Connect and Divide: The Practice Turn in Media Studies

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Currently practice theoretical questions are raised more and more often in German media studies, in particular those which connect and divide old and new media research and media technologies. This discussion follows long-term international research developments between cultural-, social- and engineering sciences, that still have to be media theoretically reconsidered according to their relevance in the context of today¿s media dynamics. The symposium »Connect and Divide: The Practice Turn in Media Studies«, will be conducted in English to promote the development of German media studies through the discussion of relevant common issues, simultaneously presenting German media research for an international audience. The focus on the essential practices of connecting and dividing is ideally suited for this project.Media divide and connect simultaneously: they act as intermediaries between otherwise disconnected entities, and as a »middle« and that mediates, but also shields different entities from each other. If we give accounts of media before and after the action, we refer to persons and organizations, automatisms and artifacts, signals and inscriptions, and we seem to find it easy to refer to their distinct dis/abilities. But in between - caught in the act or rather: within the interaction - the »middle« of media itself seems to be distributed right across the mix of material, semiotic and personal entities involved. The empirical and historical investigation of this janus-faced relationship of »connect and divide« has thus resulted in what may be called a veritable »practice turn in media studies«, being part of a more comprehensive and often quite controversial »practice turn« in cultural studies and the social sciences. The symposium confronts the described dynamics by the following sections: »Media History from a Praxeological Perspective«, a systematic perspective on opportunities and difficulties of the historical investigation of media practices; »Religion Is as Religion Does: The Practice Turn in Religion and Media Studies«, on the relationship between secularising and religious media practices and their conceptualization; »Connecting and Dividing Media Theories: Gender, Post_Colonial, and Other Agencies«, on the praxeological shift of German media research and international »media studies« and the related transformations, what can be regarded as particular/subjective/marginal and/or general/universal/normal; »The Current Relationship (After a Longer Non-Relationship) of Media Theory and Practice Theory«, on the question, which scientific tensions, hybridizations, mediations and purification efforts occur and can be expected by focusing media practices and their partial fusions of media and practice theory.