> Hi,
>
>
>
> This conference might be of interest to some listmembers.
>
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>
>
>
> VIOLENCE AND CONFLICT
>
> The 24th Conference of the Nordic Sociological Association,
>
> University of Aarhus, Denmark, 14-17 August 2008
>
>
>
> The aim of the 24th Conference of the Nordic Sociological
> Association is to advance the discussion of the various and
> changing forms of violence and conflict in modern democratic
> societies and the global system. We believe that violence and
> conflict is a fruitful prism for analyzing the character of modern
> social and political realities and that the community of
> sociologists is particularly well-placed and theoretically well-
> equipped to make a significant contribution to such analyses. To
> stimulate this debate keynote speakers and participants are
> encouraged to deal with aspects of violence and conflict. These can
> include, but are by no means limited to, the following topics:
>
>
>
> ► Political violence still occurs in modern democratic
> societies. Religious fundamentalists, right-wing extremists and
> groups on the radical Left continue to use violence as a part of
> their strategies. How are these strategies legitimized and how are
> they perceived, opposed and countered by society and the political
> system? And how can we explain the persistence of violence in
> modern democratic societies?
>
>
>
> ► Violence as part of gender conflicts, admitted or not
> admitted, physical or symbolical, is not only still part of modern
> society. It also takes new forms in sexual abuse and trafficking as
> well as in asymmetric divisions of labour. What does gender related
> violence and conflict look like today? And how is it opposed?
>
>
>
> ► Culture and religion are becoming the terrain for new
> forms of violence and conflict in a post-9/11 setting. Why are we
> seeing a recurrence of culture and religion as lines of conflict in
> modern and secular societies? And should we expect this pattern to
> continue into the future?
>
>
>
> ► Social movements and NGOs constantly raise conflictive
> issues that challenge state policies and dominant conceptions of
> the good society. Around which issues do social movements mobilize
> today? What strategies do they employ and do they actually succeed
> in changing things?
>
>
>
> ► Violence and conflict can also take more subtle and
> less visible forms. The growth of highly complex (welfare)states
> and institutional forms and the persistence of social hierarchies
> place certain groups in power positions that allow them to exert
> symbolic violence and control. How can we identify and analyze such
> hidden and symbolic forms of violence? And what kinds of resistance
> do they produce?
>
>
>
> ► Looking beyond the societies of the so-called West and
> to the global system we encounter violence and conflict that stem
> from structural inequalities both among and within states. This
> includes military violence. Are these forms of violence the result
> of economic, political or cultural inequalities at the global
> level? And how can cosmopolitan or other normative theories
> contribute to a more just and peaceful world?
>
>
> WORKSHOPS
>
>
>
> 1. Sociology of Education/Pædagogisk sociologi (coordinator:
> Azita Afsar, azita.afsar@???; Jens Rasmussen, jera@???)
>
> 2. Economic Sociology/Økonomisk sociologi (coordinator: Glenn
> Sjostrand, Glenn.sjostrand@???)
>
> 3. Military Sociology/Militærsociologi (coordinator: Claus
> Kold, claus-kold@???)
>
> 4. Historical Sociology/Historisk sociologi (coordinator:
> Svend-Erik Skaaning, skaaning@??? )
>
> 5. Gender, Power and Resistance/Køn, magt og modstand
> (coordinator: Christina Fiig, cfiig@???, Ann-Dorte
> Christensen, adc@???)
>
> 6. Environment, Risk and Expertise /Miljø, risiko og
> ekspertise (coordinator: Rolf Lidskog, rolf.lidskog@???)
>
> 7. Organisational Sociology/Organisationssociologi
> (coordinator: Rasmus Antoft, ras@??? )
>
> 8. Inclusion and Exclusion/Inklusion og eksklusion
> (coordinator: Jørgen Elm Larsen, Joergen.Elm.Larsen@??? )
>
> 9. Trust and Social Capital/Tillid og social kapital
> (coordinator: Gunnar Svendsen, glhs@??? )
>
> 10. Professions and Higher Education/Professioner og højere
> uddannelse (coordinator: Gunnar Olofsson, Gunnar.Olofsson@???)
