share-handbook-for-artistic-research-education-high-definition

28 The Contexts of Artistic Research Educationassociations, journals) but also of particular research orientations.The emergence of new disciplines also signalled the emergenceof new constellations of objects and methods of study. In the case ofsociology, for example, this included social regularities, behavioursand orderings as objects of enquiry; statistical variation as mode ofenquiry; and extra-psychological concepts as explanatory principles.The development of sociology went through a specific step-changein the 1890s, so that previously disparate materials and problemsbegan to be aggregated in a clear and systematised way, as manifestedin the development of the new associations and publishing platformscited above. Thereafter, the modern formation of sociological enquirybecomes clearly discernable. This step-change must be seen as aconsequence of multiple determinants, including the dramaticemergence of particular forms of mass society in the industrialisedworld of the 19th century.In thinking about this example of discipline formation, it is helpfulto consider the contrast between Durkheim’s project and that ofan earlier German academic, Wilhelm Dilthey, who also sought toestablish a broad methodological foundation for the systematicenquiry into human affairs. Dilthey’s project eventually contributedto several important philosophical currents in the 20th century –including phenomenology, hermeneutics and critical theory – eachof which developed a critique of scientific sociology. Through thework of Dilthey, and that of Max Weber, German social research took adistinct journey that gave rise to some key critical intellectual traditions.A significant distinction is the degree to which the professionalformation of sociology as a discrete discipline (as opposed to a range ofsocial philosophies and cultural critiques) was less accomplished in theGerman-speaking world, with the grounding discipline of philosophyarguably retaining a stronger influence on the development of socialresearch in Germany during the late 19th and early 20th century. Interms of research infrastructures, it is arguable that the path takenin the development of an institutional matrix for social research inGermany enabled a different research project, contrasting with Frenchsociology, which consistently problematised the naïve ‘scientificity’and ‘positivism’ of increasingly quantitative studies of human systems.This simplified summary of developments in chemistry, history andsociology is provided here in order to indicate that the developmentof a research infrastructure is key to discipline formation, and itmay also have a strong bearing on the research content. If we applythis observation to an analysis of the development of a conferencing