DISCIPLINE AND PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND THE HUMANITIES

A lecture series for PhD and Research MA students, Fall 2019

Time table: All sessions are held from 5.15 to 6.45 pm
Session assignments

Speakers assign preparatory material, accompanied by one or several questions for students to bear in
mind while reading; as well as at least one proposition. The propositions are meant to stimulate
debate, and do not necessarily represent the speaker’s views.

1. Introduction Pieter ter Keurs & Elena Burgos Martinez 17 Sept Lipsius 148

Preparation
- This overall document with session assignments (any questions on this document can be asked
during the first session)
- ‘Where Is Here?,’ LIAS discussion paper on area studies and the discipline

Question(s)
- Who are ‘we’?
- What is a discipline, in the present context?
- And what is a place?

Proposition(s)
- We always begin from somewhere. This holds for scholarly traditions – research questions,
data, theory and method, and discourses at large. ‘Somewhere’ carries a particular set of
values, norms, biases and affiliations. How can we problematize our places and disciplines
in order to position ourselves and our research?

2. Geography David Henley 19 Sept Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Ishan Ashutosh (2017) 'The geography and area studies interface from the Second World War to the Cold
War', Geographical Review 107(4): 705-721.

Question(s)
- What do you think the discipline of geography has contributed to area studies?". What is 'geography' as
an academic discipline in your view?

Proposition(s)
- 'Many geographers think that their discipline was the mother of area studies, but that it has lost that
position due to specialization and fragmentation. Recently, with growing concern for environmental and
climate change issues (and the attendant need for holistic views), and thanks to the GIS revolution, the
discipline of geography has arguably been regaining something of its old prominence. However this is not
always easily accepted by scholars of related disciplines, who tend to see geography as little more than
'simple description'.'

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3. Anthropology Erik Bähre 24 Sept Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Bošković, Aleksandar and Thomas Hylland Eriksen, 2008. 'Introduction: Other Peoples’
Anthropologies' in Other People's Anthropologies: Ethnographic Practice on the Margins. A.
Boškovic (ed.). Berghahn Books: Oxford and New York.
- Veer, Peter van der, 2014. The value of comparison: Transcript of the Lewis Henry Morgan
Lecture given on November 13, 2013, HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory. Online:
http://www.haujournal.org/vanderVeer_TheValueOfComparison_LHML_Transcript.pdf

Question(s)
- How does ‘place’ feature comparison and positionality?
- What power dynamics are at play when comparing ‘cultures’, ‘states’, ‘societies’ or other
places?
- Can we compare places without assuming hierarchy, and if so, what does such a comparison entail?

Proposition(s)
- Anthropologists’ awareness of regional diversity and of the cultural and political
constructedness of place needs to be extended to the discipline itself and this problematizes
comparison. Anthropology is situated in place as much as in time, and this affects perspectives
on how and what to compare. All too often, comparison manifests itself as hierarchy, which
has made anthropologists reluctant to compare societies. But is it possible to compare without
assuming hierarchies between people and societies, and what insights could such a
comparison generate?

4. Gender Studies Ratna Saptari 26 Sept Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Yuval-Davis, Nira (2006) Intersectionality and Feminist Politics. European Journal of Women's Studies pp
193 - 209
- Roggeband, Conny and Mieke Verloo (2007) ‘Dutch Women are Liberated, Migrant
Women are a Problem: The Evolution of Policy Frames on Gender and Migration in the
Netherlands 1995-2005. Social Policy and Administration, vol 41, 3: 271-288

Question(s)
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of intersectionality as a concept that goes beyond
universalistic gender categorizations?
- How do policy and societal frames operate in creating and maintaining social boundaries
and what kind of categorizations are utilized to underline ‘difference’?
- What are your observations of the social struggles and response(s) to these types of
framings?

Proposition(s)
- The traditional feminist concept of patriarchy as an overarching term shaping gender
inequality is not anymore useful to understand multiple forms of inequality and
different types of gender disparities.
- Social boundaries are not fixed and through intersectional categorizations can often be
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 - ambiguous and multiplex, but at certain moments and under certain structural
contexts, they can be sharpened and essentialized.
- Methodologically one should examine the different levels of power structures which
shape different types of social divisions.

5. Philology Jonathan Silk 01 Oct Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Sheldon Pollock: ‘Philology in Three Dimensions’ in Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval
Cultural Studies 5,4 (2014): 398- 413

Question(s)
- Pollock claims that philology is at the very basis of the humanities as a whole; Is there a perspective from
which you see it as of fundamental use for your own research? If not, why not?
- If we would not question our ability to read the past, and indeed the present, how
could we know anything? Do we have access to such critical ‘reading’ through any
means other than philology in the broadest sense? If this is so, what sets philology
apart as a field, distinguishing it from ‘the skill of carefully interacting with the
world’?

