Research Committee on
Futures Research, RC07

 

Main theme

Democratizing futures: Social quests for justice and participation

 

Programme Coordinator

• Markus S. SCHULZ, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, United States, isarc07buenosaires@gmail.com
• Radhamany SOORYAMOORTHY, University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, sooryamoorthyr@ukzn.ac.za

Programme Committee members:

• Eliana HERRERA VEGA, Ottawa, Canada
• Daniel MATO, Argentina
• Jan NEDERVEEN PIETERSE, University of California Santa Barbara, USA
• Scott NORTH, Osaka University, Japan
• Elisa P. REIS, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Hermilio SANTOS, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
• Hiroyuki TOYOTA, Kansai Gaidai University, Japan
• John URRY, Lancaster, United Kingdom

RC07 Liaison in Argentina
María Ana González, Universidad Nacional de Luján, mariaanagonzalez04@yahoo.com.ar

Volunteer at the venue
Antonella Colman Alet, colmanalet@gmail.com

Deadlines

All Forum participants (presenters, chairs, discussants, etc.) need to pay the early registration fee by April 10, 2012, in order to be included in the programme. If not registered, their names will not appear in the Programme or Abstracts Book.

Sessions

provisional as of March 15, 2012, in alphabetical order

 

Alternatives to neoliberal globalization: Comparing counter-hegemonic projects - Part I

Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society and RC07 Futures Research [host committee]
The global financial system has increased inequalities through booms and crises. Far from collapsing, global capitalism keeps permuting. The rise of Brazil, Russia, India and China has led to a new multipolarity. Transnationally linked civil society actors protested the neoliberal mode of globalization and the activities of transnational corporations, governments, and intergovernmental organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF.

The huge demonstrations in Prague, Washington, Seattle, Genoa, and Cancún were televised to global audiences, as had been images of the earlier Zapatista uprising of Mayan peasants in Chiapas. Latin American countries have catapulted into positions of power a wave of new populist leaders from Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to Ollanta Humala in Peru. Spending cuts in the wake of the recent financial crisis have triggered protest throughout the Euro zone, most visibly in Greece and Spain.

What alternative projects do the diverse actors in the Global South and the Global North articulate? How can they overcome the linguistic and cultural barriers, and how do they manage to network across borders and vastly different local contexts? How do they interact with transnational elites, the mass media, and repressive forces? – This session welcomes scholars working on any of these aspects from a theoretical, empirical, and/or normative viewpoint.

 

Alternatives to neoliberal globalization: Comparing counter-hegemonic projects - Part II

 

Citizenship and experiences of participation/ Ciudanía y experiencias de participación

 

Democratizing futures and digital inclusion: Participatory opportunities and pitfalls

This session invites papers on any aspect of digital exclusion and digital inclusion. Special attention will be given to work that addresses new media’s potential to erase traditional forms of social stratification or to replicate offline inequalities and accentuate the impacts of disadvantage. The session welcomes different angles of research from empirical analysis to research on policy implication. Papers may address current trends, social consequences, alternative future scenarios, or processes for imagining and shaping media futures. Papers may also focus on related issues such IT design and development, intellectual property rights, surveillance, mobility, participatory trends, online activism, or virtual publics. Submissions are invited on local, national, or transnational dimensions. Comparison of these angles of vision will allow the session as a whole to examine the complex interplay of different social forces around digital inequality. This session invites contributions in English, French, and Spanish.

 

Futures of education: Alternative experiences and new politics between inequality and democratization/ Futuros de la educación: Experiencias alternativas y nuevas políticas entre desigualdad y democratización

 

Futures of water: Scenarios and struggles/ Futuros del agua: Escenarios y luchas - Part I

 

Futures, values, and sociological theory - Part I

 

Futures, values, and sociological theory - Part II

 

Globalization, futures of management, and resistance movements. Part I

Joint session of RC07 Futures Research and RC09 Social Transformations and Sociology of Development [host committee]
What is the future of ‘management’? What forces can counter its appeal of efficiency and push for a democratization of social organization? The notion of management has penetrated ever more social spheres and has embraced the world with an even tighter grip. Management is the central social technology not only in corporations and state administrations but also in unions, universities, charities, leisure organizations, and an increasing number of daily routines. The global discourse of management has spread through academic programs, professional training seminars, organizational strategies, government policies, and self-help literature. The technologies vary as much as the sites of their deployment. Disciplined bodies and knowledge submit to these forms of control. Yet, there is also a diverse array of resistances from individual misbehavior in the workplace to collective counterstrategies by social movements.

