|
|
|
|
Doing Culture: Initiative and Idea |
|
|
|
 Doing Culture is a trans-national, trans-faculty and trans-forming initiative which has evolved from the joint thought movement of Viennese cultural psychology and qualitative social research.
Doing Culture is supported by teachers and students. Whoever is respectively meant by this is shown on a case by case basis. The achieved academic degree is not always the decisive criterion here. Those who are involved in this project can learn from and with one another, as well as jointly generating new knowledge.
Cultures = conjunctive spaces of experience
Doing Culture is based for one thing on Karl Mannheim’s scientific knowledge that cultures do not emerge on the basis of intellectual concepts, but through the everyday behaviour and action of people with each other. Cultures are spaces of shared experience. The name Doing Culture is to be understood as a direct exhortation in this sense: The everyday behaviour and action of people with each other should not only be examined, but also initiated and supported in order to enable the formation of new spheres of culture and experience!
Cultural spheres: Virtual and Real
Limits are often set on the formation of new cultural spheres in the real sphere. Far distances, national borders, visa restrictions, etc. are obstacles which make the free movement of people and their coming together difficult or impossible. Many of these walls do not exist in the virtual sphere. Complex national policy rapprochement processes which still take many years in the real sphere are already accomplished in the virtual sphere. There are no “Schengen borders” for virtual travellers!
But the virtual sphere also has its limits: People move here freely and without passport, but at the same time also without their own body. This remains at its place in front of the PC, irregardless how far the virtual travels lead and whom one may encounter. And so the fundamental sensory experiences are lacking for the formation of cultural spheres.
It is clear how the conditions of the real and the virtual sphere are capable of enabling or restricting cultural evolution in a different way. Since both “worlds” stay in connection to each other, there is considerable potential in their connection: And so the virtual sphere cannot replace up-close, cultural experience in the real sphere, but it can facilitate it or even initially make it possible via the network. As a result, the creative possibilities in the real sphere can be expanded by virtual means in order to engender a living connection between people of different cultures.
Cultural spheres overlap
Different cultures not only consist of people of different nations, but also people from different social spheres, e.g. scientists, economists, artists, etc. or also people who find themselves in differing positions of their biographical development: For instance, trainees and the trained.
At the same time, being culturally integrated also takes place on multiple levels: We take part in our national culture, family culture, professional culture, etc. — i.e. cultures overlap, exist with each other, next to each other and through each other.
The objective of Doing Culture is to generate conditions which enable new, joint experiences with people of different cultures. New cultural spheres should be helped to express articulation, and to tread towards the already existing spheres without replacing them.
Cultural research: Theory and Method
As already depicted in the beginning, Doing Culture is particularly inspired by the thought movement of Viennese cultural psychology and qualitative social research. But the theoretical starting point of our initiative is also the so-called “performative turn” in science, through which the everyday behaviour and action of people becomes the focus of cultural research.
Whoever intends to pursue precise science requires precise research instruments. We work with the Documentary Method, a method which enables the standardised reconstruction of collective human behaviour and action, and is thus particularly well-suited for the study of cultural phenomena.
With this method we have also decided in favour of overcoming the differences of scientific work and everyday life experience. We show the everyday behaviour and action of people through personal experience as well as empirical research. Scientific research differs from the everyday merely through the level of abstraction. If research findings are reconstructed from everyday experience, these are restorable at any time. As a result, they are practically-oriented, and have considerable validity as well as prognostic quality.
Interdisciplinarity and Openness
Doing Culture lives from exchange. This applies to the exchange between people as well as between various disciplines. At the same time, the sphere of cultural research not only allows the linkage of neighbouring scientific branches such as psychology, philosophy, economics, social sciences and linguistics, regional planning, history and geography, etc., but also connections with the arts and crafts, etc.
Doing Culture is an open platform with a supranational sphere of activity. We are constantly searching for new stimuli and inspirations from the cultural sphere and other countries — no matter whether this pertains to scientific articles, experience and travel reports, restaurant critiques, photos, films, etc. And so if you yourself would like to become involved in Doing Culture, then simply contact us via e-mail.
|
|
What is Doing Culture? 
