Democracy-in-Practice

Current debates in qualitative research on politics

Research seminar for advanced master’s students

Tuesdays between 13:15 and 14:45
Building 43, Room 0112/1

*** Don’t forget to register on Canvas ***

https://canvas.instructure.com/enroll/KPPWT9

Contact

Dr. Endre Dányi

Visiting Professor for the Sociology of Globalisation
Faculty of Social Sciences, Bundeswehr University Munich
Email: e.danyi@unibw.de
Office: 33/3113

Dr. Yannik Porsché

Lecturer and Research Fellow
Faculty of Social Sciences, Bundeswehr University Munich
Email: yannik.porsche@unibw.de
Office: 33/1273

Course description

How can we think about democracy – not as a set of abstract institutions and procedures, but as a
series of partially connected discursive and material practices? And how can we study those practices
in the social sciences? Drawing on recent developments in science and technology studies,
governmentality studies, socio-legal studies and related fields, this advanced research seminar
(Forschungsseminar) presents specific empirical projects ranging from extremism prevention through
global drug policy to processes of political subjectification. The sessions will be centred around the
discussion of discursive and ethnographic data stemming from the research projects of the course
convenors and their invited guests.

Course requirements

The research seminars take place in the Winter Trimester, on Tuesdays between 13:15 and 14:45, in
Building 43, Room 0112/1. As specified in the Modulhandbuch, the successful completion of the
course requires regular attendance. The final grade consists of two tasks: an in-class presentation
prepared in response to a specific empirical project (50%) and a final paper of 6-8000 words related to
a current debate in qualitative research on politics. The final paper is due the 15th April 2020 (50%) -
please give a print copy to Frau Schmidt (or drop it in Mailbox 50) and send an electronic version to
e.danyi@unibw.de.

Options for final paper:

1) Research topic from class, e.g. based on presentation/comment or otherwise related to political
practices:
i) Precise research question, the political relevance of which is made clear

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 ii) Correctly cited academic literature

2) Review of a recent empirical work on politics (book, edited collection or journal article):
i) Maximum 50% of the paper as a presentation of the content of the work that makes its
political relevance clear
ii) Contextualisation of work in further studies by the same author and in the wider field
of research or the particular debate. I.e. how has this work been taken up or criticised
by others?

Course outline

1) Introduction (14 January 2020)

All the empirical projects discussed in this course are variants of political ethnography. Although they
cover very different topics, they all focus of material and discursive practices associated with
democracy. But what makes these projects ‘political’? In the first session we’ll explore a couple of
possible answers to this question, concerned with the objects, the processes and the effects of
research.

Recommended reading: Dányi, 2018b

2) Militarized masculinities - guest presentation by David Shim (21 January 2020)

This session examines the construction of militarized masculinities in Die Rekruten - a popular
YouTube series produced by the German Armed Forces. Based on feminist approaches to
militarization, we’ll aim to understand how notions of de/militarized masculinities contribute to the
legitimacy and attractiveness of the German Armed Forces as an employer.

Required reading: Eichler, 2014

Background reading: Shim, forthcoming

3) Museum - presentation by Yannik Porsché (28 January 2020)

This session demonstrates how producers, visitors and journalists 'do politics' in a museum exhibition
on representations of immigrants in Paris and Berlin. When producers and visitors negotiate public
representations in museums, what is at stake is, on the one hand, how accurate portrayals of the
outside world are, and, on the other hand, how exhibits serve as a proxy for someone, a collective or
an institution. A central question in museum work on migration is, thus, who can legitimately speak in
the name of whom.

Required reading: Chakrabarty, 2002

Background reading: Porsché, 2016

4) Police - presentation by Yannik Porsché (4 February 2020)

Based on a three-year ethnography on crime prevention of the police in Germany, this session
examines how the police incorporate youth in their de-escalation work preceding an annual
demonstration on the 1st of May. An interaction-analytical comparison of work meetings traces how
membership categorisation and assumption of social responsibility change: over the course of several
months the police turn initially reluctant youth who the police at the outset considered “trouble-
makers” into their “helpers”. Whereas the police are the driving force at the beginning of the project,
on the day of the demonstration they remain in the background and merely supervise the youth. This

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sequential development is discussed as a precarious process of disciplining, generating trust and
encouraging political consensus.

Required reading: Ericson et al., 1993

Background reading: Porsché, draft-a

5) Hunger strike - presentation by Endre Dányi (11 February 2020)

This session focuses on a hunger strike that took place in Brussels in 2012 and involved 23 illegal
immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East. Drawing on a relatively recent exchange between
Judith Butler and Michel Callon, we’ll examine in what sense can we think about the hunger strike as
a performative act – not only a staging of an event, but also as a refiguring of political agency in a
democratic context.

Required readings: Butler, 2010; Callon, 2010

Background reading: Abrahamsson & Dányi, 2019

6) Harm reduction - presentation by Endre Dányi (18 February 2020)

A central promise of democratic politics is that it can deal with all problems a political community
may face in a standardised manner. But where do problems come from, and what role do the social
sciences play in their constitution? This session will address this double question through the example
of intravenous drug use. More specifically, it will contrast various modes of problematisation related
to drugs in Lisbon, including epidemiological models and a harm reduction programme.

