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Location
Zoom
Series/Type
,
Format
Online
Dates
  • March 24, 2023 from 12:00pm to 1:30am

Links

On Friday, March 24, from 12:00-1:30 pm, Dr. Nick Fox, joined by Dr. Pam Alldred, will present in CQ’s latest online seminar. There will be a 1-hour presentation and moderated discussion, followed by a 30-minute informal chat with the presenter. The Zoom link to join the seminar will be emailed to participants upon registration.

This session will be recorded.

Speaker: Nick Fox (Department of Sociology, University of Huddersfield)

Pam Alldred (Department of Social Work, Care and Community, Nottingham Trent University) will join the Q and A.

Organizer: Sarah Elton (Department of Sociology & CQ Fellow, Toronto Metropolitan University)

Title: Doing new materialist research: from ontology to methodology

Abstract: With growing interest in new materialist and posthuman approaches, it is timely to explore in detail how these ontologies translate practically into social research methodologies for social inquiry. This task has been made complex by the differing interpretations of the new materialist theories by social theorists, with different conclusions about the shape of a new materialism-inspired methodology. This paper aims to fill a gap in the literature by setting out a methodology using one specific thread within the new materialisms: Deleuzian ‘ethology’. Inspired by Spinoza’s Ethics, Deleuze established a conceptual toolkit for ethological inquiry, comprising ‘relation’, ‘assemblage’, ‘affect’ and ‘capacity’. This talk considers how this toolkit translates into a straightforward research methodology. This entails developing a perspective on setting a research question, methods for data collection, methods of data analysis and finally, presenting study findings. The paper concludes with some reflections on the task of translating philosophical theory into social science methodology.