Institution: GIGA Doctoral Programme
Lecturer: Dr. Lauren Wilcox, Cambridge
Date: May 21-22, 2015
Place: GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Neuer Jungfernstieg 21 in Hamburg
Language of instruction: English
Registration: Participants need to register until May 10 via the GIGA website.
Contents: Interpretive methodologies are centered upon the meaning-making practices of actors and are key research strategies of social constructivist perspectives on global politics, broadly construed. While there is some overlap between qualitative research methods and interpretive methods, these two terms are not synonymous. There is not a single interpretivist methodology; rather, interpretive methodologies may include case study analysis, ethnography, participant observation, grounded theory, genealogy, discourse analysis, feminist analysis, and more. This course provides an introduction to interpretivism as a genre of research methodologies that share an emphasis on the socially constructed nature of meaning and knowledge, discusses a variety of different kinds of interpretivist methodologies including feminism, constructivism and critical theory and more recent advances, and provides a forum for discussing issues of research design, quality criteria (how do we know the author’s claims should be trusted?) and selection of material.