DRAFT PROGRAMME: Joint Conference of the European Sociological Association’s Sociology of Emotions Research Network (RN11) and the British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Emotions Study Group, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, August 28th –30th, 2018

Draft Programme — WILL LIKEY CHANGE AFTER REGISTRATION

Joint Midterm Conference of the European Sociological Association’s Sociology of Emotions Research Network (RN11) and the British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Emotions Study Group, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, August 28^th –30^th, 2018.

NOTE: PhD Workshop will take place on Monday, August 27^th.

Tuesday, August 28^th

9.00 – 9.50          Registration/Coffee

9.50 – 10.00        Welcome

10.00 – 12.00 Session 1

Session 1.1.  Theorizing Affect & Emotion (1)
Feelings of values and social forms leading to action: How emotions contribute to the structuration of the social world?	Minner, Frédéric
Managing the (in)visibility of emotions: Integrating the dimension of space in Hochschild´s concept of emotion management	Margies, Nina
Emotions by Design? Squaring the Circle from Emotion Management to Emotion Regulation	Patulny, Roger
Public Emotions: Feelings Entangled Between Representation and Persuasion	Verbalyte, Monika
Session 1.2 History,  Memory and Nostalgia
Emotion, memory and politics. Maurice Halbwachs idea of ‘historical memory’ and the current debate on historical nostalgia.	Scherke, Katharina
The JET Programme: Power, Nostalgia and Emotions	Estampador Hughson, Sharleen
Imperial Daydreaming about the Ottoman Past: Turkey as a Case Study in State-Sponsored Nostalgia	Karakaya, Yagmur
Hope and Fear. Concepts of Peace and War in Austria before, during and after the First World War	Haring, Sabine
Session 1.3. Collective emotions, identities and social movements
The Emotional Construction of Identity – A Communication-Theoretical Approach	Kurilla, Robin
Collective Emotion: What was, what is and what could be.	Day, Chris
Emotions and social movements. An analysis proposal from the interaction ritual and the cultural performance.	Giménez, Ferran
How to Measure Emotions at Political Rallies? Empirical Study of Political Demonstrations in Hungary	Kiss, Balázs

 

12.00 – 13.00 Lunch

13.00 – 15.00 Session 2

Session 2.1. Religion and Emotion
Religion as Emotional Management: the case of sorrow and death	Asma, Stephen
Continuing bonds. Grief and the belief in afterlife	Jakoby, Nina
How megachurches manage emotions	Pruisken, Insa
Between being “wary of religion” to “destiny is everything”: modes of managing emotions in case of first generation entrepreneurs	Bhansali, Kumud
Session 2.2. State and Emotion
The Emotional State and its (Im)Moral Practices	Rungius, Madeleine
Voice, Politics of Shaming and Social Bond: Protests by Schoolteachers and Farmers in Post-Soviet Latvia (1991 – 2000)	Ķešāne, Iveta
The Chosen Emotion: Gratitude, Education, and the Relationships between the State and Its Disadvantaged Citizens	Shoshana, Avihu
Emotion and discourse: The political demise of Metiria Turei	Gray, Claire
Session 2.3. (Un)certainties of Status and Emotions
How Wealth Elites Feel? Deep Stories among the Wealthiest 0.1%	Kantola, Anu
Being Professional and Acting on a Hunch: Epistemic emotions and cybervetting in job recruitments	Hedenus, Anna (with Christel Backman)
Emotional implications of career development: reflections from career histories of female professors of Pakistani universities	Sadaf , Fouzia
Examining the relationship between dimensions of social stratification and individuals’ propensity for emotion regulation	Kuche, Coline

 

15.30 – 17.00 Session 3

Session 3.1.Towards a Digital Sociology of Emotions
Toward a Digital Sociology of Emotions: Emotions-as-practice in the digital space	Eright, Jacob
The ‘Digital Materiality’ of Emotions: The Case of Tracking Technologies	Pritz, Sarah
Small data: sharing emotion on Twitter	Brownlie, Julie
Session 3.2. Theorizing Affect and Emotion (2)
One step further’ – About affects and courage in a Foucauldian ethos	Mejte, Frederik
A theoretical exploration into researching the unspoken emotions of touching	MacLaren, Jessica
Mapping the interactional dynamics of envy. Envy in the (un)making	Dowgiałło, Bogna

 

17.00 – 17.15     Break

17.15 – 18.45     Keynote Ian Burkitt        

18.45 – Sneaky Pints?

