In this workshop we discuss matters of size and scale with regard to human sociality and mobility, which have been the focus of our research group at the University of Cologne in recent years (see https://www.sfb806.uni-koeln.de/index.php/projects/s-supraregional-systems/e3). While there seems to be agreement that size matters, e.g., the overall number of people in a group, the question that we see to tackle is whether and how a difference in group size translates into a difference in scale.
We are inviting a small circle of researchers (mostly anthropologists) to this workshop whom we know have encountered both qualities of quantity sketched above: you all have experienced the personal qualities of multirelational encounters that defy countability and typology, and you have all dealt with the effects of globalization, demographic growth, and bureaucratization that provoke the opposite. You have been working with research tools that nudge us in opposite directions: Ethnography that allows us to delve into the complexity of cases and at the same time modes of analyses that require us to look at the results in terms of “cases” of a certain type in the first place. In this workshop we would like to hear how you juggle both experiences in your work, what difference the quality of quantity makes with regard to the subject matter of your interest and to discuss what we all may be able to recommend with regard to these contradictory tendencies.