Required reading: Vitellone, 2015

Background reading: Dányi, 2018a

7) Cosmopolitics - presentation by Endre Dányi (25 February 2020)

At the end of the 20th century, after two world wars and decades of conflict between ‘the East’ and
‘the West’, liberal democracy seemed to become a global model of governance – a ‘common ground’
for all political communities across the world. But what exactly does a claim of commonness entail?
What vision does it impose on others, and what visions does it make invisible or unthinkable?
Drawing on a debate between Ulrich Beck and Bruno Latour, this session will explore this timely
topic through a comparative study of parliamentary politics in Germany and northern Australia.

Required readings: Beck, 2004; Latour, 2004

Background reading: Dányi & Spencer, 2020

8) Extremism prevention - presentation by Yannik Porsché (3 March 2020)

Politicians and academics call for prevention measures as sustainable counter-strategies against a rise
of different kinds of extremism. Yet, in the face of the dynamic and disputed phenomenon of
extremism there is little agreement on what legitimate and effective prevention work should look like.
This session offers an ethnomethodological perspective and analyses how practitioners render their
work accountable. In order to make their work transparent and to prove the effectiveness of their
particular approach, prevention workers invite documentary film-makers and researchers to evaluate
their work. We will analyse how two projects by a non-governmental organisation in Germany are
filmed and reported on.

Required reading: Neumann, 2013

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Background reading: Porsché, draft-b

9) Political dialectics – guest presentation by Jenni Brichzin (10 March 2020)

Since the riots in the summer of 2018, the city of Chemnitz has become a symbol of a resurgent right-
wing radicalism, which - at least for the time being - has been able to gain public ground. Using urban
ethnographic means, this week’s presentation explores the question of how such a resurgence of the
radical right was, or still is, possible.

Required reading: To be added later

Background reading: To be added later

10) Student project presentations (17 March 2020)

Please prepare a 5-7-minute presentation of your final paper, including a specific question or debate in
qualitative research on politics, relevant literature and a provisional outline.

Literature

Abrahamsson, S. & E. Dányi (2019). Becoming stronger by becoming weaker: The hunger strike as a
mode of doing politics. Journal of International Relations and Development, 22(4): 882-898.
Beck, U. (2004). The truth of others: A cosmopolitan approach. Common Knowledge, 10(3), 430–449.
Brichzin, J. - To be added...
Butler, J. (2010). Performative agency. Journal of Cultural Economy, 3(2), 147–161.
Callon, M. (2010). Performativity, misfires and politics. Journal of Cultural Economy, 3(2), 163–169.
Chakrabarty, D. (2002). Museums in late democracies. Humanities Research, 9(1): 5-12.
Dányi, E. & M. Spencer. (2020). Un/common grounds: Tracing politics across worlds. Social Studies
of Science (forthcoming)
Dányi, E. (2018a). Good treason: Following actor-network theory to the realm of drug policy. In T.
Berger & A. Esguerra (eds.), World politics in translation: Power, relationality and difference
in global cooperation. London: Routledge, pp. 25-38.
Dányi, E. (2018b). Politics beyond words: Ethnography of political institutions. In R. Wodak & B.
Forchtner (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics. London: Routledge, pp. 291-
305.
Eichler, M. (2014). Militarized masculinities in international relations. Brown Journal of World
Affairs 21(1): 81-93.
Ericson, R.V., K.D. Haggerty, K.D. Carriere. (1993). Community policing as communications
policing. In: D. Dölling and T. Feltes (eds.), Community policing: Comparative aspects of
community oriented police work. Holzkirchen: Felix-Verlag, pp. 41-70.
Latour, B. (2004). Whose Cosmos, Which Cosmopolitics? Comments on the Peace Terms of Ulrich
Beck. Common Knowledge, 10(3), 450–462.
Neumann, P.R. (2013). The trouble with radicalization. International Affairs, 89(4), 873-893.
Porsché, Y. (draft-a). Reluctant collaboration in community policing. On the nested sequentiality of
police incorporating youth in their de-escalation work prior to 1st of May demonstrations in
Germany.
Porsché, Y. (draft-b) Accountability of extremism prevention: When institutional matters get into
conflict.
Porsché, Y. (2016). Politics of public representation: A Franco-German museum exhibition on images
of immigrants. In: A. Haynes, M. J. Power, E. Devereux, A. Dillane, J. Carr (eds.), Public and

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 political discourses of migration: International perspectives. London: Rowman and Littlefield,
pp. 179-192.
Shim, D. (forthcoming). Militarized masculinities, ambiguity and antimilitarism: An analysis of the
German Armed Forces’ YouTube series Die Rekruten. International Feminist Journal of
Politics. [Draft.]
Vitellone, N. (2015). Syringe sociology. The British Journal of Sociology, 66(2), 373–390.

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