 

Wednesday, 29^th August

9.45 – 10.00 Coffee

10.00 – 12.00 Session 4

Session 4.1. Populism and Emotions
Emotions and populist narratives of crisis	Salmela, Mikko
The Politics of Emotion: Class, Gender and Race within the European Far-right	Landberg, Josefine
The role of Emotions as Moderators of Populist and Programmatic Policies	Farkas, Eszter
In the Face of Anger: New Year’s in Cologne and the Politics of Resentment	Holzberg, Billy
Session 4.2. Emotion in Family and Intimate Relations
Family stories: Childhood intimacies in displacement	Holmes, Mary(with David Anderson, Katherine Baxter, Arek Dakessian, Marie-Eve Hamel, Johannes Langer and Liliana Riga)
Separation Talk. Narrated Emotions and emotional Narrations	Bub, Eva-Maria
The role of emotion in mediating perceptions of equality in couple relationships	McQueen, Fiona
Family stories, discursive repression and the construction of inter-generational relationships	Leshem, Rotem
Session 4.3. Emotion, Bodies, Inequalities
Shame, anger and inequalities: emotions in the sociology of suicide	Chandler, Amy
Disability Studies & Ableism. What’s emotion got to do with it?	Wechuli, Yvonna
Learning to Mind Your Own Emotions: A Sociological Analysis of a Primary School Mindfulness Programme	Hailwood, Ellie
Intersections of emotions, power and status in relation to supporting autistic pupils in secondary school	Graham, Elisabeth

 

12.00 – 13.00 Lunch

13.00 – 14.30 Session 5

Session 5.1. Emotions in the Digital Change
Sociology of emotions in digital leadership and communication	Stana, Raluca
Routinization in Digital Practices: The Case of Viral Fear	Cottingham,  Marci
Affects, social media, and the re-imagination of human-animal boundaries	Policarpo, Verónica
Session 5.2. Law and Emotion
Emotion and judicial independence – moving targets in the sociology of law	Bahl, Friederike
How Swedish prosecutors and judges are deliberating decision making in cases of fraud	Bladini, Moa
Performing the repentant lover in the court-room:An analysis of Oscar Pistorius’ recreation of hegemonic masculinity through emotions	Macht, Alexandra
Session 5.3. Feeling Rules in Health and Care
Emotional labour in the ED: Feeling rules, gender stereotypes and emotional stoicism.	Kirk, Kate
Feeling rules within secure units for adolescents – a staff perspective/ Handling fear among staff – violence and emotion in secure units for adolescents	Andersson, Peter
Feeling the way: reviewing discourses of impact and evidence-based practice in the context of looked after children.	Roszynski, Katrina

 

14.30 – 15.00     Coffee

15.00 – 16.30 Session 6

Session 6.1. Emotions, State and Power
Emotion as Power: Capital and Strategy in the Field of Power	Heaney, Jonathan
Positive emotions as general resources in power to – theorizing a basic constitutive nexus of power and emotion	Poder, Paul
States of Morbidity: The Politics of Contrived Collective Effervescence	Coleman, Roy
Session 6.2. Emotion Construction in Media, Literature and Film
Taming Emotions in The Walking Dead / Moral Emotions in wild, wild Westworld	Seebach, Swen  (with Natália Canto-Mila)
The Historical Development of an Emotionalized Culture – Evidence from a German Youth Magazine	Beyer, Manuela
A Story of Grief. Dismantling feeling rules based on online literary reviews	Jakoby, Nina (with Fiona A. Anderau)
Session 6.3. Emotions in Academia: Research, Practice, Culture
The role of emotions in changing university culture	North, Gemma
Emotional Fatigue of Conducting Research on Domestic Violence: Impact on Family and Intimate Relations	Tayyab, Faiza
(Un)becoming researcher: ‘multimodal participatory journaling’ as a tool for capturing emotion in researcher development within and outside academia	Fransman, Jude

