The AGOH considers itself to be an association for the advancement of research science. The association will express its view on matters pertaining to professional and research policies, and it will do so specifically with a view on the reception and position of objective hermeneutics in professional organizations (such as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, DGS) and with a view on methodological training in objective hermeneutics offered by universities and other institutions. One of the association’s main concerns today consists in the advancement of the practical application of the methodology in the areas of consulting, expertise, and evaluation. In recent years, the membership of the association (consisting to a large extend of researchers in Sociology, Pedagogy, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities, all employed by universities or research institutes) has increasingly embraced professionals working in other fields: family therapists, psychotherapists, physicians, social workers, administration experts, and management consultants. Accordingly, the exchange between theory-oriented research and the latter’s professionalized day-to-day problem-solving praxis has emerged as an additional focus of the association’s work.
In order to pursue these goals the association is engaged in the following fields:
The association’s main emphasis lies in the organization of conferences (annual meetings).
a) At least once a year – usually in the second half of September – the association hosts a two-day conference for members and non-members. These conferences provide an opportunity for discussing methodological problems and research results. The conference format allots sufficient time to discuss each paper in detail - more than is sometimes granted at similar conferences. In this way, the association seeks to pay heed to the fact that research projects designed according to the standards of the objective hermeneutic’s sequential analysis will not usually be presentable within a restricted time frame. Because each presenter is usually granted 75 minutes for his presentation (including discussion), the total number of papers read at the conference is limited.
b) In irregular intervals – about every three years – the association is host to a larger, theme-focused conference. These conferences provide an opportunity to discuss related research projects. In addition, these conferences make it possible to present objective hermeneutic research to colleagues not working with this approach – in the social sciences as well as the humanities – and to do so with a clear thematic reference. In order to facilitate such an exchange, the association invites to these conferences scientists which do not work with this methodology. We seek to publish the most important papers presented at these conferences, and we try to add to these volumes related papers which have not been presented, but which are of relevance to its thematic focus and in keeping with our methodological standards. In this way, the results of objective hermeneutic research will be made available to a larger audience in a given field. The association will provide the financial support needed for these publications which will be part of the book series "Forschungsbeiträge aus der objektiven Hermeneutik" (which is published with Humanities-Online in Frankfurt/Germany).