Proposition(s)
- Philology is fundamentally a colonialist enterprise: it puts us in the position of telling others
what they mean or meant
- Pollock serves old wine in new bottles. He tries to make philology look sexy, but it’s nothing more than a
relic of the past.
- It is impossible to uncover the true meaning of a text. But we should not care.

No class on Thu 3 October 2019

6. History David Kloos 08 Oct Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. New Edition.
Princeton University Press, 2008. Preface + Introduction, pp. ix-xxi; 3-23.
- Buettner, Elizabth. Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture. Cambridge University Press,
2016. Introduction, pp. 1-19.

Question(s)
- What does Chakrabarty mean by “provincializing Europe”? What does he mean by
“Europe”?
- What would his thesis imply for the study of Europe (geographically defined)? How does
Buettner’s work complement or depart from it?
- How might these readings be relevant for your own research?

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7. International Relations Noa Schonmann 10 Oct Lipsius 148

Preparation
- “Towards a Humanities-based International Relations: A Vision Statement and Summary
Report from the MAIR Working Group on Programme Development, May 2019”
- View: RSA ANIMATE of “The Divided Brain” by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist
[https://youtu.be/dFs9WO2B8uI]

Question(s)
- What is an Arts/Humanities mode of inquiry? How do we distinguish between an
arts/humanities and a (social) scientific approach/disciplines?
- What happens when you shift IR as field of research and study from social sciences to
humanities faculty?

Proposition(s)
- The academic discipline of International Relations was born in Britain and bred in the United
States. A century on, IR scholarship has spread across universities in the West, and beyond. It
has developed into an intellectual field of study that is rich in substance, diverse in approach,
and live with debate. While IR studies largely remain shoehorned into Social Science faculties,
the field is bursting at its disciplinary seams. In this session we explore the case for a
Humanities-based IR. We’ll outline an approach to the study of international relations that in
more than merely “informed” by case-studies of select historical experiences, in pursuit of
regularities and general mechanisms. A Humanities-based approach to IR is embedded in
discursive interpretation of human experience, both lived or imagined, focusing on social
processes of knowledge production in, and sense making of, world politics. The argument does
not go to discount the Social Scientific approach, but rather it is a call for deeper integration
and intense collaboration towards truly transdisciplinary work. While Social Scientific IR can
offer us insight into the realm of probability, a Humanities-based IR explores the great realm
of human possibility, and the remote peripheries of social imagination.

8. Linguistics Maaike van Naerssen 15 Oct Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Barbara Johnstone, ‘Place, Globalization, and Linguistic Variation,’ in Carmen Fought (ed),
Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004: 65-83

Question(s)
- Think about the (un)importance, the (ir)relevance, the (dis)advantage of associating a particular language
variety with place and its consequences for both everyday language use and (socio)linguistic analysis (feel
free to come up with your own examples!).
- What is the value/relevance/importance of place to sociolinguists?
- What is the value/relevance/importance of place to everyday language users?
- How do speakers use language to orient towards (and perhaps construct) place?
- In what ways can language be seen as a site of struggle, contradiction, and ambiguity in conflicts over
place identity?

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 Proposition(s)
- The language variety we speak is a reflection of our place identity.
- The claim “Because places are meaningful, place is normative” (p.69) is especially applicable to language
use and linguistic variation.

9. Midway reflection Elena Burgos Martinez 17 Oct Lipsius 148

Midway reflection

No class on Tue 22 and Thu 24 October 2019

10. Philosophy Ahab Bdaiwi 29 Oct Lipsius 148

Preparation
- W. Burkert, “Prehistory of Presocratic Philosophy in an Orientalizing,” in P. Curd and D. W. Graham (eds.),
The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford, 2008), 55-85.
- M Mahdi, “Orientalism and the Study of Islamic Philosophy,” in Journal of Islamic Studies 1 (1990), 77-98
- D Gutas, “Origins in Baghdad,” in R. Pasnau (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, volume
1 (Cambridge, 2010), 11-25

Question(s)
- Is Western (both ancient and medieval) philosophy a strictly rational – and scientific – enterprise?
- Is an idea rational, thoughtful, and philosophical if western culture deems it so?
- Are medieval Arabic ideas little more than religiously couched discourses masquerading as rational
speak?

Proposition(s)
- Western philosophy is an essentially contested term
- Western ancient and medieval philosophy is heavily indebted to eastern ideas, particularly Arabic, and
would lose their defining characteristic without exogenous factors of the Arabic and ancient Babylonian
and Egyptian religion

11. Law Adriaan Bedner 31 Oct Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Radbruch, Gustav. (2006). Five minutes of legal philosophy (1945).(Germany). Oxford Journal of Legal
Studies, 26(1), 13-15.
- Radbruch, Gustav. (2006). Statutory Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law (1946). Oxford Journal of Legal
Studies, 26(1), 1-11.