 

16.30 – 16.45     Break

16.45 – 18.15 Keynote Karin Wahl-Jorgensen      

20.00     Conference Dinner

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, 30^th August

9.45 – 10.00        Coffee

10.00 – 12.00     Session 7

Session 7.1. Migration, Asylum and Emotion
Global citizens, emotions and social inclusion	Pratesi, Alessandro
Emotional transnationality in processes of migration	Albrecht, Yvonne
Integration measures and the subjective well-being of refugees: Evidence from a representative German refugee panel	von Scheve, Christian (with Lena Walther, Lukas M. Fuchs, and Jürgen Schupp)
Forced Mobility in Immigration Detention: Emotional Violence as Governmental Technique	Peterie, Michelle
Session 7.2. Morality and Emotions
Taxes and Emotions	Terpe, Sylvia
A thousand sorrows cannot pay a debt: Debt as an emotionful social relation	Karakaya, M. Faith
Recipes for happiness: results from a web survey on morally binding feeling rules	Martín Pérez, Alberto (with Aitor D. Aguayo, José A. Rodríguez Díaz, José Luis Condom Bosch)
Moral emotions and social imageries among volunteers helping refugees in 2015, Hungary	Zakariás, Ildikó  (with Margit Feischmidt)
Session 7.3. Political identity and emotions
Collective emotion as a shared product of group agency and national-level engagement: A case study of South African pride, euphoria and unity in relation to the 2010 FIFA World Cup	Sullivan, Gavin Brent
The emotional management of the migration crisis in Hungary	Kiss, Balázs
‘Turkishness’ at the Stage in Eurovision Song Contest: Gendered Discourses of Affective Nationalism in Turkey	Ural, Haktan
A Union without heart? The role of emotions in European Union (EU) parliamentary debates	Sanchez Salgado, Rosa

 

12.00 – 12.30     Coffee/Snacks

12.30 – 14.30     Business Meeting

14.30 Conference Ends

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On the Emotional State: Workshop at Queen’s University Belfast, May 27th, 2016

Provisional Programme. More details to follow.

On the Emotional State_poster_final

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: ASA Junior Theorists Symposium 2015

This has been doing the rounds for a few days now but it is an excellent opportunity for serious, theory-orientated early career sociologists. If they can afford it of course.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

2015 Junior Theorists Symposium

Chicago, IL

August 21, 2015

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 13, 2015

We invite submissions for extended abstracts for the 9th Junior Theorists Symposium (JTS), to be held in Chicago, IL on August 21st, 2015, the day before the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA). The JTS is a one-day conference featuring the work of up-and-coming theorists, sponsored in part by the Theory Section of the ASA. Since 2005, the conference has brought together early career-stage sociologists who engage in theoretical work.

We are pleased to announce that Patricia Hill Collins (University of Maryland), Gary Alan Fine (Northwestern University), and George Steinmetz (University of Michigan) will serve as discussants for this year’s symposium.

In addition, we are pleased to announce an after-panel on “abstraction” featuring Kieran Healy (Duke), Virag Molnar (The New School), Andrew Perrin (UNC-Chapel Hill), and Kristen Schilt (University of Chicago). The panel will examine theory-making as a process of abstraction, focusing on the particular challenge of reconciling abstract “theory” with the concrete complexities of human embodiment and the specificity of historical events.

We invite all ABD graduate students, postdocs, and assistant professors who received their PhDs from 2011 onwards to submit a three-page précis (800-1000 words). The précis should include the key theoretical contribution of the paper and a general outline of the argument. Be sure also to include (i) a paper title, (ii) author’s name, title and contact information, and (iii) three or more descriptive keywords. As in previous years, in order to encourage a wide range of submissions we do not have a pre-specified theme for the conference. Instead, papers will be grouped into sessions based on emergent themes and discussants’ areas of interest and expertise.

Please send submissions to the organizers, Hillary Angelo (New York University) and Ellis Monk (University of Chicago), at juniortheorists@gmail.com with the phrase “JTS submission” in the subject line. The deadline is February 13, 2014. We will extend up to 12 invitations to present by March 13. Please plan to share a full paper by July 27, 2015.

