SORTING PEOPLE INTO KINDS. PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN DIFFERENTIATION.
5. – 7. Dezember 2024
Atrium Maximum, Alte Mensa | Gutenberg-Campus
About the Symposium
Since July 2021, the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) Human Differentiation has been working towards the aim of studying a fundamental cultural and social phenomenon: the perpetual categorical differentiation by and of humans, e.g., based on nationality, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, achievement or sexual orientation. These are the means via which societies can classify their ‘human material’ (Simmel 1908) and assign them their social affiliations, and, moreover, delineate other entities such as animals and artefacts such as robots.
The primary goal of the first four years of our research was to accumulate and condense all our diverse research projects – spanning the fields of American studies, anthropology, linguistics, media and theatre studies, sociology, and social psychology – into analytical tools for studying human differentiation in general and producing a first version of an encompassing theory of sorting people into kinds alongside other forms of social differentiation such as functional (roles), positional (status), or relational (e.\,g., couples, families, networks) differentiation. Thus, the lion share of our work was comprised of comparing diverse forms of human differentiation in different social contexts, discourses, and situations, in countries all over the world and in various time frames.
PROGRAMM
Donnerstag, 5. Dezember
09:15 am
Welcome
HUMAN DIFFERENTIATION ILLUSTRATED
09:25 am
Stefan Hirschauer, JGU Mainz
Sorting People into Kinds. Introducing Human Differentiation
10:30 am
Tobias Boll, JGU Mainz
Sorting Out Sex. Sexualities and their People
11:25 am
Benjamin Wihstutz, JGU Mainz
Doing Dis/ability. Performing, Passing, Differentiating
LANGUAGE AND COGNITION
01:15 pm | Keynote
Eviatar Zerubavel, Rutgers University NJ
Social Grouping. Cognitive Sociology and the Phenomenology of Social Distance
02:35 pm
Roland Imhoff, JGU Mainz
Facing Differences. Lumping People based on Visual Impressions
03:30 pm
Erez Levon, University of Bern
Kinds, Loops, and the Social Experience of Categories
04:40 pm
Nico Nassenstein, JGU Mainz
Language and (Self-)recognition in East Africa
05:50 pm | Keynote
Alondra Nelson, Institute for Advanced Study, NJ
Sociotechnical Turns in the Social Life of DNA. From the Human Genome Project to AI
07:30 pm
Conference Dinner at Heiliggeist
Freitag, 6. Dezember
MOBILITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURES
09:15 am
Mimi Sheller, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Producing ´People´ through Moving, Fixing, Parting and Commoning: Towards a Mobile Theory of Human Differentiation
10:10 am
Annalisa Pelizza, Università di Bologna
Scripts of Alterity: The Datainfrastructural Enactment of People on the Move to Europe as Migrants
11:15 am
Wendy Chun, Simon Fraser University
From Algorithmic Discrimination to Recognition. The Technology and Politics of Authenticating Differences
12:10 am
Gabriele Schabacher, JGU Mainz
Infrastructures of Human Differentiation: From Architecture to Data
01:00 pm
Lunch
BODIES AND STATUS
02:00 pm
Mita Banerjee, JGU Mainz
Living in ´The Village´ of Successful Aging: Age, Whiteness and Wealth
02:55 pm
Mara Loveman, UC Berkeley
Enslaved Women, Free Wombs: How Gradual Abolition of Slavery Created New Kinds of Unequal Human Kinds
04:00 pm
Ghassan Hage, The University of Melbourne
On the Usage of Animal Metaphors in Everyday Racializing Practices
04:55 pm
Matthias Krings, JGU Mainz
Melanin Matters. Coloristic Human Differentiation
06:00 pm | Keynote
Loïc Wacquant, UC Berkeley
Race as a Social Principle of Vision and Division
08:00 pm
Dinner for the speakers at Mediterraneo
Samstag, 7. Dezember
BOUNDARIES AND POLITICS
09:30 am
Oliver Scheiding, JGU Mainz
Zines, Fans, Allies: Intensities of Affiliations in Micro-Media
10:25 am
Dilek Dizdar, JGU Mainz
Borders and Bordering. Translation in Asylum Settings
11:30 am | Keynote
Anthony Appiah, NYU
Polation and the Politics of Identity & Final Discussion