This course is a part of HF's PhD week.
In most cases, scale has been defined by the singular object, a text, a work, an event, an instance of communication, which is then linked to other objects at the same scale, forming a process or a pattern.
Questions of scale have entered the humanities mainly by way of two major social, natural, and technological transformations: on the one hand, the accelerating climate emergency and nature crisis, often referred to in the geochronological shorthand “the Anthropocene”, on the other, the digital revolution, including DH, SoMe, and AI.
This PhD course asks what it means to work with scales, scaling, and scalability in humanities research. We will explore the theoretical and methodological presuppositions of scaling, as well as the ethical and political implications, and will ask how scaling in the humanities relates to scaling practices in capitalist economies and the possible virtues of “non-scalability” (Tsing).
Key questions:
- How do longer or shorter time scales impact our objects of study?
- What happens if we change the time scale, by zooming in or out?
- Is there also an ontology of scale, in other words, are certain scales inherent to certain objects?
- What is the politics, and indeed, the economy and ecology, of scale?
- What is the relationship between temporal scale and acceleration, both technological and social?
- How do the genres of longer time scales change humanities research (i.e. big history, deep history, distant reading, GIS temporal mapping etc.)
- In what ways are scales linked to disciplines?
- Is there something like a human – and by implication, humanities – time scale?
The course will also have a practical side, where participants are asked to look at their objects of study at different temporal and spatial scales, and experiment with how theories and methodologies change with scale, and how this affects research output and impact.
This is a 1 ECTS course.
Course preparations
Course participants will read the required readings, in total about 100 pages. Participants will write a brief (1-2 page) response paper where you critically engage with a proposition in one or several of these texts. You will also write a 2-3-page essay relating themes from the workshop to your own field or research project. The two texts, with references and bibliography, should be uploaded to the digital course site in Canvas no later than 20 November.
In class
Your reflections will be the starting point for our discussions - in groups and plenary. Everyone is expected to read all essays submitted by the other course participants. Expect an interactive and problem-driven day. We start with discussing issues arising from your response-papers to the common readings. After lunch we move on to your reflections centering on your own field or research project.
Language
The course language is English, including reading responses and essays. We may switch to Norwegian in discussions, if everyone is able to follow what is being said.
Registration
The course is open to PhD fellows, completion grant holders, and post-doctoral fellows at the Faculty of Humanities, other UiO faculties and external PhD fellows.
Registration opens 7 October at 12 noon and closes 13 November at 12 noon. Priority will be given to PhDs from the Faculty of Humanities, then PhDs from other Faculties at UiO, and lastly other applicants.
Course convenor
Postdoc Sine Halkjelsvik Bjordal, s.h.bjordal@ikos.uio.no (IKOS)
Associate Professor Knut Ivar Austvoll, k.i.austvoll@iakh.uio.no (IAKH)
IKOS, responsible department
Curriculum
Braudel, F (1960). History and the Social Sciences: The Long Duration. In: Political Research, Organization and Design, 3:6, 3-13
Chakrabarty, D. (2018), Anthropocene Time. History and Theory, 57: 5-32.
Coen, Deborah R. “Big Is a Thing of the Past: Climate Change and Methodology in the History of Ideas.” Journal of the History of Ideas 77, no. 2 (2016): 305–21.
Hecht, Gabrielle. “Interscalar Vehicles for an African Anthropocene: On Waste, Temporality, and Violence.” Cultural Anthropology 1, no. 33 (2018): 109–41.
Lucas, Gavin. 2024. Adventures in timeland. History and Theory, 63:2, 166–185.
Shryock, Andrew, et al. “Introduction.” Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present, 1st ed., University of California Press, 2011, pp. 3–20. JSTOR, Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present on JSTOR
Pétursdóttir, Þ. (2020). Anticipated futures? Knowing the heritage of drift matter. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 26(1), 87–103.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2012. On Nonscalability: The Living World Is Not Amenable to Precision-Nested Scales Available. Common Knowledge (2012) 18 (3): 505–524.