>
> 11. Old and New Conflicts in Working Life/Gamle og nye konflikter
> i arbejdslivet (coordinators: Kjeld Nielsen, kjeld@??? ;
> Paavo Bergman, Paavo.bergman@???)
>
> 12. Sociology of the Sacred/Det sakrales sociologi (coordinator:
> Anders Berg Sørensen, abs@??? )
>
> 13. Ethnicity and Migration/Etnicitet og migration (coordinator:
> Matti Simila, matti.simila@??? )
>
> 14. Consumption and Lifestyles/Forbrug og livsstil (coordinator:
> Lisanne Wilken, ceklw@??? )
>
> 15. Mass Media/Massemedier (coordinator: Steen Vallentin,
> sv.lpf@???)
>
> 16. Globalisation, World Society/Globalisering, verdenssamfund
> (coordinator: Mikkel Thorup, idemt@??? )
>
> 17. Strategies of Analysis: Discourse, Systems, Fields/
> Analysestrategier: Diskurser, systemer, felter (coordinators:
> Jesper Tække, imvjet@??? ; Roar Hagen, roarh@???)
>
> 18. Social Theory/Sociologisk teori (coordinators: Mikael
> Carleheden, mikael.carleheden@???; Michael Hviid Jacobsen:
> mhj@???)
>
> 19. Social Movements/Sociale bevægelser (coordinator: Henrik Kaare
> Nielsen, aekhkn@???)
>
> 20. Democracy in Sociological Perspective/Demokrati i sociologisk
> perspektiv (coordinator: Jørn Loftager, Loftager@???)
>
> 21. Sociology of the Body & Health/Sundhed og kroppens sociologi
> (coordinator: Inge Kryger Pedersen, ikp@???)
>
> 22. Quantitative Methods in Sociology/Kvantitative metoder i
> sociologi (coordinator: Martin Munk, Mdm@??? )
>
>
>
>
>
>
> KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
>
>
>
> Prof. Dr. Mathias Albert (Universität Bielefeld)
>
> Prof. Dr. Hauke Brunkhorst (Universität Flensburg)
>
> Prof. Dr. Donatella della Porta (European University Institute,
> Florence)
>
> Senior Lecturer, Dr. Bülent Diken (Lancaster University)
>
> Prof. Dr. Dorte Marie Søndergaard (School of Education, University
> of Aarhus)
>
> Prof. Dr. Slavoj Žižek (University of Ljubljana)
>
>
>
>
>
> Conflict in World Society
>
> Prof. Dr. Mathias Albert (Universität Bielefeld)
>
>
>
> The notion of conflict up to now seems to be largely absent from
> theories of world society. This comes in stark contrast to the
> omnipresence of (violent) conflict all over the world. The present
> contribution will seek to redress this situation in three steps. At
> first it will be argued that although most theories of world
> society do not deal with conflicts in a narrower sense, they
> address central dynamics which can be seen as driving forces of
> global conflicts. This is particularly obvious in the case of an
> ongoing functional differentiation in Luhmann’s world society
> theory and in the case of resistance to the global evolution of
> Western standards and ‘scripts’ in the Stanford School approach.
> In a second step, particularly the systems theoretical version of
> world society theory will be inspected in order to argue that this
> body of theory at its core indeed is a conflict theory in that
> conflict communication is co-constitutive of society rather than
> somehow ‘external’ to it. However, there is a wide and
> persistent gap between the systems theoretical formulation of
> conflict as conflict communication on the one and the diagnosis of
> global conflicts in world society on the other hand. A third step
> will then attempt to provide some vistas regarding the possible
> joining of these latter two perspectives, illustrating a possible
> value added in the case of the (im)possibility of successful
> conflict intervention.
