Engaging with the World: Agency, Institutions, Historical Formations

The 13th Annual Conference for the International Association for Critical Realism will take place in Padova, Italy, July 19-21 2010.

Pre-conference workshop: July 17-18

Venue: Department of Sociology, via Cesarotti, 12, 35 123 Padova

Conference website: http://www.sociologiapadova.eu/iacr/


CALL FOR WORKING SESSIONS PROPOSALS

The deadline for proposals to organize a working session is Friday 8 January 2010.

Working session proposals should be sent to: andrea.maccarini@unipd.it

The Conference can comprise working sessions oriented to all areas in the humanities, philosophy and the social sciences at large. It invites participants from both within and outside critical realism who are interested in exploring critical realist philosophy, its method, practice, and implications for many different disciplines, encouraging a broad focus on the general theme of the conference.

Global society is often regarded as disrupting identities and blurring boundaries, one which entails giving up ideas structure and fixity. Globalization supposedly introduces a “liquid” era of fluidity where everything is possible, and anything goes. Nevertheless, its current dynamics are developing into a harder reality: wars, economic crisis, the haunting risk of pandemics, the ever worsening food supply crisis, and the environmental challenge. These all call for a dramatic shift in the optimistic cosmopolitan mood and the thought that we can build and rebuild ourselves and our world as we please, at least for the most developed countries.

The theme of “engaging with the world” calls out at least two different sets of questions. First, the big phenomena we are witnessing on the global level are compelling us to call constructivist approaches into question. Understanding the inner dynamics and complex interactions of institutions and subsystems in global society – like education systems, health and care systems, job markets, media systems, and so on – apparently needs more than a study of the way these systems engage in refined language games to “construct reality”. How do such structures, dynamics, and interactions result in emergent entities, phenomena, and events? What is the real impact of such emergent social facts on peoples, groups and individuals, and on the human quality of their lives? Is it possible to make sense – although certainly not through any “grand narrative” – of the emergent historical formation? What social processes and mechanisms are involved in producing the most significant changes at all levels of society?

On the other hand, the “new” world of “our” times is fostering new forms of social life, new kinds of experience in all spheres of life, and even a massive transformation in our self-understanding. Is responsible agency still a key to interpreting human action and experience of the world? Aren’t cultural changes in the way human beings conceive of themselves profoundly affecting the very way historical civilizations are being reproduced or transformed? How does critical realism make sense of the emergent historical formation in terms of its original and dialectical approaches and in terms of the philosophy of metareality? How does a relational realist approach to the social sciences provide a framework to understand these phenomena?

These are only some very general questions that can be asked, the significance of which can be easily seen in such different fields as general social theory, education, economics, psychology, philosophical and cultural anthropology, religion studies, gender studies, and more.

Proposals for working sessions that wish to explore a wide range of problems, particularly from a critical realist angle, with a focus on the themes specified above, are welcomed.


DATES

November 20, 2009
Opening day for proposals to organize a working session

January 8, 2010
Deadline for proposals to organize a working session.
Proposals should contain an abstract describing the theme of the session. It should not list contributors. Papers for presentation will be selected by session conveners no later than April 15.
If at all possible, we intend to accommodate excellent proposals for sessions submitted also after the deadline of January 8, but there can be no guarantee of available space.

January 22, 2010
Notification about acceptance of proposals to organize a working session.
Posting the working session titles, abstracts and conveners’ names on the congress website (see the “call for papers” page).
Call for submission of abstracts of papers for a working session.

February 1, 2010
Opening day of registration.

March 31, 2010
Deadline for submission of abstracts of papers for a working session.

April 15, 2010
Notification about acceptance of abstracts of papers.

May 31, 2010
Deadline for early registration with a reduced fee.
Deadline for registration of authors whose abstracts have been accepted.

July 19, 9.30 – 11.00
On-site registration.


Conference website: http://www.sociologiapadova.eu/iacr/