GU/Chalmers STS Seminar 19 Nov: Alison Gerber "Drawing the line: comparison and evaluation in new disciplines"
Francis Lee
Friday 19 November, 13.15-15.00
Chalmers. Vera Sandbergs allé 8. Hus Vasa 2. Trappa A. Våning 3. 2356 Järntorget.
Drawing the line: comparison and evaluation in new disciplines
Alison Gerber, Lund University
Issues of quality and value are perpetually lively and contentious in both artistic and academic work, and while contemporary research on new and emerging disciplines generally takes as its focus cross- and interdisciplinary developments the establishment of an academic research culture in already-mature fields (as when artistic practice extends to artistic research) is comparatively neglected. If we imagine “artistic research” as an emerging discipline, we may expect practitioners’ boundary work to play a decisive role, and to look for the ways that strong symbolic boundaries are constructed and maintained. But is boundary work the most fruitful analytical perspective on the negotiations behind the development of standards? With a focus on the Swedish artistic research field, I consider the ways that evaluations and boundaries interact in an emerging (inter)discipline. I suggest an analytical perspective focused on the relationship between commitments to boundary work and orientations to boundary objects that offers insight on the ways that new artistic and academic fields are defined and evaluated.
Alison Gerber is an assistant professor of sociology at Lund University. Her research is focused on culture, science, and public life, with a special emphasis on new kinds of evidence. She leads Show&Tell, an ERC-funded team ethnography focused on algorithmically generated images and emerging digital 3D methods for documentation, visualization, and analysis as they move between science and the law. Her background is in economic and cultural sociology and the sociology of the arts; a book, The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers is available from Stanford University Press.
Background paper: Background paper is attached.
Welcome!
Elena Bogdanova, Ingemar Bohlin, Mark Elam, & Francis Lee