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The Use of Concepts: Choosing and Unfolding Concepts in PhD Theses - 5 ECTS
Date and time
Tuesday 10 June 2025 at 09:30 to Friday 13 June 2025 at 17:00
Registration Deadline
Thursday 1 May 2025 at 23:55
Location
Porcelænshaven - room PH18B 1.18 (first floor),
Porcelænshaven 18B,
2000 Frederiksberg
Porcelænshaven - room PH18B 1.18 (first floor)
Porcelænshaven 18B
2000 Frederiksberg
The Use of Concepts: Choosing and Unfolding Concepts in PhD Theses - 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Kaspar Villadsen, Department of Business Humanities and Law (BHL)
Professor Bent Meier Sørensen
Department of Business Humanities and Law, CBS
Associate Professor Justine Grønbæk Pors
Department of Business Humanities and Law, CBS
Associate Professor Stefan Schwartzkopf
Department of Business Humanities and Law, CBS
Professor with special responsibilities Kaspar Villadsen
Department of Business Humanities and Law, CBS
Prerequisites
Only PhD students can participate in the course.
It is a precondition for receiving the course diploma that the PhD student attends the whole course.
Questions of the use of concepts are crucial in the discussions at Ph.D. defenses: Are the concepts the student is using relevant for the study in question? Are they carefully selected and defined? Could other concepts from alternative theoretical traditions have been chosen with better results? Are the concepts used in a manner that is sufficiently sensitive to the empirical material, or do they foreclose the complexities of the social or historical reality?
The goal is to sharpen the conceptual apparatus in the dissertations. To that end we will set aside sufficient time to carefully examine and discuss the papers submitted by the participants.
The course will consist of both lectures/presentations by scholars who are specialist in a series of key thinkers’ use of concepts. The goal of the lectures is, first, to clarify the ways in which the thinker in question defined and employed their most significant concepts and, second, to suggest and demonstrate how to put the concepts at work in specific analysis. In the afternoon, there will be workshops that aim to explore how concepts function in each participant’s research/dissertation – with the aim of strengthening, deepening and nuancing the conceptual dimension of the dissertations/research (articles).
Papers/abstracts must be in English.
Day 1
9.30 - 12.00 Introduction to the course. Heidegger’s philosophical work on concepts
- Kaspar Villadsen
12.00 - 13.00 Lunch
13.00 - 15.00 Conceptual history: Writing histories for the present
- Stefan Schwarzkopf
15.00 - 17.00 Papers from PhD scholars
- Kaspar Villadsen & Stefan Schwarzkopf
Day 2
9.30 - 12.00 Derrida and deconstruction as analytical strategy
- Justine Grønbæk Pors
12.00 - 13.00 Lunch
13.00 - 15.00 Using concepts ‘like Molotov cocktails’: Learning from Foucault’s writing
- Kaspar Villadsen
15.00 - 17.00 Papers from PhD scholars
-Kaspar Villadsen & Justine Grønbæk Pors
Day 3
9.30 - 12.00 Conceptual Activism: Taking the lead from Arendt
- Bent Meier Sørensen
12.00 - 13.00 Lunch
3.00 - 15.00 Using abstract theory in case studies: Letting the material ‘unfold’ the concept
- Kaspar Villadsen
15.00 - 17.00 Papers from PhD scholars
- Kaspar Villadsen & Bent Meier Sørensen
Day 4
9.30 - 12.00 Testing and combining various concepts: The case of norm-violating leadership
-- Bent Meier Sørensen & Kaspar Villadsen
12.00 - 13.00 Lunch
13.00 - 15.00 Comparing conceptual strategies
- Kaspar Villadsen
15.00 - 17.00 Concluding discussion and evaluation
-Kaspar Villadsen
• Achieve a strong reflexivity regarding how the choice of concepts brings certain questions, problems, entities and processes into the foreground while others recede into the background
• Heidegger, M. (1978) “The Question Concerning Technology”. In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, by Martin Heidegger, pp. 3-36. New York: Garland Publishing.
• Borgmann, A. (2007) ‘Technology’. In A Companion to Heidegger, edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall. John Wiley & Sons.
For Stefan Schwartzkopf’s session (Tuesday):
• Koselleck, R. (1982) “Begriffsgeschichte and Social History.” Economy and Society, 11(4): 409-427.
• Bothello and Salles-Djelic (2018) “Evolving conceptualizations of organizational environmentalism: a path generation account.” Organization Studies, 39(1).
For Justine Pors Grønbæk’s session (Wednesday):
• Derrida, J. (2000) “Hospitality.” Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 5(3): 3-18.
• Blackman, L. (2007) “Researching affect and embodied hauntologies: Exploring an analytics of experimentation.” In B. T. Knudsen and C. Stage (eds.) Affective methodologies (pp. 25-44). London: Palgrave.
For Kaspar Villadsen’s session (Wednesday):
• Villadsen, K. (2021) “‘The Dispositive’: Foucault’s Concept for Organizational Analysis?” Organization Studies, 42(3): 473-494.
• Villadsen, K. (2023) “Goodbye Foucault’s ‘Missing Human Agent’? : Self-formation, Capability and the Dispositifs.” European Journal of Social Theory, 26(1): 67–89.
• Foucault, M. (2007) Security, Territory, Population. New York: Palgrave [lectures 1 and 2].
For Bent Meier Sørensen’s session (Thursday):
• Arendt, H. (2003) "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship." In: Responsibility and Judgment. Ed. Jerome Kohn. Schocken Books.
Arendt, H. 1998. "Chapter Five: Action." In: The Human Condition, by Hannah Arendt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Supplementary:
• Olaison, Johnsen and Sørensen (work in progress) "Organization as a space appearance: An Arendtian perspective on power, action and community", intended for Organization Studies.
For Kaspar Villadsen’s session (Thursday):
• Foucault, M. (1982) "The Subject and Power." Critical Inquiry, 8(4): 777-795.
• Karlsen, M.P. & Villadsen, K. (2008) “Who Should Do the Talking?: The proliferation of dialoque as governmental technology.” Culture and Organization, 14(4): 345-363.
Supplementary:
• Villadsen, K. (2024) "‘The Subject and Power’ – Four Decades Later: Tracing Foucault’s Evolving Concept of Subjectivation." Foucault Studies, (36): 293–321. Available at: https://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-studies/article/view/7220
For Kaspar Villadsen and Bent Meier Sørensen’s joint session (Friday):
• Sørensen, B. M. and Villadsen, K. (2018) “Penis-twirling and Pie-throwing: Norm-setting and Norm-defying Drama in the Creative Industries.” Human Relations, 71(8): 1049-1071.
• Sørensen, B. M. and Villadsen, K. (2016) “The Naked Manager: The ethical practice of an anti-establishment boss.” Organization, 22(2): 251-268.
Registration Deadline and Conditions
The registration deadline is 1 May 2025. If you wish to cancel your registration, it must be done by this date. By this deadline, we determine whether there are enough registrations to run the course or decide who should be offered a seat if we have received too many registrations.
Event Location
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Organizer Contact Information
CBS PhD School
Nina Iversen
Phone: +45 3815 2475
ni.research@cbs.dk
Organizer Contact Information
CBS PhD School
Nina Iversen
Phone: +45 3815 2475
ni.research@cbs.dk