Moreover, one of the most important features of organizations in the last quarter of the 20th century has been the increasing influence of management. There has been a spread of management from large corporations into professions, NGOs, the public sector, and everyday life of social actors. The spread of management has meant the spread of the discourse on management. This discourse consists of a given language and given practices that are produced, distributed, and consumed by actors in the global social world. These forms of disciplined knowledge that have contributed to the creation of a world controlled by managers, and technologies of management have penetrated the global discourse of management. This discourse can be found in individual stories, self-help books, training programs, organizational strategies, and government policies. This discourse is so widespread that it seems difficult to escape from its grip. Microforms of resistance in the workplace are today completed by collective strategies of resistance in civil society.

This joint session of RC07 and RC09 invites papers on the multiple forms of resistance against this discourse of management. Authors may present theoretically inspired case studies of public sector employees, unionists, shareholder activists, or other pressure groups. They should ask the question how the global discourse on management is resisted in different situations at work or outside the workplace. This may then permit to demonstrate the variety of counter-hegemonic movements against the management discourse in the global age and its potential influences on our global future. Papers should thus aim to advance our knowledge on these different forms of new social movements that challenge the global management discourse that has shaped the present and will shape the future of our global world.

 

Globalization, futures of management, and resistance movements. Part II

Joint session of RC07 Futures Research and RC09 Social Transformations and Sociology of Development [host committee]

 

ICTs for science and technology development in Latin America and the economic South: Present and future

Joint session of RC07 Futures Research and RC23 Sociology of Science and Technology [host committee]
Although it is well documented that ICT’s are not evenly distributed along the world and the development gap between the rich and the poor among and within countries has increased, some advantages have been obtained from the comprehensive use of the technological means to communicate around the world for S&T advancement.

What Latin Americans and the Economic Southerners have to say in terms of possible advantages/disadvantages rendered by the relative easiness to communicate with peers both in the industrialized and not industrialized countries? What can be visualized as the future of these communications? What theoreticians have to say in terms of current and future developments? Is the explosion of ICT’s helping/obstructing our science, technology and innovation? These and many other questions are proposed for exploration. Both personal experiences and theoretical advances are welcome.

The session will be run in both English and Spanish. Since simultaneous translation is not feasible, we ask presenters who can do, to produce slides in both languages. Presentations in one language are welcome. We will arrange the public in such a way that those who speak both languages be seated close to those who don’t for a personal translation.

 

Imagining futures: Social movements, publics, and contentious politics. Part I

Joint session of RC07 Futures Research [host committee] and RC48 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change
The Research Committees on Future Research, RC07, and on Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change, RC48, are planning one or more Joint Sessions in English and/or Spanish on contentious politics and on how social movements shape futures. Questions may include (but are not limited to):

• How do social movements in Latin America and around the world imagine alternative futures?
• How do social movements create, debate, disseminate, and attempt to implement projects and visions of the future?
• How do social movements invent new practices?
• How do social movements relate to old and new media, publics and counter-publics?
• What factors influence the outcomes of social movement struggles?

 

Imagining futures: Social movements, publics, and contentious politics. Part II

Joint session of RC07 Futures Research [host committee] and RC48 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change

 

Imagining futures: Social movements, publics, and contentious politics. Part III

Joint session of RC07 Futures Research [host committee] and RC48 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change

 

Memory´s futures: Human rights and transitional justice - Part I / El futuro de la Memoria: Derechos Humanos y Políticas de Transición: Verdad, Justicia y Reparación - Parte I

 

RC07 Business Meeting

 

RC07 Futures Research Round Table Session 1

• RC07 Roundtable 1A: Participación política juvenil y democratización del espacio social / Political participation of youth and the democratization of social space
• RC07 Roundtable 1B: Memory's futures: Human rights and transitional justice/ El futuro de la memoria: derechos humanos y políticas de transición: verdad, justicia y reparación
• RC07 Roundtable 1C: Imagining futures: Social movements, publics, and contentious politics
• RC07 Roundtable 1D: Technology/media/futures
• RC07 Roundtable 1E: Alternatives to neoliberal globalization: Comparing counterhegemonic projects

RC07 Futures Research Round Table Session 2

• RC07 Roundtable 2A: Futures of water: Scenarios and struggles/ Futuros del agua: escenarios y luchas
• RC07 Roundtable 2B: Memory's futures: Human rights and transitional justice/ El futuro de la memoria: derechos humanos y políticas de transición: verdad, justicia y reparación
• RC07 Roundtable 2C: Imagining futures: Social movements, publics, and contentious politics
• RC07 Roundtable 2D: Technology/media/futures
• RC07 Roundtable 2E: Politics of the future. Open theme

Social justice, equality and participation

The aim of this session is to stimulate the debate about social justice. This includes discussions of the impact of inequalities on participation in different social, political and cultural spheres as well as ideas for overcoming various types of inequalities in contemporary society. Hence, we welcome papers studying the various dimensions of inequality and/or political and social participation and their relation to equality and justice. This session invites contributions in English and/or Spanish.

 

 

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