11th Annual Seminar of the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology
The Annual Seminar is a renowned three-day conference format of Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (BGHS) approaching 11 years in 2019. In cooperation with the collaborative research center (SFB 1288) on “Practices of Comparing”, we invite young researchers to present their work on the construction of race and racism in an interdisciplinary framework of history, sociology, law, literature and others. More precisely, this year?s Annual Seminar focuses on the role of comparing in the processes of making mankind and the way it influences assumptions of equality and inequality.
Whether in natural sciences, social and human sciences or humanities, race as a concept or central category has been widely contested and criticized. But the construction of race is a crucial part in the processes of making mankind and as an analytical category it is intertwined with the emergence of disciplines in their respective epistemological contexts (e.g. “scientific racism“) and related discourses. It is an integral part of the formation of a knowledge matrix biased by a European perspective that urges for further scrutiny across scientific fields. The conference wants to explore origins and preceding concepts as well as the construction of race as a category and methodological model that has been used in different scientific contexts over time, as well as its consequences for the production of knowledge and reality.
Moreover, the conference will address the entangled relations of race to the social phenomenon of racism in everyday life and other discourses across the globe. It remains open to question how the development of the category of race influenced practices of racism and vice versa as well as how it connects to a broader political context. Furthermore, racism often finds its expression in a more complex set of practices by actors, institutions and structures that transverses and involves other categories and relations of (in-)equality such as gender and class. For this reason, we want to ask for the status of racism in the reproduction of power relations, processes of social differentiation and material inscriptions.