Dear Listmembers,
a CFP some of you might be interested in. Deadline is in a few days but
anyways. Sorry for cross posting and please distribute widely.

email: [log in to unmask]

Call for Papers:

The logics of change – poverty, place, identity
and social transformation mechanisms
November 24 – 25, 2011
ifz Salzburg, Mönchsberg 2a, 5020 Salzburg, Austria

Conference designated to the ifz-project
“Tu was, dann tut sich was” / „Do something and things will change“

We live in a world of constant change. While this is an intrinsic fact
and experience of our daily life, change itself has many guises ranging
from very sudden, often unexpected occurrences like job loss or natural
and man-made hazards (like in Japan) to very slow, subtle and hardly
perceivable processes like demographic change or changes in moral
attitudes. Change affects us directly in our immediate environment but
also beyond our ‘own doorstep’, in other continents: on the other side
of the world (see: the ‘World Risk Society’, Ulrich Beck).
Transformation may be something perceived just by an individual or by
society as a whole. Change can be a linear process of gradual
transition, but it can also be recurring, wave-like; sometimes
desirable, sometimes not.
Change is thus associated and correlated with logic at manifold levels
and varying in its complexity and extent. As such, this conference is
trans-disciplinary in nature and addresses both theorists in Philosophy,
Sociology, Economics or Geography, but also practitioners in wider
fields of enquiry and research.

Background of the Conference: the organizers of the conference have
initiated a “social festival”, entitled “Tu was, dann tut sich was” (“Do
something and things will change”). It deals with aware-ness of poverty
and inequality, and aims at local empowerment and participation.
Privately funded and sponsored, the festival aims to encourage local
people, businesses and institutions to come up with and put forward
ideas that will tackle social and cultural problems of poverty, identity
and social institutions in their local communities. It is hoped that
social commitment both at the local and re-gional level can be
increased, thus contributing towards improving the ‘quality of life’ for
those hit by (sudden) changing circumstances. This year the festival,
whose character is explicitly bottom-up, takes place in the Lungau
region (in the south of the Province of Salzburg, Austria), a region
where e.g. unemployment and outmigration is comparatively high. It is
hoped that social commitment both at the local and regional level can be
increased, and that this contributes towards improving the ‘quality of
life’ for those hit by (sudden) changing circumstances.
1 The concept of „Tu was, dann tut sich was“ was inspired by the model
of the European Capitals of Culture, a cultural festival held in
different places (cities or regions) each year, accordingly „Tu was,
dann tut sich was“ is called a „social festival“ (see www.tu-was.at).

Abstracts of approx. 300 words are welcome for one of the four sessions
below and should be sub-mitted to [log in to unmask] and
[log in to unmask] Notification of acceptance will be given
by June 30, 2011. Invited colleagues are asked to prepare a paper for
publication in spring 2012: deadline for submitting manuscripts is
October 30, 2011.


Session I: “Social festivals” as a tool to eradicate poverty and promote
local identity
“Social festivals“ deal with local knowledge such as the everyday
experience of and insight into social, cultural and local conditions,
and they mirror specific perceptions and local theories of their
settings. They follow certain interests and intentions and appeal to
certain target groups, though they may also appeal to a wider audience
and “unusual suspects”. – This kind of event strongly refers to its
social-cultural environ-ment, be it in an interactive or in an effective
way. Local or regional players can act as key figures in implementing
such festivals, and accordingly in making local knowledge and local
theories applicable for the benefit of the local community.
In this session we want to take a closer look at examples of so-called
social festivals that can be seen as outstanding, especially when it
comes to interaction, impact, and side-effects. The questions we pose
are: To what extent can festivals promote local identities? In how far
can they help support social cohesion and empowerment, and can they
contribute to reducing poverty and social disparities? And do social
festivals contribute to a responsible, sustainable regional development?

Session II: Methods for understanding and evaluating social belonging,
regional embedded-ness, and local acceptance
 Manifold relationships between the individual Lebenswelt and
social-spatial envi-ronments are to be discerned when surveys are
carried out to better understand agency and social belonging. Context
sensitive interpretation of specific structures and processes in regions
on the one hand, and efforts of generalizing observations in order to
attain common rules on the other challenge the appropriate application
of methods and techniques. Additionally, different scales and scopes of
complexity raise the question of an adequate integration of change
concepts in respective methods (from process to evolution, from local to
global, from individual to society). In this session we wish to discuss
methods and techniques from a wide range of disciplines, their goals,
assumptions, benefits, and difficulties. Examples are (but are not
re-stricted to): Social network analyses, social capital surveys,
action-setting analyses, qualitative interviews, or multivariate
statistics.


Session III: What is a ‘contented and happy life’ in a world of
inequality, exclusion, and pover-ty?
Change can be for the better or for the worse. When we think about
change for the better, the motives for change may be lying in a
dissatisfying status quo, or in a promising vision of an improved future
condition. One common goal, as wide-ranging and far-reaching as it is
challenging, would be a “contented and happy life”.
A “good life” does not solely depend on money and, or material wealth.
It also relies heavily on the intangibles of life such as a sense of
perspective, opportunities and chances for fulfillment, traditions and
values, fairness and recognition, social and cul-tural participation or
a sense of purpose and belonging. At the same time we live in a world
where the preconditions for a contented and happy life, both financial
and in-tangible, are constantly at risk. For many people, their status
quo is characterized by inequality, exclusion and poverty, and they feel
threatened by change for the worse. Bearing this in mind, we will focus
on ideas of what a “good life” comprises, and on factors that can
influence, promote or obstruct well-being in different circumstances and
different areas of life.

Session IV: Theories & reflections about locality, agency, regional
awareness, and identity.
A wide range of disciplines are concerned with the (supposed)
antagonisms between micro- and macro-phenomena. Tensions between for
example embeddedness and participation, structure and agency,
infrastructure and inclusion have been discussed for a long time. There
are, in addition, theories dealing with hybridity, actor-networks, or
the idea of palimpsest. This session intends to introduce and illustrate
different theoretical approaches which shed light on social-spatial
scale enquiries, hybrid phenomena, but also on local theories of agency,
resilience, poverty, vulnera-bility, and identity issues in order to
better understand the complexity of a ‘good and happy’ life under
contemporary conditions of globalization, crisis, risk, and uncertain-ty.



Contact for queries and abstracts:

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Koch
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ifz – International Research Center Salzburg
Mönchsberg 2a, A – 5020 Salzburg
http://www.ifz-salzburg.at/?p=1322

Mag. Elisabeth Kapferer
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Center for Ethics and Poverty Research (University of Salzburg)
Mönchsberg 2a, A - 5020 Salzburg
www.uni-salzburg.at/zea