>
>
>
>
>
> Democratic Solidarity in the World Society: The International
> Community under the Threat of Advanced de-Constitutionalization or
> Capitalism, Religion and Executive Power
>
> Prof. Dr. Hauke Brunkhorst (Universität Flensburg)
>
>
>
> Democratic solidarity is defined as a complex concept that
> integrates normative and functional aspects of solidarity. Under
> both aspects solidarity is social integration through difference,
> conflict, antagonism, heterogeneity, alienation. The democratic
> nation state that emerged after the constitutional revolutions of
> the 16s, 17s and 18s century in the end was able to reconcile the
> lasting contradictions and conflicts between ethnic and religious
> groups, economic classes, fragmented cultures, abstract spheres of
> value and self-referential social systems. During the legal
> revolutions of the 20s century the claim to democratic solidarity
> was globalized together with the state-system and all functional
> subsystems and spheres of value. Yet, the state of the world
> society at the same time seems to loose its capacities to reconcile
> lasting contradictions and conflicts. In particular markets,
> religious communities and the executive political powers are
> running out of state-control. This causes serious problems of
> legitimation in the world society.
>
>
> Eventful protest, global conflicts
>
> Prof. Dr. Donatella della Porta (European University Institute,
> Florence)
>
>
>
> Social movement studies have traditionally stressed conflict as a
> dynamic element in our societies. Social movements are
> “conflictual” not only because of their stakes, but also because
> of their forms as protest has been in fact considered as their main
> repertoire of action. In social movement studies, protest has been
> studied mainly as aggregate of events. In the 1990s, an
> instrumental view of protest has been linked to the spread of an
> image of a “protest society”, with a sort of
> “conventionalization” of once unconventional forms of action,
> with their spreading to the most various groups of the society as
> well as a routinization by the authorities and large acceptance
> among the public. There is however also another part of the
> picture, which started to became more focused in 1999, with the
> protest in Seattle against the WTO Millenium Round and spread after
> the attack at the twin towers in 2001. This is an image of renewed
> political conflicts expressed on the street through mass rallies or
> direct action in what can be considered as a new cycle of protest.
> Beyond describing some forms of action that (as countersummits and
> social forums) emerged in the new cycle of protest, this
> contribution shall address the more general issue of conflict in
> nowadays society by considering the emergent character of protest
> itself. The concept of “eventful protest” is developed in order
> to look at the effects of protest on social movements themselves.
> Protest events—especially, some of them—constitute processes,
> during which collective experiences develop in the interactions of
> different individual and collective actors, that with different
> roles and aims take part in it. Research on the global justice
> movement is used to illustrate the relational, cognitive and
> affective impacts of eventful protest on the very movements that
> carry them out.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nihilism Today - Disjunctive Syntheses of Passivity and Violence
>
> Senior Lecturer, Dr. Bülent Diken (Lancaster University)
>
>
>
> Most significant problems of contemporary life have their origins
> in nihilism and its paradoxical affective structure, which is
> simultaneously destructive to and constitutive of society. Indeed,
> even though it has its origins in pre-modernity (in the form of the
> denial of this world in the name of another, true one), the
> contemporary forms of nihilism remain defining characteristics of
> social life. In this context I am especially interested in radical
> nihilism (that is, the will to negation, or, a spiteful willingness
> to harm oneself to be able to harm the other, one’s ‘enemy’)
> and passive nihilism (the negation of the will as such). In these
> two senses, nihilism is significant to understand both the hedonism/
> disorientation that characterizes the contemporary post-political
> culture and the emerging forms of despair and violence as a
> reaction to it. I ask, in other words, how different forms of
> nihilism today constitute a non-dialectical 'synthesis' in spite of
> seemingly antagonistic 'disjunctions'.