A Brief History of Liberty – and its Lessons: A Public ‘Ethics Initiative’ Lecture by Professor Philip Pettit of Princeton University in NUI Galway.

Distinguished Irish philosopher Prof. Philip Pettit of Princeton University will give a public lecture on ‘A Brief History of Liberty — and its Lessons’ in the Aula Maxima, NUI Galway at 4pm on Tuesday, 17^th June 2014. This talk is being presented as part of the President of Ireland’s ‘Ethics Initiative’, and organised by the Power, Conflict & Ideologies Research Cluster of the School of Political Science & Sociology. The President of Ireland, His Excellency Michael D. Higgins, will be in attendance at the lecture.  All are welcome and the event is free, but we would appreciate if you could register your attendance here.

Philip Pettit, originally from Ballygar Co. Galway, is L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University, where he teaches philosophy and political theory. He is particularly renowned for his revival and development of republicanism within political philosophy, and for his work on group agency.  Among his books are The Common Mind (1996); Republicanism (1997); The Economy of Esteem (2004), with G. Brennan; A Political Philosophy in Public Life: Civic Republicanism in Zapatero’s Spain, with J.L. Marti (2010); and Group Agency (2011), with C. List.  Professor Pettit is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of academies in his two countries of citizenship: Ireland and Australia.  His recent book On the People’s Terms (2012) is published with Cambridge University Press. It is based on the 2009 Albertus Magnus Lectures in Cologne, and the 2010 Seeley lectures in Cambridge.  Also forthcoming is a book with W.W.Norton for a general audience, entitled Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World. He is giving the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Berkeley in 2014-15.

While in Ireland, Prof. Pettit will also be involved in a number of workshops, based on his work, in UCD, and will give the opening keynote address, on the infrastructure of democracy, to the third annual Garrett Fitzgerald Summer School in Dublin later in June.

Abstract for the lecture is below the fold.

Call for Papers – ESA Emotions Network Midterm Conference 2014**DEADLINE EXTENDED TO APRIL 6TH 2014**

Antony Gormley: FEELING MATERIAL XIV, 2004
4 mm square section mild steel bar
225 x 218 x 170 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

** DEADLINE EXTENDED TO APRIL 6TH 2014**

The ESA Emotions Network (RN11) will hold their 6th midterm conference between 25-27 September, 2014. The conference will take place on the island of Rhodes, Greece, in the University of the Aegean. This year, in addition to the usual streams, the conference will feature two special workshops on emotions – one for PhD students (featuring Prof. Helena Flam and Prof. Helmut Kuzmics), and one on the use of literary analysis for sociology of emotions research (again, featuring Prof. Helmut Kuzmics and Dr. Stephanie Bird). The proposed sessions, towards which you might pitch your abstracts, include: Theorizing Emotions; Emotions and: Morality; Globalization; Religion; Civic Action; Power; Literature; Law; Finance; Visuals; Migration-Sensations-Spaces; Post-Atrocity Emotions; and Researching Emotions Empirically. The full call for papers is here: CfP RN 11 Midterm Rhodes final(pdf).

Abstracts not exceeding 300 words should be sent by the 31st of March 2014 to Jochen Kleres (jkleresATposteo.de). Please use “RN 11 midterm submission”in the subject line of your email. Also, please send your abstract indicating whether it is for a specific session listed above. Notifications about the abstracts selected for presentation at the midterm conference will be made by mid-May 2014. Conference fees, more precise conference times, and links to accommodation will be announced then.

I hope to make it this year myself and I urge those working on affect or emotions to submit an abstract. I have been to other conferences with this group and always found them both intellectually stimulating and, perhaps more importantly, filled with interesting, warm and (not least) fun social scientists from all over the world. But hurry up! The deadline is Monday!

 

Diana Coole talk on May 20th, NUI Galway – on the ‘Population Question’

We are delighted to announce the second guest speaker of the Power, Conflict & Ideologies Cluster (School of Political Science & Sociology) this year is Prof Diana Coole of Birkbeck  University of London. The talk, based on the ‘Population Question’ (specifics below), will take place at 3pm on 20th May in the SAC Room/CA110, Cairnes Building (St. Anthony’s, ground floor)  NUI Galway. All are welcome.

