Making Publics across Time and Space

该项目的目的是在英国和北美的研究人员之间建立一个新的联系网络，这些研究人员一直在研究类似的问题，但他们的工作因时间和空间而分离。北美组织专注于早期现代历史上的公共制造；而英国组织则致力于现代公共制造的当代实践。然而，这两组人有一些共同的重要问题、分析途径和方法。我们的目标是让这两个群体的成员在对话中走到一起，探索这些在问题、方法和分析方面的差异和相似之处。我们有兴趣评估这一历史时期的重要性；公共宣传的可能性和做法的社会、政治和文化背景的影响；并考虑如何进一步发展方法论和分析取向。我们非常坚定地致力于将这个网络视为发展未来学术和未来学者的一种手段，在这两个群体中发展早期职业研究人员的现有做法。在英国，一个以开放大学公共项目为中心的研究小组一直在发展对公共行为、公共文化、公共空间和公共领域的新理解。该方案以该大学公民身份和治理中心为基础，侧重于重塑当代公共做法跨越公民身份、身份和治理问题的方式。这项工作探讨的主题包括公众参与、公共服务重塑以及如何确定、处理和参与公共事务。这项工作将重要的实证研究与方法创新和新的分析方法结合在一起，这些方法和新的分析方法集中在构建或制造公共产品的想法上。自2005年以来，该小组在个人研究、集体讨论(部分通过ESRC研讨会系列--新兴公众)、建立早期职业研究人员网络和一系列讲习班和研讨会的基础上发展起来，这些讲习班和研讨会旨在将公众发展为未来工作的新兴跨学科重点。该组织出版了多份出版物，并为各种学术、政策和政治辩论(从《大社会》到当前危机中的公开宣传)做出了贡献。在类似的时期，一组研究人员在北美(由SSHRC资助的Making Public项目，从2005-2007年)。尽管这个小组关注的是不同的历史时期(早期和现代)，以及相当不同的问题和主题，但这个小组制作公共产品的方法与以开放大学为基础的小组的工作有一些深刻的联系和重叠。他们的项目解决了一系列惊人相似的分析问题：在早期现代欧洲，新的人群是如何在传统和等级制度之外形成的？围绕共同利益，这些不同男性和女性之间新形式的联系的兴起，可能会对我们自己社会的崛起说些什么？我们能从这些“公众”身上学到什么吗？他们能告诉我们什么关于我们现代社会的运作方式，以及公共利益是如何兴衰的？目前的提议将支持这两个组织在18个月的时间里进行交流，以期建立一个网络的制度基础，以及未来研究合作的可能性。

The aim of this project is to construct a new network of connections between researchers in the UK and North America who have been working on similar concerns but whose work has been separated by time and space. The North American group have focused on the making of publics in early modern history; while the UK group has addressed contemporary practices of public making. However, the two groups share some significant questions, analytical approaches and methods. We aim to bring members of the two groups together in conversation to explore these differences and similarities in question, method and analysis. We are interested to assess the significance of historical period; the effects of the social, political and cultural contexts of possibilities and practices of public making; and to consider how the methodological and analytical orientations might be developed further. We have a very strong commitment to seeing this network as a means of developing future scholarship and future scholars, darwing on existing practices in the two groups towards the development of early career researchers.In the UK, a group of researchers centred on the Open University's Publics programme has been developing new understandings of public action, public culture, public space, and the public sphere. Based in the University's Centre for Citizenship Identities and Governance, the programme has focused on the ways in which the remaking of contemporary practices of publicness cuts across questions of citizenship, identities and governance.Topics explored in this work have included issues of public participation, the remaking of public services and how publics are identified, addressed and engaged. This work has combined significant empirical studies with methodological innovations and new analytical approaches that have centred on ideas of constructing or making publics. Since 2005, this group has developed based on a combination of individual research, collective discussion (in part through an ESRC seminar series - Emergent Publics), the building of an early career researchers network, and a series of workshops and seminars directed to developing publics as a emerging interdisciplinary focus of future work. The group has produced several publications and contributed to diverse academic, policy and political debates (from the Big Society to public making in the current crisis). Across a similar period, a group of researchers in North America (the Making Publics project, funded by SSHRC from 2005-2007). Although focused on a different historical period (the early modern) and rather different issues and topics, this group's approach to the making of publics has some profound connections and overlaps with the work of the Open University based group. Their project addressed a strikingly similar range of analytical questions: How did new groups of people form outside of tradition and hierarchy in early modern Europe? What might the rise of these new forms of association between diverse men and women, around common interests, say about the rise of our own society? Can we learn anything from these 'publics'? What can they tell us about the way our modern society works, and how public interests rise and fall?The current proposal will support exchanges between the two groups over an eighteen month period with a view to establishing the institutional basis of a network and the possibilities of future research collaborations.