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Question(s)
- What were your ideas about law as a discipline and its relation to place before you read this article?
- Have your ideas changed? If so, how and why?

Proposition(s)
- When law is disconnected from its place of origin, its relation to justice is weakened or indeed severed,
and it is prone to become a tool of oppression.

12. The Study of Religion Ab de Jong 05 Nov Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Kim Knott, ‘How to Study Religion’, in: Religions in the Modern World: Traditions and Transformations,
Third Edition, Linda Woodhead et al. (eds.), New York: Routledge, 2016: 15-40

Question(s)
- Does religion/do religions actually exist or is it/are they exclusively discursive formations? Does any of
this matter in the real world (and in the academy)?
- How can we connect the work of specialists in individual religions with more general theorizing about
religion as a function of human cultures and societies?

Proposition(s)
- “Religion is often misunderstood and underrepresented across the humanities and social
sciences. This lack of emphasis and training is odd considering that most people around the
globe consider themselves religious and most scholars agree that religion continues to play
a vital role in all aspects of human activity.” (C.L. Williams – Discipline and Place 2018)
- “The claims of public religion to provide binding and authoritative norms for the regulation
of public and private life challenge the state’s claim to monopolize the regulation of public
life (and to authoritatively regulate certain areas of private life as well).” (R. Brubaker,
Grounds for Difference, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015: 100

13. On Collecting Pieter ter Keurs 07 Nov Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Walter Benjamin, ‘Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting’, in Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays
and Reflections, edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968 and later editions: 59-67

Question(s)
- Everyone collects. What do you collect, and how do you collect? What role do collections play in your
own research?

Proposition(s)
- The study of material culture is not confined to any particular discipline.

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 - Studying material objects does not necessarily lead to materialism.
- The self-evident nature of the material world makes us forget its importance.

14. Political Economy Jonathan London 12 Nov Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Ha-Joon Chang: Economics, the User’s Guide (Bloomsbury 2014), Chapters 1 & 4.
- Wolfgang Streeck, “How to Study Contemporary Capitalism.”
- Jonathan London, “Welfare, Inequality, and Marketization”

Question(s)
- What is the subject matter of economics?
- What are the main approaches to the study of the economy?
- How should we understand and study capitalism and market societies?
- How do different streams of political economy understand welfare and inequality in the contemporary
world market?

Proposition(s)
- The study of the economy is not confined to any particular discipline.
- Assumptions that prevail in disciplinary economics are grossly inadequate for understanding market
societies.
- Contending perspectives on welfare and inequality offer complementary insights for understanding the
world market.

15. Literary Studies Kamila Krakowska Rodrigues 14 Nov Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Haesendonck, Kristian van. 2018. "Travelling Concepts II: The Archipelago as a Spatial Concept for Literary
Studies." In Postcolonial Archipelagos. Essays on Hispanic Caribbean and Lusophone African Fiction, 285-
314. Brussels: Peter Lang.
- Mionga ki Obo. 2007. dir. Ângelo Torres. Portugal/São Tomé: Lx Filmes. 52min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhdgXfO6cVU&t=5s

Question(s)
- Google São Tomé and its history before watching the film and start thinking how to apply the concept of
archi-pelago as defined in the article in the analysis of the movie.

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 16. Archaeology Alexander Geurds 19 Nov Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Kristiansen, Kristian, "Old boundaries and new frontiers", in Current Swedish
archaeology 4 (1996): 102-23.

Archaeology debates both with its disciplinary identity as well as its locus of study. In this class we will briefly
survey some of the reasons and consequences of these discussions. The above reference, while a bit dated by
now, can serve as a backdrop to an informed debate.

Question(s)
- How can we see archaeology both as a discipline, as well as a mix of various others? Would you consider
that healthy or in fact rather risky? Discuss your reasons.
- The historical conditions from which archaeology developed might be seen to be essential to understand
archaeology today. Do you agree or disagree?
- How can we think of an archaeology that is consequential in the contemporary world? Can you think of
potential cases from your own horizon of experience?

Proposition(s)
- Theoretical divergence within archaeology leads to complementarity, rather than
contradiction.
- Archaeology is a local activity, but one of the most wide-ranging disciplines.
- Leiden University’s faculty structure of having Archaeology situated alongside Social
Sciences and Humanities is illustrative of its disciplinary complexity.

17. Conclusion Pieter ter Keurs & Elena Burgos Martinez 21 Nov Lipsius 148

Preparation
- Summaries of the think pieces your fellow students have drafted for their advisors.
- Online evaluation of the lecture series.

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