The title of the paper will be ‘From Population Control to Behaviour Modification: Liberty, Coercion and Behaviour Modification in Pursuit of Sustainable Wellbeing’. The abstract is below, but a useful introduction to these issues and Coole’s perspective on the population question in general may be found in her 2013 paper ‘Too Many Bodies? The Return and Disavowal of the Population Question’, which is currently open access (as one of Routledge’s ‘most popular’ politics papers of 2013).

The abstract for the Galway talk, and the speaker’s bio, are below the fold.

 

Prof. Philip Pettit at NUI Galway: public lecture and reading group

Prof.Philip Pettit of Princeton University will give a public lecture on the theme of justice and democracy in NUI Galway at 4pm on 17 June. The venue is the SAC Room in the Cairnes Building. The talk is organised by the Power, Conflict & Ideologies Research Cluster of the School of Political Science & Sociology. A reading group run by the cluster will meet to discuss Prof Pettit’s work in the approach to his visit. Interested colleagues from other Schools (and other institutions) are welcome to join the group, but ask that they contact either myself (jonathangheaneyATgmail.com), Dr. Jenny Dagg (jennydaggATgmail.com) or Dr.Niall Ó Dochartaigh (niall.odochartaighATnuigalway.ie) so we can keep track of numbers/room size etc.

We have initially scheduled two meetings:

1. Thursday 13 March, 2pm

Venue: Room 306, , Aras Moyola, NUI Galway

 2. Monday 7 April, 1pm

Venue: Room 306, Aras Moyola, NUI Galway

The reading for the first meeting is Freedom as Anti-Power’ (1996 pdf), which offers a general overview and introduction to his influential approach to normative, neo-republican political theory, and his conception of freedom as non-domination in particular.  In the second meeting we will discuss his new book On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2012), in which this framework is reasserted and refined, and turned to questions of political legitimacy, social justice and democracy.  If you are interested in getting a flavour of the arguments and style of this later work there are videos of lectures that he did in Frankfurt in 2012 available here.  There is also an excellent audio interview about the new book (and his life in general) available on the New Books in Philosophy website.

If you would like to join the meetings of the reading group or would like further information please email either myself or Niall.

Speaker bio:

Philipp Pettit, originally from Ballygar Co. Galway, is L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University, where he teaches philosophy and political theory.  Among his books are The Common Mind (1996), Republicanism (1997), The Economy of Esteem (2004), with G. Brennan; Made with Words (2008); A Political Philosophy in Public Life, with JL Marti (2010); and Group Agency (2011) with C. List. Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit, ed G.Brennan et al, appeared from OUP in 2007.  Professor Pettit is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as of academies in his two countries of citizenship: Ireland and Australia.  His most recent book On the People’s Terms (2012) is published with Cambridge University Press. It is based on the 2009 Albertus Magnus Lectures in Cologne, and the 2010 Seeley lectures in Cambridge.

Economy and Society Summer School, 12-16th of May 2014, Blackwater Castle, Cork

** applications opening Janurary 2014 **

Tom Boland of WIT has asked me to post this call for applications for the Economy & Society Summer School, which will be held in the beautiful Blackwater Castle in Cork.  The school is aimed primarily at doctoral students from across the social sciences, and offers a unique and intensive week of theory, reading, thinking and discussion for up to 30 students.  It is an excellent event, and space, for developing your own thinking and research, and students can also earn credits (5-10 ECTS, 3-6 American Credits), where relevant.  The site with all of the details on the programme, requirements and application etc is HERE.  The blurb is below:

Doctoral candidates from across disciplines in business and social sciences need to address both economy and society. Clearly, the economy shapes society, and economic institutions are irreducibly social. Furthermore, in an increasingly interdisciplinary academic world, sociology, anthropology, politics, geography and history on the one hand, and organisation studies, management, marketing, finance and economics on the other can indeed be mutually illuminating. Thus, this summer school is oriented to the contemporary social science concern with the economy and the turn towards the social in the broad range of economics and business. Bridging the gap between these paradigms and developing a new language to address the intersections of economy and society is a vital contemporary concern.

