XXIII Congresso SISP
Italian Society for Political Science
www.sisp.it
Rome, September 17th – 19th 2009
Section: Democrazie e democratizzazione
Chairs: Luigi Bobbio (Università di Torino) and Liborio Mattina
(Università di Trieste)
Workshop:
Contentious Dynamics in Local Contexts
Convenors: Noemi Podestà and Tommaso Vitale
Scholarly literature tends to show how the urban conflicts that
surface in European cities are more and more defined by strong
segmentation and fragmentation. The conflicts are no longer
structured and miss well defined social groups as references, like in
the instance of the protest cycle of blue-collars that spread in
Europe from 1965 to 1977. Urban mobilizations underwent deep
change since the end of the seventies due to the weakening
of Keynesian welfare policies and the extensive spreading of neo-
liberal policies. Some claims of the urban movements were accepted
pushing many organizations to evolve into agencies involved in
projects of urban renovation and fighting against social
exclusion. While this general dynamic led to a shrinking of
contentious spaces, conflicts have not vanished from European cities:
they rather fragmented and ground around new issues, sometimes
with a certain continuity. In particular, there has been the
emergence of protests against investments supporting the
transformation of inner cities in gentrified areas with a
specialization in services, and against the dropping of those
neighbourhoods that did not fall within these programs. Community
activism - not necessarily occurring in poor suburbs - has opened
multiple and often contradictory lines of conflict: for the defence of
green areas; against the growth of traffic; in opposition to polluting
facilities; on immigration and urban security; for and against social
mix and spatial segregation; for the acknowledgement and the
preservation of common goods and public services. Besides, during the
‘90s urban conflicts spin-off from the cities, and re-opens a urban/
rural cleavage, and leads scholars to use the more inclusive terms of
local conflict. So, while lot of research has been cumulated on this
theme, lots of theoretical and methodological issue remains mostly
unexplored.
The convenors welcome submissions on these questions:
1) How the study of local conflicts allow to explore not only
contentious dynamics but broadly the contexts where the conflicts take
place? The convenors welcomes papers that not only explain
contentious dynamics in a “contextual political analysis
approach” (Goodin, Tilly 2006) but use the analysis of local conflict
to interpret and explain local societies changes.
2) What are the relationships between case study methods and research
on local conflicts? Why there is not a lot of comparative research on
local contentious dynamics? How to study local conflicts and their
linked mediation in a comparative approach? What could be the
contribution of a systematic comparative case approach to research
which stresses the use of a configurational logic and the existence of
multiple causality?
3) Local conflict analysis seems so polarised between politics and
policy, between studies on the impact of conflict on electoral
behaviour and studies which analyse conflict in relation to policy
implementation. Is it possible to design researches that permit to
articulate the policy-politics nexus?
Studies including ethnographic methods are particularly encouraged,
above all comparative qualitative researches. Also comparative –
historical approaches are very welcomed, and researches mixing
different data collection techniques mainly able to combine archive
data and fieldwork to catch urban contentious dynamics.
Paper proposals are expected to be around 5.000 characters. Each
abstract will be evaluated looking at its:
- relevance and pertinence with the workshop’s themes;
- quality and clarity of the research question;
- empiric qualitative or quantitative base and methodology;
- theoretical original contribution and discussion of available
knowledge
Final Papers can not exceed 50.000 characters (spaces, notes and
references comprises). To allow maximum time for discussion, we intend
that all papers should be circulated by e-mail and put on the SISP
website.
Some paper will be selected to be published in a Italian book on Local
Conflicts and Democratization.
Abstracts and paper could be written in Italian, English, French and
Spanish.
· Paper-proposals should be sent by April 15th 2009
· Acceptance will be communicated by May 4th 2009
· Papers have to be completed by September 2nd 2009
· Final program will be defined by September 7th 2009
Please send proposals to both the two convenors:
Noemi Podestà, Centro Interdipartimentale Volontariato e Impresa
Sociale, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale; Dipartimento
di Studi Politici, Università degli Studi di Torino: podesta@???
t
Tommaso Vitale, Dipartimento di Sociologia e ricerca sociale,
Università degli Studi di Milano – Bicocca: tommaso.vitale@???
The co-organizers will be glad to answer any questions that you may
have about the session. No funds could be provided for travels and
accommodation costs.
For more information about the XXIII Congresso SISP, please see
www.sisp.it
Scholars in local conflicts could be interest also to know the related
Call for papers at the workshop “Contentious Cities: Diversity,
Injustice and the Building of a Fair Urban Environment” in the ISA
RC21 session at the XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology, Gothenburg,
Sweden, July 11-17, 2010. Please download it at:
http://www.isa-sociology.org/congress2010/rc/rc21.htm
International Scholar in Urban Conflicts and Contentious Politics
should be interested also in the new Italian academic peer-reviewed
Journal “Partecipazione e conflitto”. Please check for call for
papers and new issue at:
http://www.francoangeli.it/Riviste/sommario.asp?IDRivista=152
----------------------------------------
Tommaso Vitale
Dipartimento di Sociologia e della Ricerca Sociale
Università di Milano Bicocca
via Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, 8
20126 Milano
tel: ++39.02 6448 7477
skype: tomvita
Papers and pre-prints:
http://homepage.mac.com/tommaso.vitale/
