Research Methodology

"There exists a routine in most people’s lives wherein they
wake, work, and sleep with few activities in between those
main moments. During this routine, typical behaviors occur
wherein the participants are completely numb to the activities
that they are completing each day, they are so used
to doing them that they no longer are aware of their movements.
Work and everyday life is so typical that people feel
the need to exercise to offset their lack of movement, their
typical actions. Assuming this situation, we seek to explore
how everyday bodily attention and movement can be challenged,
and made aware. If there is a possibility that we can
make people aware of their full body movements, we can
therefore create the tendency for people to become more explorative
in their daily lives. We explore concepts of the
body-mind disconnect, introduce elements of curiosity and
examine unawareness of body.
We developed a process of research wherein we conducted
initial research observations, a series of low, mid and high fi
prototypes, body movement workshops, and cultural probes
to examine how people experience bodily awareness."

This diploma thesis deals with the processes of national identity construction through the sports discourse in the media. The main attention is paid to the example of the "failed" performance of the Slovak sportsmen at the Olympic Games in London 2012. Slovaks didn’t repeat their previous medal achievements in London 2012, therefore the media ironically labelled their performance as the "Bronze Age". One aim of this study is to describe and to interpret the way Slovak media covered the performance of the Slovak sportsmen at the Olympics, with the focus on the television broadcast and newspapers. The crucial part of the research, however, is a discourse analysis of the evaluation commentaries in press, which critically reflected the performance of the Slovak national team, moreover, also the overall situation within the Slovak sport. The analysis method is based on the approach of Norman Fairclough, and therefore social identities, relations and systems of knowledge are distinguished within the studied texts. The theoretical basis of this work deals with the importance of international sporting events, the relationship between national identity, sport and the media, and the broader framework of the Slovak national and sporting identity. The work proves that the identity processes within the media discourse of sport are active, and yet they do not always take the form of celebratory patriotism.

""Español:
Como muchas de las estructuras surgidas en las postrimerías del capitalismo
industrial, la ciencia está entrando en crisis por uno de sus aspectos fundacionales: la
objetividad y la búsqueda de la verdad. Y eso, por cierto, no es culpa de la ciencia, sino de los
científicos. La ciencia, especialmente la social y humana, es mucho más que esa encrucijada
en especial. El problema está en lo que esconde tras de sí: un sistemático alejamiento de la
realidad por parte de quienes estamos preparados a comprenderla. ¿Dónde están puestas las
trincheras de la ciencia? Lejos del fragor de la batalla, en una especie de espacio alterno, de
suspensión social y existencial: el científico, el sociólogo, deja de ser algo (padre, madre,
ciudadano, lo que sea) para poder ser científico. De las primeras cosas que se escuchan al
entrar al claustro académico de la ciencia social y humana, están la búsqueda afanosa de la
objetividad científica, la neutralidad, en una tendencia que se matiza y recomienda al
investigador en ciernes, no sin cierto tufillo positivista, a que el investigador mantenga cierta
distancia de sus sujetos de estudio con tal de no hacerse ni muy militante pero tampoco muy
ajeno a su cotidianidad. Con este panorama, la invitación que se hace en este trabajo es clara:
trascender de estas formas científicas para dejar de ver a la ciencia y a su práctica como un
requerimiento institucional con el que hay que cumplir, un requisito escolar o, peor, un deber
supremo de iluminación universal. La ciencia debe ser un ejercicio lúdico, y el saber
disciplinario una herramienta que nos permita conocernos y reconocernos en el mundo, con su gente, en nuestro contexto, a través de una práctica reflexiva, anárquica en lo epistemológico y
libertaria en su esencia.

English:
As many of the structures born in the beginnings of industrial capitalism, science is
on a crisis because of one of its foundational aspects: objectivity and the search for truth. And
that, by the way, it’s not the fault of science, but of scientists. Science, specially the social and
human ones, it’s more than just that special quest. The problem is on what it’s hiding behind
it: a systematic restraining from reality by those who are prepared to study it. Where are the
trenches of science? Far away from the battle, in some kind of alternate space of social and
existential suspension: the scientific, the sociologist, quits being someone (father, mother,
citizen, whatever) for being scientist. One of the first lessons learned when entering academic
institutions of social and human sciences are the quest for scientific objectivity, the neutrality,
in a nuanced but insisting way recommended to the new researcher not without some positivist
bias, mainly to keep distance from study subjects in order to not become too militant with their
causes but no too strange to their every-day lives. So, with this scenario, the invitation made
on this paper is clear: to transcend these scientific forms in order to stop regard science and its
practice as an institutional requirement to accomplish, a scholar must-be or, worse, a supreme
duty of universal enlightening. Science must be regarded as a playful exercise, and
disciplinary knowledge as a tool that allow to know us and recognize us in the world, with
their people, in our context, through a reflexive, anarchical practice on the epistemological
side, and libertarian on its essence.""

Die Religionswissenschaft hat keine eigenständige Tradition in Theorie und Methode der Sachkulturforschung entwickelt. Die Gründe dafür werden fachgeschichtlich, theoriegeschichtlich und religionsgeschichtlich benannt. Anregungen für die Erschließung materialer Religion werden in Anlehnung an die Vorschläge der Volkskundlerin Gudrun M. König entwickelt, die fünf Zugangsweisen zur materiellen Kultur unterscheidet: „die des Sammlers, des ‚Historikers’, des ‚Ethnographen’, des Illustrators und des Theoretikers“. Am Beispiel des Hawaiianischen Gottes Ku zeige ich die heuristische und methodische Tragfähigkeit dieser Zugangsweisen auf.

This article disputes the premise dominant in moral philosophy and the social sciences that a strict definition of terrorism is needed in order to evaluate and confront contemporary political violence. I argue that a definition of terrorism is not only unhelpful but also impossible if we take the historicity and flexibility of the concept seriously. Failure to account for terrorism as a historical phenomenon produces serious analytical and epistemological problems that result in an anachronistic, ahistorical, and reductive understanding. Because there are no historically or contextually stable answers to the question what terrorism is, I argue for a novel account of terrorism that replaces the attempt to define terrorism with an analysis of its meaning and function within a specific context.

This article examines the lack of research on the pornography industry and the means of addressing this situation. Much contemporary pornography research invokes the apparent economic prowess of the pornography industry as justification for its work, yet focuses on the product and its reception rather than on the industry that produces it. In this paper I identify and discuss the specific institutional challenges around studying pornography within business studies, and also the opportunities that arose through this work. The research methods used in this study of the North American pornography industry are presented and discussed, together with considerations around access, authentication, and stigma. I challenge the dependence by current scholars on secondary data about the industry by offering theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches with which to gather rich empirical material, thus furthering the wider field of pornography research.