We welcome proposals in the following thematic areas:
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Art, Literature and Culture
Literature and art exceed the time and place determined by scientific guidelines. However, experience with the aesthetic field also involves and produces knowledge. Works in this thematic area would favour the thematisation of knowledge through aesthetic-expressive rationality. We seek proposals that discuss the nature of knowledge, between coincidences and discontinuities between the real and the imaginary.
Keywords: art; literature; aesthetic-expressive rationality.
Cities, Urbanism and Heritage
The fields of study of architecture, urbanism and heritage have produced in recent years new and vast analyses, extending their reach to new geographies and assuming other conformations mainly aided by post-colonial theory. It is indisputable that modern and modernist heritage conforms most cities of the Western world, and that in ancient colonised territories this presence was, and still is even more, significant, constituting authentic repositories of transnational collective memory. Recent studies have indeed shed new light on non-Western modern production, in African, Asian, East European or South American contexts, many of which associated with the cultural process of colonialism, rewriting parts of a history always necessarily incomplete. To the Western European and North American canonical concept of modernism, a plurality of conceptual neologisms and other modernisms were added, the result of several conjugations (of time, space, physical environment and socio-political conformation) which have allowed a balance between the mission civilisatrice of architecture and the sustainability of modern societies. Thus, we seek proposals that explore the links between heritage and coloniality.
Keywords: architecture and cities of colonial genesis in post-colonial context; modern urban and architectural heritage; cities of modern genesis.
Science, Risks: Environment, Territory and Demography
The development process characteristic of the West, based on the exploitation of natural resources, and the process of migration from rural to urban areas has been making cities increasingly densely populated, hampering the implementation of measures that meet everybody’s needs, especially the least economically favored. In this context, implementation of technological and governmental measures that foster resilience to disaster risks are needed. Faced with such challenges, we seek proposals that explore the ways in which the science of risk, associated with the various environmental sciences, can foster the development of effective measures to predict disasters, avoid them and minimize the damage caused by them.
Keywords: environment; disaster; development; risk; territory.
Democracies, Participations and Human Rights
Participation, individual or collective, as a fundamental element for access to human rights, has long been discussed. However, spaces that provide opportunities and encourage informed and democratic participation are yet to be defined, built and conquered. Permeated by old and new forms of discrimination, contemporary societies continually produce processes of marginalisation and exclusion, not always making available to individuals and groups, mechanisms of control, redress and accountability. This thematic area seeks, on one hand, contributions that reflect on how the articulation of human rights can lead to the consolidation of democratic and inclusive forms of participation. On the other, conversely, asks how the guarantee or the limitation of participation impact on access to and full realisation of human rights.
Keywords: democracies; discrimination; human rights; exclusion; participation.
Methodological Challenges
This thematic area seeks proposals that reflect on critical research focused on the production of scientific knowledge that is able to respond to the complexity of social reality and which faces the struggles for emancipation of individuals and groups. How can we utilise traditional methodological tools of in a critical, innovative and dialogic way? How to build new methodological models which are adequate to an alternative thinking about the alternatives that the world offers today? We are seeking proposals that explore new answers to these questions.
Keywords: ecologies of knowledges; research tools and methods; methodological innovation; scientific paradigms; participatory research.
Between Colonialisms: Metamorphoses of Power
In this thematic area we welcome reflections on how colonialisms are present today, both in the form of legacy and historical heritage of colonial systems of the past, as well through the perpetuation of relations of domination and negation of otherness in current socio-political systems. In spaces in which global capitalism metamorphoses power relations according to a logic of ownership and violence, neo-colonial models of domination originate new resistances, continually challenging post-colonial thought. Thus, we are seeking contributions that problematise current colonial continuities in different spaces.
Keywords: coloniality of power; neo-colonialisms; colonial heritage, spaces and practices; post-colonialism.
State, Administration and Public Policies
Considering the contemporary state under an analytical perspective of public policy, the action and demands of various social movements and groups are seen as fundamental elements for understanding the legitimacy of popular participation in the entire process of democratic education. Also international organisations interfere in the development of public policies, as well as in their application by the public administration. We are seeking proposals that question the ways in which the state responds to the diverse demands of society aimed at reducing exclusion and promoting equity, prevailing the supremacy of public interest over private interests.
