The Wendish Research Exchange - Groß, Steffen W.: The Additional Value of Hybridity

Lětopis Abstract 2016 1: Groß, Steffen W.: The Additional Value of Hybridity

Any attempt to understand cultural phenomena, or the causes and consequences of a given aspect of human endeavour, inevitably depends upon the concepts and categories, the methodological assumptions that are implicit in the design of the research programmes that are employed. In the humanities, much more than in the natural sciences, the methodologies of research programmes compete against one another for influence: they prove their efficacy, their interpretive and explanatory power through competition. When a new methodological framework emerges, and claims validity, even superiority, we must assess what more it has to offer: does it reach parts that established methodologies do not? Does it enable us to perceive, comprehend, and utilize additional, perhaps previously unconsidered, phenomena? Will it be possible to analyse certain relationships more thoroughly than before, and, henceforth, to understand them better in their complexity? And, if so, how can such an “additional value” be reasonably conceived and measured? This paper attempts to offer a rational interpretative framework for the assessment of hybrid research programmes, and more widely the comparison of research methodologies.