Professor Hubert Knoblauch 
Dr. Bernt Schnettler Professor Hubert Knoblauch Dr. Bernt Schnettler In recent years we have witnessed a rapid dissemination of video not only in the social world but also in the social sciences and the social study of religion. Video is increasingly used in the field, despite the blatant lack of usable methods.
The seminar will be presenting a method of video-analysis based on conversation analysis, genre analysis. The method addresses particularly the interpretation of interactions. It will be first sketched in general; in a second step we will demonstrate its application to data, using, first, "secular" data before we, secondly, turn to a number of data on religious experiences, practices and interactions. Finally, we will be sketching the use of an additional and complementary method, i.e. hermeneutics, as applied to the interpretation of religious data.
Prof. Hubert Knoblauch and Dr. Bernt Schnettler are at the Department of Sociology, Technische Universität Berlin. They have their scientific training from the Department of Sociology, Universität Konstanz, Germany, where video analysis in empirical projects has been pursued for more than 30 years by Thomas Luckmann. Both have experience from empirical projects on contemporary religiosity using video recordings, and both have publications on the theoretical and methodological issues concerning video and video analysis in sociological research.