Keywords: public administration; equity; state; public interest; popular participation; public policies.
Gender and Sexuality: Inequalities and Resistances
Gender and sexuality: inequalities and resistances is a thematic area that opens a space to the most recent debates on old issues - discrimination based on biological sex, sexual and relational orientation, and social roles of gender. It is a field of research effervescent by the old issues of sexual division and the structures and social interactions that legitimise it and reproduce it. It is also a field marked by the emergence of new forms of living sexuality and affection, of building plural identities around the sexual dimension, of reinventing conjugalities and parenthoods. Opposed to heteronormativity is a dimension of struggle for legitimacy of the plural, a constellation of new realities around sexuality, confronting a variety of institutions – from family to state – in order to rethink their positions and their own structures and logics of integration in the social.
Keywords: inequality; gender; power; resistances; sexuality.
Interculturality/ies and Ecology/ies of Knowledges
In a world increasingly formed by globalised localisms and localised globalisms, in physical and virtual terms, intercultural dialogue emerges simultaneously as a great need and a very complex challenge. In this context, several positions emerge ranging from the understanding of a dialogue in so-called ideal communication conditions, which do not recognize a priori the different obstacles and power relations, to positions that seemingly do not make viable any dialogue at all, based on static categories of knowledge, culture, identity, nationality, sexuality, temporality and productivity. In order to overcome such positions, which are unable to create dialogues that are both critical and fruitful, this thematic area welcomes contributions related to different times and living spaces that allow us to question different power relations in the so-called cross-border spaces, thus constantly reinventing multiple social emancipations of combat of the various sources of social oppression.
Keywords: ecology of knowledges; globalism; interculturality; localism; migration.
Peace, Power and Security
International relations are confronted with a political reality which is complex and continually changing. The militarised conflict in Ukraine, Israeli military actions in Gaza and the advancement of ISIL in Syria and Iraq rekindle theoretical and conceptual debates about forms of intervention, the nature of the concept of security and the possibility of conflict between states in the European territory. Simultaneously, politically and economically integrated transnational territories continue to suffer the effects of distortions caused by social and economic policies applied to them. Interventionism as a response to the economic and financial crisis has considerably changed the living conditions of populations, but also the structures of power relations among states. We seek proposals which, through the analysis of key concepts like Peace, Power and Security, critically examine currently discussed phenomena by engaging with alternative methodologies, trans-disciplinary approaches and contributions to change.
Keywords: conflict; interventionism; peace; security.
Poverty and Exclusion
Poverty and exclusion in the current context of economic austerity and growing social inequality, impose themselves as challenges to be (re)conceptualised. New groups and vulnerabilities emerge, and it is important to discuss the processes and pathways that underlie them in light of new and old theories of development, as well as the role of public policy and collective action in its reduction and eradication. We are seeking proposals that address these issues.
Keywords: exclusion, new inequalities; poverty.
Transformations in the World of Labour
The transformations in the world of labour are object of discussion in the field of social conflict and political struggle, considering the context of crisis of many countries with welfare state model in different levels of consolidation. To discuss labour issues is fundamental to understand their importance and place, especially in a context where we seem to witness an intensification of asymmetries, both from the viewpoint of institutions and organisations, conflicts, consensus and social cohesion, as well as human action and its subjective and objective meaning within the social interaction of organised groups and of collective structures of social life. These principles have emerged in societies since the nineteenth century, marked by the Industrial Revolution which deepened social conflicts and then generated fundamental conditions for social solidarity. In such troubled times, we propose an exercise of thinking about this subject and welcome proposals which address issues of the world of labour: professions and organisations, economic transformations, development and public policy, trajectories of precarity, employment, income, and collective bargaining.
Keywords: employment; precarity; professions; income; labour.
The proposals must contain a title, an abstract up to 250 words, and 3 or 4 keywords, as well as the author’s identification, including name, title, institution, academic degree, the type of work submitted (initial project, doctoral project in course, or in final stages), and the desired thematic area.
Proposals should be sent to coloquiodoutorandoscall@ces.uc.pt
Deadline for paper proposals : January 31, 2015.
Deadline for acceptance/refusal answer: February 2, 2015