To some, the economy appears as a sort of autonomous assemblage of law-like forces; supply, demand, labour and capital, and yet it can be concretely investigated through more micro phenomena such as offices, factories, companies, entrepreneurship, internationalisation, networks or cultural practices such as consumerism, leisure and credit. Furthermore, historical perspectives suggest that there is a complex and often surprising lineage in the emergence, transformation and consolidation of money, private property and markets. Another concern is the subjective experience of economic processes, for instance, the trials of job-seeking and ‘selling yourself’, the experience of indebtedness, poverty or social mobility. And in the quest to make a contribution, researchers examining these phenomena look to a broad set of theorists and researchers from across the social sciences, a selection of which will be presented in detail in the summer school reading groups.

The most important political ideas in the last century are liberalism and socialism, both of which are economic philosophies; these paradigms dominate public debate and politics. The main activities of the contemporary state are economic management; taxation, regulation and providing social services. Furthermore, many areas of social and personal life have become suffused with economic logics; we work on ourselves, our families and our relationships; there is a marketplace for ideas, for love and for friendship; we ‘consume’ media history and politics. While there is much to critique in the injustices, excesses and absurdities of the ‘economy’, it is first of all necessary to understand it interpretatively. Since Weber’s ‘protestant ethic’ thesis, it is clear that in modern society one of our highest values, our most important institutions and primary markers of identity is work. Paradoxically, a gulf has opened between economic practices and social norms, even as society has increasingly taken on the market principle.

The Economy and Society summer school aspires to help early stage researchers strengthen and widen their theoretical basis in ways that allows them to position their work amongst broader discourses, extend and sharpen their understanding of their theoretical and empirical practices and to contribute to their formation as independently-minded academics. In this way we hope to offer a space to move beyond the narrowing of fields and hair-splitting discourse of some contemporary research.

Organisers: Tom Boland, Ray Griffin and John O’Brien – Waterford Institute of Technology,

 In collaboration with Kieran Keohane, Colin Sumner and Arpad Szakolczai – University College Cork

Is Civil Society the Good Society?

This is a fascinating exchange, recorded in Dublin a few months ago, between Jeffrey Alexander and Maeve Cooke on the relationship between, and their their perspectives and positions on, the ‘civil society’ (sociology) and the ‘good society’ (philosophy).  It can be viewed as a conversation between their respective books on these topics – Cooke’s Re-Presenting The Good Society (2005) and Alexander’s The Civil Sphere (2006).  I have read the former some years ago and found it excellent.  I was particularly interested in the central deployment of imagination and affect in her arguments there.  I have not yet read Alexander’s book, which is 800 pages long, but have plans to.  The UCD blurb is below:

Professor Jeffrey Alexander (Department of Sociology, Yale University) and Professor Maeve Cooke (UCD School of Philosophy, University College Dublin) discuss: “Is Civil Society the Good Society?” at a special workshop in Dublin, Ireland (06 Sept 2013).

Professor Alexander, who is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University, was in Ireland to receive an honorary doctorate from University College Dublin in recognition of his “considerable contribution to sociology”.

“Jeffrey Alexander is one of the leading figures if not the intellectual voice of modern cultural sociology. His many books, most outstanding perhaps The Civil Sphere (Oxford University Press 2006), The Performance of Politics (Oxford University Press 2011) and his studies on cultural trauma such as Remembering the Holocaust (Oxford 2009), are milestones in the field”, said Dr Andreas Hess, UCD School of Sociology, who read the official citation at the conferring ceremony in University College Dublin.

“In contrast to other attempts such as the sociology of culture or cultural studies, the focus is not only on the arts, theatre, music, modern media and so forth but Alexander’s cultural sociology combines the aspirations of classic sociology of a Max Weber or Emile Durkheim with some of the new insights from linguistics, social anthropology, and the philosophy of language and applies these to a wide range of social phenomena.”