>
>
>
>
> Bullying – Intra-Active Enactments of Excluding Practices in
> School Culture
>
> Prof. Dr. Dorte Marie Søndergaard (School of Education, University
> of Aarhus)
>
>
>
> “It’s like walking a tightrope”, says a girl when asked about
> life in her school class. “If you make one mistake you fall and
> the others will taunt or slander you”. “Every day is a fight to
> maintain or improve your position - like climbing a wall bar”,
> says a boy, “and while doing so you watch those above and kick
> those beneath” (AntiMObbeKonsulenterne). These are statements from
> children experiencing bullying in school life. This paper suggests
> an understanding of bullying as practices which work in low
> tolerance cultures typically characterized by strong policing
> strategies, tight sanction practices and an increased state of
> social and emotional alertness related to maintenance of hierarchy
> and social order. A range of entangled forces thus work in the
> constitution of bullying practices and in the positioning of
> bullies, bullied and bystanders among children in school. The paper
> sets out to explore the analytical potentials in co-focusing
> discourses, materiality, subjectivities and technology as some of
> the enacting forces involved in bullying practices, and suggests
> that a perspective on bullying as intra-active enactments paves the
> way for multifacetted understandings of statements such as the
> above mentioned. A particular focus centres on (violent) media
> products in terms of, for instance, video games as one of the
> entangling agents enacting child bodies and subjectivities. The
> intra-action of technology (as in particular media), discourse-
> materiality (as in gendered connotations of/and weapons) and
> subjectivity (as in emotional and reflexive evaluations) make up
> constitutive processes folding in and out of real and virtual life
> in ways that leave some real-life child encounters unintelligible
> within the individualising categories of everyday meaning-making
> among adults. In this analytic approach, Science and Technology
> Studies and poststructuralist conceptualisations of
> subjectification processes are brought together and reworked to
> make space for a complexity-sensitive understanding of bullying as
> an extreme version of marginalising movement in everyday practices
> among children.
>
>
>
>
>
> Violence and Subjectivity: Subject as a Post-Traumatic Effect
>
> Prof. Dr. Slavoj Žižek (University of Ljubljana)
>
>
>
> There is an old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every
> evening, as he leaves the factory, the wheel-barrow he rolls in
> front of him is carefully inspected. The guards can find nothing.
> It is always empty. Finally, the penny drops: what the worker is
> stealing are the wheel-barrows themselves… The same holds true for
> violence. At the forefront of our minds, these days, violence
> signals acts of crime and terror, let alone great wars. One should
> learn to step back, to disentangle oneself from the fascinating
> lure of this directly visible ‘subjective’ violence, violence
> performed by a clearly identifiable agent: subjective violence is
> just the most visible peak of a triangle which is also made of two
> other kinds of violence. There is symbolic violence embodied in
> language; then there is systemic violence, the often catastrophic
> consequences of the smooth functioning of our economic and
> political systems. The catch is that subjective and objective
> violence cannot be perceived from the same standpoint: subjective
> violence is experienced as such against the background of a non-
> violent zero-level, it is seen as a perturbation of the
> ‘normal’, peaceful state of things. Objective violence is
> something like the notorious ‘dark matter’ of physics, the
> counterpart to an all-too-visible subjective violence: it has to be
> taken into account if one is to make sense of what otherwise seem
> to be ‘irrational’ explosions of subjective violence.
>
> IMPORTANT DATES
>
>
>
>
>
> The deadline for submission of abstracts is April 1, 2008.
>
>
>
> The deadline for “early bird” registration is June 1, 2008.
>
>
>
> A website with more detailed information will be available in
> January 2008
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Please direct all questions to the congress coordinators:
>
>
>
> Gitte Sommer Harrits, Department of Political Science, University
> of Aarhus
>
> (tel.: ++45 8942 1250) (e-mail gitte@???)
>
>
>
> Gorm Harste, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus
>
> (tel.: ++45 8942 1293) (e-mail: gha@???)
>
>
>
> Carsten Bagge Laustsen, Department of Political Science, University
> of Aarhus
>
> (tel.: ++45 8942 1394) (e-mail: cbl@???)
>
>
>
> Thomas Olesen, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus
>
> (tel.: ++45 8942 1247) (e-mail: tho@???)
>
>
>
>
>
> Thomas Olesen
>
> Associate professor, Ph.D.
>
>
>
> Department of Political Science
>
> University of Aarhus
>
> Bartholins Alle
>
> 8000 Aarhus C
>
> Denmark
>
>
>
> Phone: +45 89 42 12 47
>
> Fax: +45 86 13 98 39
>
> E-mail: tho@???
>
> Website: www.ps.au.dk/tho
>
>
>
>
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>
