Debating the Norms of Scientific Writing

International Interdisciplinary Workshop for Young Researchers

OrganizerJulien Wacquez (EHESS, CESPRA, CEFRES)
Partners: CEFRES, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, EHESS (Paris)
When & Where: 23rd of May 2018, FLÚ AV ČR, conference room (Jilská 1, Prague 1 110 00)
Language: English

See the call for papers here

See the abstracts of the lectures here: Abstracts.

Since their foundation, social sciences have been questioning the practice of scientific writing as well as its limits and effects. To what extent does writing in itself affect the production of knowledge? How are the norms of scientific writing constantly negotiated? How are scientific texts convincing their readership?

Professors and young researchers are invited, not only to explore such questions, but also to share their own experiences as scientific writers. What kinds of problems do we face when striving to transform our investigations into a text? What kinds of narrative and rhetoric strategies do we implement in order to tackle such problems?

Because writing scientific texts is both a lonely and a collective activity, this workshop aims to develop a better understanding of the writing choices that we can make (between following or transgressing the “accepted” norms of writing of our discipline). 

Program

9:30-10:00 – Welcome

10:00-10:30 – Introduction

Jan Balon (FLÚ AV ČR)

10:30-12:00
Panel 1. (re)Producing new norms of writing
  • Julien Wacquez (EHESS-CESPRA & CEFRES)
    The Ways of Science Fiction in the Study of the Anthropocene
  • Annibal Arregui (CEFRES-FSV UK)
    Straw-Men of Science: “Hologrammatic” Dichotomies as Academic Sparring

Chair: Jan Balon (FLÚ AV ČR)

Lunch break

13:30-15:30
Panel 2. Writing Science and/or Writing Politics

  • John Holmwood (University of Nottingham)
    Writing for Justice. When Other Lives Are at Stake
  • Jitka Wirthová (ISS FSV UK)
    How to Write the Proof: Creating Expertise in Strategic Documents for Educational Reform
  • Abdul Qadar (EHESS-LAS)
    Writing as a Punjabi Native Anthropologist: Understanding the Relationship between Ethnographic Text, Self of an Anthropologist and Representation

Break

16:00-18:00
Panel 3. The Social Scientist as a Writer

  • Jean-Louis Fabiani (EHESS & CEU)
    The Impossible Novelist: Portrait of the Sociologist as a Frustrated Writer
  • Fanny Charrasse (EHESS-LIER)
    Literary but Not Fictional
  • Edouard Chalamet-Denis (EHESS-CESPRA)
    Via Hayden White: Questionning Narrative and Opening Possibles in the Writing of History

Illustration: Edgar Degas, Portrait of Edmond Duranty (1879)