can help provide them.

SKAD for a glocal academy

Studying the interdependent discursivities² of our time entails crossing increasingly contested and renegotiated disciplinary and geographic boundaries. These include boundaries between so-called systematic disciplines focusing on the Global North and OECD-world,³ and Area Studies or Postcolonial Studies focusing on the Global South including so-called “developing” and transforming countries. Today, the greater or lesser global interdependence of discourses, their circulations and translations into manifold contexts challenge our existing methodological and analytical lenses. They emphatically do not remain in the traditional disciplinary and geographic container spaces of the traditional Western science system.

SKAD enthusiastically takes on these challenges, offering a guiding methodological and analytical frame, while intentionally leaving ample room for local, context-, theme- and discourse-specific further development and additions. This volume was designed to present a broad range of such contextualisations and operationalisations of SKAD. Foucault’s critical ontology of the present as well as more current challenges to the intellectual dominance of the West, legitimised through colonial histories, voiced by colleagues such as Stuart Hall (1997), Gayatri Spivak (1999), and Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000) have encouraged and informed SKAD to seek engagement with the politics of power/knowledge and the work they do within and between societies. Examples can be found in the chapters here by Zhang and McGhee, and Küppers.

SKAD heeds Walter Mignolo’s plea to study the social starting from many worlds and thereby diversity, rather than from one assumed universal, reference frame. Mignolo called this concept “pluriversality” (2007: 453, 2011: 2). It captures and further encourages the intention of SKAD to support study of the manifold discursivities of our times in their own right, according to their own logics, in their own languages and cultural and socio-political contexts. We will not be able to understand the interdependent social and discursive worlds of today if the tools we use are developed based only on limited empirical realities, everyday experiences, ways of knowing and ways of explaining, rather than the full array. SKAD offers a conceptual and methodological frame for studying the everyday workings of discourse in a wide variety of academic disciplines and studies, geographic, socio-political, cultural or thematic contexts.

It is precisely on this point that SKAD as a proposed epistemological frame interlinks and is inspired by recent discussions regarding rethinking Area Studies. In Area Studies at the Crossroads (Mielke and Hornidge 2017), authors from five different continents reflect on the how of decolonising the academy requisite for understanding, in Max Weber’s terms, social reality on this planet. The authors argue for the need (1) to develop conceptual approaches and methodologies for empirically assessing social reality in its dynamic, constantly changing forms based on local empirical contexts, by and with local researchers at local research institutes; and (2) to contribute to the nurturing of critically thinking minds and high degrees of reflexivity in local epistemic cultures and knowledge systems. To accomplish these goals, the authors reject the often cited divide between so-called systematic disciplines and Area Studies and instead strongly argue for their mutual enrichment and reciprocal further development. Several of the chapters in Mielke and Hornidge’s (2017) book illustrate the empirical and analytical strength, but also substantial challenges and limits, of linking conceptual thought of systematic social science discip...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction: the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse in an interdependent world
• 2 The sociology of knowledge approach to discourse: an introduction
• 3 Situating SKAD in interpretive inquiry
• 4 The social construction of value: a comparative SKAD analysis of public discourses on waste in France and Germany
• 5 SKAD analysis of European multi-level political debates
• 6 Legislation and discourse: research on the making of law by means of discourse analysis
• 7 A SKAD ethnography of educational knowledge discourses
• 8 Using SKAD to study Chinese contemporary governance: reflections on our research process
• 9 Using SKAD to analyse classification practices in public health: methodological reflections on the research process
• 10 Self-positioning of semi-skilled workers: analysing subjectification processes with SKAD
• 11 Dangerous or endangered? Using the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse to uncover subject positions of sex workers in South African media discourse
• 12 Guidance on transitions: reconstructing the rationalities of the European discourse on career guidance services using the sociology of knowledge approach
• 13 Using SKAD to investigate cooperation and conflict over water resources
• 14 Studying discourses ethnographically: a sociology of knowledge approach to analysing macro-level forces in micro-settings
• 15 From analysis to visualisation: synoptical tools from SKAD studies and the entity mapper