The Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra organizes for the fifth time the International Colloquium of Doctoral Students from the doctoral programmes hosted by the Centre or which have the CES as their host institution.
In this fifth edition, which will take place on 20 and 21 March 2015, the theme Emerging Powers, Continuities and Transformations sets the tone for a discussion about the struggles which emerge from the tensions between change and social reproduction. This Colloquium invites a look at the structuring dynamics of new powers, considering the structures and dynamics of reproduction of powers historically institutionalised and structured. It concerns, therefore, powers that emerge from current logics of social structure, noticeable through the intersection of the global with the local, of the society and its institutions with individuals, collectives and their actions. Thus, this theme relates to the dynamics of the struggle for the exercise of domination and emancipation, as well as their reciprocity and their sources of tension. To understand power as a relationship in continuous reconstruction and reconfiguration opens up the space needed for its discovery in the various domains of social life but, moreover, returns to the subject the ability to transform it.
To challenge to a debate on emerging powers is, therefore, a provocation to a thorough observation of society itself and its diverse fields of social activity, understanding that every power relation has a political and historical nature to be observed and questioned. Economic power, political power, cultural power and symbolic power are expressions that invite an analysis of the economy of power, of its politics, cultures and symbols and signs in the many spheres of social life, as well as in its various analytical plans.
It is, in this context, an exercise we propose in the level of the following thematic areas:
