The International Association for Critical Realism (IACR) are now accepting abstract submissions for their annual conference, which this year focuses on the topic of ‘post-truth’. The deadline for submitting abstracts for the conference has been extended to May 1st 2019.
Further details on the conference topic and session themes can be found here and on the IACR website.
The International Association for Critical Realism (IACR) are now accepting abstract submissions for their annual conference, which this year focuses on the topic of ‘post-truth’. The organisers explain that the conference will “explore, from a Critical Realist perspective, the challenges ‘post-truth’ politics pose for society, the need for value-based research, and the role, representation and dissemination of academic knowledge in the public sphere.”
Proposals for paper sessions on the following themes are especially invited:
The conference will take place at the University of Southampton, between the 31st of July and the 2nd of August, 2019. It will include a roundtable on the work of Andrew Collier. Further information about the conference can be accessed at https://iacrsoton.wordpress.com, and enquiries can be sent to Erin Forward: E.M.Forward@soton.ac.uk
The eighth annual Centre for Social Ontology workshop will take place at the Grenoble Ecole de Management from January 7th to January 10th, 2019. It will be followed by an Open Research Workshop on Friday the 11th of January, in room C241. The seminar is convened by Prof. Ismael Al-Amoudi (GEM, social and organisational studies) and will feature professors Margaret Archer (Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, social theory), Pierpaolo Donati (Bologna, sociology), Jamie Morgan (Leeds-Beckett, philosophy and economics), Doug Porpora (Drexel, media studies) and Colin Wight (Sydney, international relations). This open seminar will feature a morning roundtable session regarding the CSO’s current project on post-human society, followed by an afternoon general discussion around the question ‘Towards post-human society?’ to generate informed dialogue with attendees.
Finally, between 3pm and 5pm on Friday, an Early Career and Doctoral Research Workshop will be held, during which time the five guest speakers will be available for individual 30 minutes discussions. Do not hesitate to discuss with them either a research project of yours for which you would like their input, or questions you may have about their own research, about realist approaches to social science, etc.
Those interested in attending can register here. Given that places are limited to a maximum of 35 participants, please register early. Please use the first sheet of the Google Doc to register for the open seminar, and the second page to register for the individual sessions should you wish to do so.
Friday Programme:
The seventh annual Centre for Social Ontology workshop took place at the University of Tromsø from January 9th to January 11th. It was followed by a workshop with colleagues from UiT Tromsø which can be viewed online here.
Doug Porpora, ‘What the Media are Saying’
Pierpaolo Donati, ‘ Human Enhancement and the Technological Matrices: the Hybridization of Identities, Social Relations and Organizations.
Mark Carrigan, The Human Ghost in the Machine that Learns
Margaret Archer, Considering AI Personhood
Andrea Maccarini, Transhuman social forms, cognitive advantages, post-human Sociability and feedback mechanisms.
Emmanuel Lazega, Fire and Forget Swarms; A.I. and the new wave of militarily driven Bureaucratization of Society.
Ismael Al-Amoudi, Public Policy, Artificial Intelligence and Ethical Problems
Postmodernity. Second modernity. Network Society. Late modernity. Liquid modernity. Such concepts have dominated social thought in recent decades, with a bewildering array of claims about social change and its implications. But what do we mean by ‘social change’? How do we establish that such change is taking place? What does it mean to say that it is intensifying? These are some of the questions which the Social Morphogenesis project has sought to answer in the last five years, through an inquiry orientated around the speculative notion of ‘morphogenic society’.
In our book launch on May 30th 2017 at the British Library, contributors to the project gathered in order to reflect on their contributions and the project as a whole. Here are podcasts from the talks on the day:
You can see live tweets from the event here.
Find out more about the book series: http://www.springer.com/series/11959
Postmodernity. Second modernity. Network Society. Late modernity. Liquid modernity. Such concepts have dominated social thought in recent decades, with a bewildering array of claims about social change and its implications. But what do we mean by ‘social change’? How do we establish that such change is taking place? What does it mean to say that it is intensifying? These are some of the questions which the Social Morphogenesis project has sought to answer in the last five years, through an inquiry orientated around the speculative notion of ‘morphogenic society’.
In this launch event, contributors to the project discuss their work over the last five years and the questions it gas addressed concerning social change. The day begins with an introductory lecture by the convenor of the project, Margaret S. Archer, before a series of thematic panels presenting different stands of the project. It concludes with a closing session in which participants share three issues the project raised for them, as well as a general discussion.
At the end of the day, there will be a wine reception to which all participants are invited. There will also be an opportunity to purchase discounted copies of the books from Springer.
Participants:
Ismael Al-Amoudi
Margaret S. Archer
Mark Carrigan
Pierpaolo Donati
Emmanuel Lazega
Andrea M. Maccarini
Jamie Morgan
Graham Scambler (Chair)
More speakers to be confirmed.
The Social Morphogenesis project was funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation through six years of support for the Centre for Social Ontology. This support was generously extended to enable this book launch.
All are welcome to this special celebration of Critical Realism (CR) and the works of its originator, Professor Roy Bhaskar. The event will see the launch of new books on the subject and an introduction to a new member of the UCL community. Chairing the proceedings will be Hilary Wainwright, the sociologist, political activist and socialist feminist, best known for being editor of Red Pepper magazine.
The afternoon will begin with a welcome to Professor Margaret Archer, who is joining UCL, by Professor David Voas, Head of the Department of Social Science, UCL Institute of Education and Professor Priscilla Alderson, UCL Institute of Education.
Registration and more details: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/celebration-of-critical-realism-at-ucl-tickets-31540549633
The sixth annual Centre for Social Ontology workshop took place from the 3rd to 6th January 2017 in central London. The papers will be published as the first in a new volume of books, with full details to be confirmed soon.
Maggie Archer: Bodies, Persons and Transhumans: Why do these Distinctions Matter?
Doug Porpora: Vulcans, Klingdoms, and Humans: What does Humanism Encompass?
Phil Gorski: The Meta-ethics of Transhumanism. Does the ethics of human flourishing provide sufficient leverage to critique radical Transhumanism?
John Latsis: Needs, Wants and the ethics of human enhancement
Pierpaolo Donati: Transcending the Human: Why, Where and How?
Emmanuel Lazega: Transhumanist Interventions: A formula for a divided social order?
Mark Carrigan: The Evisceration of the Human in the Digital Social Sciences
Colin Wight: Death, Dreams and Destruction: the illusions of Posthumanist Warfare.
Jamie Morgan: A.I. and the failure adequately to define the Human
Ismael Al-Amoudi: Dehumanisation and organisation studies
Wolfgang Hofkirchner: Imagined Futures gone astray; An ontological analysis
This collection, edited by Tom Brock, Mark Carrigan and Graham Scambler, seeks to celebrate the scope and accomplishments of Margaret Archer’s work, distilling her theoretical and empirical contributions into four sections which capture the essence and trajectory of her research over almost four decades. Long fascinated with the problem of structure and agency, Archer’s work has constituted a decade-long engagement with this perennial issue of social thought. However, in spite of the deep interconnections that unify her body of work, it is rarely treated as a coherent whole. This is doubtless in part due to the unforgiving rigour of her arguments and prose, but also a byproduct of sociology’s ongoing compartmentalisation.
This edited collection seeks to address this relative neglect by collating a selection of papers, spanning Archer’s career, which collectively elucidate both the development of her thought and the value that can be found in it as a systematic whole. This book illustrates the empirical origins of her social ontology in her early work on the sociology of education, as well as foregrounding the diverse range of influences that have conditioned her intellectual trajectory: the systems theory of Walter Buckley, the neo-Weberian analysis of Lockwood, the critical realist philosophy of Roy Bhaskar and, more recently, her engagement with American pragmatism and the Italian school of relational sociology. What emerges is a series of important contributions to our understanding of the relationship between structure, culture and agency. Acting to introduce and guide readers through these contributions, this book carries the potential to inform exciting and innovative sociological research.
Find out more on the publisher’s website: https://www.routledge.com/Structure-Culture-and-Agency-Selected-Papers-of-Margaret-Archer/Brock-Carrigan-Scambler/p/book/9781138932944
Centre for Social Ontology 