“In his opus magnum The Civil Sphere and in the follow-up study The Performance of Politics Alexander tries to apply cultural sociology to modern civil society and its politics. They are attempts to understand the complex relations and interactions between established institutions and the more flexible or elastic civil sphere in which public opinion is being formed and in which various conceptualisations of justice are discussed and begin to take shape. As Alexander shows convincingly in the case of Obama’s first presidential campaign, the civil sphere is also the place where the open democratic struggle for symbolic representation and meaning takes place − with outcomes that are not always predictable,” continued Dr Hess.

Call for Papers – Poesis: The ambivalent creation of truth.

Call for Papers: (Submission deadline 1^st of November)

Sixth International Political Anthropology Workshop in Ireland on

Poesis: The ambivalent creation of truth.

29^th & 30^th of November, 2013

Waterford Institute of Technology

Organised by the Department of Applied Arts, Waterford Institute of Technology, the Journal International Political Anthropology, and the School of Sociology & Philosophy, University College Cork

Conveners: Tom Boland (Sociology, WIT, tboland@wit.ie,)

                   John O’ Brien, (Sociology, WIT, jfobrien@wit.ie)

Poesis, from the Ancient Greek (ποίησις) means production or composition. This creativity is central and vital to humanity; from language, story and song through objects, homes and art to political and social institutions. To study society and culture separately is scarcely tenable: this conference concerns the centrality of meaning, narrative and even beauty to human life. Yet, in modernity poesis and culture are often relegated to being little more than entertainment or even frothy ideology which distorts ‘real’ social processes. Furthermore, for academics oriented to investigating, interpreting or even measuring social forces, how poesis creates truth is a matter of deep ambivalence.

There is nothing more poetic than the sense, or even the sensation, of moving through fiction towards the truth. As Nietzsche pointed out, all of our truths are fictions which we have ceased to recognise as creative poesis: the foundational concepts of philosophy, theology and all the modern disciplines emerge from stories. Inevitably, we live culturally within one fictional world or another, or even in many worlds that overlap in complex ways. Yet, we are ambivalent about this poesis: Whose fiction is it? Does fictional mean false, ideological and erroneous? And what might happen if the fiction starts to wear thin – will there be disenchantment, alienation or renewal?

The intersections of culture and society are no narrow specialism, but increasingly a concern common to many disciplines. Cultural anthropology, at least since Geertz, has taken the meaning-making practices of human societies as a central area of inquiry. Cultural sociology has grown from a minor field to a central paradigm. Literary and performance theory, musicology and cognate disciplines have become increasingly concerned with culture and context, from new historicism to reader response theories. This conference will bring together papers concerned with poesis and culture from all of these areas which engage with the ambivalent status of truth after the cultural turn, the historical turn and the performative turn.

The question of poesis and truth cannot be confined to the sepulchral realms of high art or the distracting froth of popular culture. Despite the dominance of technocratic discourse, the political world is animated by fictions, from universalising utopian visions to images of the nation. Ultimately politics is a contest over meaning. Similarly that thing which we sometimes call ‘economic reality’ is also a storied world, with confidence, booms and busts the material of our contemporary morality tale. The tale of technological world domination, the bildungsroman of entrepreneurial success, the Faustian pact of progress and the carnival world of the market are all fictions. And of course, culture is now an industry, so that tourism, advertising and education are sites of the production and consumption of poesis and truth.

However, this brings us to problems of distinction: Are all societies alike in creating meaning? Modernity is associated with a dearth of meaning, a decline of poesis and truth becoming singular and univocal – but is this our near-sighted parochialism? Are all elements of society meaning-making? Every human action exists in a nexus of meaning, but it is hardly an undifferentiated continuum, and surely there are particular sources of meaning which deserve academic attention, from poetry, to religion, to authority, to ritual and beyond.

We invite plenary and session papers on:

–          Poetry and truth, theory and meaning.

–          Society as a fictional world: in modernity and beyond.

–          Politics as the contested field of meaning.

–          Poesis and everyday life.

–          The marketplace for meaning and productive poesis.

Deadline for abstracts is Friday 1^th of November 2013.

Feel free to contact the convenors earlier for consultation and information

www.politicalanthropology.com