Sociability in Social Research
Sociability in Social Research
Ritual, Play, and Ambiguity
This chapter considers the research project as a temporary, liminal community, always at risk of dispersal from external incentives and internal frustrations. Participant commitment can be sustained through the traditional mechanism of ritual, while intellectual insight advances in play; junior researchers can animate both modes of sociability and achieve influence thereby. Shared space and shared time coordinate planned interactions and also facilitate spontaneous emergences. Examples from the Göttingen Interdisciplinary Working Group on Cultural Property illustrate the intellectual payoffs of coffee machines, dancing, visual project mapping, and writing the grant renewal application as exercises in social as well as intellectual coordination. In the middle stages of research, a tolerance for conceptual ambiguity at the project level can facilitate lower-level successes and interactions.
Keywords: interdisciplinarity, commitment mechanisms, community, liminality, sociability, play, ritual, junior researchers, ambiguity
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