POSTS

22-23- Nov 2018
Venue: The University of Newcastle, Sydney Campus, 55 Elizabeth St, Sydney NSW 2000

A two-day symposium including roundtable discussions, to cross-fertilize between several game-changing communal responses, pioneering workable policy agendas and ‘real utopian’ visions in the current era of economic uncertainties;
INTERESTED IN REPRESENTING YOUR ENTERPRISE, INITIATIVE, OR ORGANIZATION AT THE SYMPOSIUM? Read the following and contact us for more information:

The post-mining boom era has already started and it has posed serious challenges to the Australian economy in general and to the Hunter region communities in particular. Among the most important challenges commonly acknowledged by the entrepreneurs, small business owners and workers in the region are: prospects of rising under/un- employment especially among the youth, environmental degradations, unconstructive competitions (between sectors like farming, wine production, tourism and mining), wage stagnation, decline in property investment and water management issues. New insights and leadership are needed for a future after coal. Prospective trajectories of change in future should be predicted. Alternatives and solutions to such challenges, instead of short-term remedies, need to be envisioned by drawing on careful analysis of the roots of today’s challenges and changes. Many lessens can be learnt from projects and experiences that have already gained momentum in other places across the world.

Alternative Futures Project through its first national Symposium aims to create a collaborative dialogue between the academics and potential local/national industrial/communal partners. At the end of each day, there will be a discussion roundtable run by designated discussants (see the tables below for more details). The event and further online communications will be used to disseminate the outcomes of studies, explore all the potentials for research collaboration, enhance a focused discussion of the participants’ views and research outcomes, and to strategize for successful linkage grant applications.

Each session will start with plenary presentations of academic views on post-GFC and Post Coal/Carbon Futures and the policy implications for regional city centers in NSW, particularly the Hunter Valley followed by a discussion involving delegates from key community organizations and enterprises, to benefit from the experiences/inputs/feedback of a representative cohort of local community organizers, social activists, policy advisors, advocates and analysts from the national and regional civil society sector.

For more information please contact:

Dr. S. A. Hamed Hosseini F.
School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
The University of Newcastle,
Callaghan, NSW, 2308
Australia
Phone: +61 2 4921 5878
fax: +61  2 4921 6933
Email: hamed.hosseini@newcastle.edu.au

RC42 Social Psychology (host committee)

Populism is both a political and academic concept which varies widely in its use. As found within the social sciences, it is generally regarded as a  mobilized support for the political, cultural and economic preferences of the mainstream populous as opposed to those of the elite, intellectuals, media, governments, public institutions, and scientific and civic organizations. There are populists of the left, center and the right on the political spectrum, but currently attention has focused on right-wing populism as an increasingly transformative force. The social psychological and sociological accounts of populism are much related to the research traditions of studies of authoritarianism, dogmatism, Fascism and closed-mindedness, and the social conditions which facilitate their emergence. How perceptive/effective is this legacy for understanding today’s populist resurgence? For this session, we specifically wish to focus on the recent upsurge of right-wing populism, particularly since it is linked with many contentious attitudes, such as anti-immigration, anti-elites, Islamophobia, homophobia, and national isolationism, among others. The session is open to micro and macro studies which help the understanding of populism using either qualitative and/or quantitative data.

RC48 Social Movements, Collective Actions and Social Change (host committee)

Globally, neoliberalism is no longer the mobilising tool it once was. The neoliberal mainstream has been displaced, initially from the radical Left, but increasingly, and simultaneously, from the far Right. From anti-austerity to left nationalism, from solidarity economy to the eco-social commons, democratic alternatives to market rule have gained considerable ground, but have faltered with the emergence of new forces for autocracy and ethno-populism. This panel addresses the major challenges faced by these post-neoliberal democratic movements, in the current context of authoritarian populist resurgence, rising ethno-nationalism and global geopolitical polarizations., How are these democratic alternatives emerging, surviving, or evolving through social movements, and where are they gaining ground or declining? How may they be converging? How may they respond to the authoritarian alternatives? Where are they marginalised, and why? In this spirit we seek new theory and reflection beyond the current political nexus.

RC24 Environment and Society (host committee)

The colonization of the Americas and other regions has gone hand in hand with natural resource extraction, which has included economies built on minerals, forestry resources, fisheries, and – more recently – oil and gas. Shifts towards globalization and knowledge-based economies within the urban centres of the global north have not resulted in moving away from resource extractivism. Rather, we see a reconfiguration of the commodification and extraction of earth resources that underlies contemporary lifestyles of overconsumption for the affluent of the world. This reconfiguration of natural resource extraction has often involved reaching further and further into new sites in remote and rural areas, including extensive “land use change” in biomes such as the Amazon Basin, Boreal forests and the Arctic. It has also involved the increasing commodification of resources such as drinking water. At the same time, this reconfiguration of resource extractivism has been met with resistance by environmental and Indigenous social movements. This session invites papers that focus on social processes of mobilization and resistance to resource extraction. The objective is to transcend the north-south division that has influenced research and provide a space for comparison.

RC02 Economy and Society (host committee)

Although the scientific consensus on causes and implication of global warming is well established, the climate crisis has provoked three distinct political-economic projects, rooted in differing class fractions and social interests, which currently vie for hegemony at different levels and regions of the world-system. Carbon capitalism is a project of ‘business as usual’ (in the Stern report’s terminology), with efficiency improvements (and possible sunsetting of coal) but no major changes to the political ecology of contemporary capitalism. Climate capitalism proposes the ecological modernization of the energy base of capitalism, by redirecting flows of capital away from fossil fuels, and toward more climatically benign sources of energy including hydropower, solar, wind and nuclear. The first two projects are capital-centric: they leave the class structure of capitalism untouched, including the concentration of economic power in the hands of a relatively small group of major investors, executives and corporate directors. In contrast, energy democracy finds its social base in environmental and other progressive movements, including sections of the labour movement. It mandates a dual power shift, from fossil-fuel power to renewables (decarbonization) and from corporate oligarchy to public, democratic control of economic decisions (democratization). This session welcomes papers exploring the sociology of these projects, singly or in combination, especially analyses that foreground issues of political economy and political ecology.

RC07 Futures Research (host committee)

How do the major political changes of 2016 (Brexit, election of Trump) fit into the larger transformations of globalization? What are the features of 21^st century globalization compared to 20^th century globalization? What are pattern changes in the roles of advanced economies and emerging economies (such as China and the BRICS)?

RC48 Social Movements, Collective Actions and Social Change (host committee)

This session debates developmentalism in social movement theory. Social movement theory, implicitly or otherwise, defines the movement by its developmental epoch. Periodisation commonly constructs ‘leading edge’ movements in the socio-economic heartlands, as ‘new’, relegating the rest. With the globalization of development crises – from climate crisis to financial crisis – development ideology has become politicized, for all societies. The ‘developed’ world has itself become the key site of global development problems, while late industrialisers now claim a role as drivers for alternative social models. Increasingly, social movements can gain a key role in challenging and transforming developmentalist models and ideologies. In this context, movement projects can circulate and find new traction across global divides – from occupy the squares, to climate justice. With transnationally-defined social and ecological crises, social movement theory can find new scope and relevance by engaging with critiques of developmentalism. What might this add to our understanding of social movements? What possibilities may this open-up, especially for strengthening Southern theory of movements? What may be its epistemological assumptions or methodological biases? And where, in terms of places and social forces, may it have most application and purchase?

Friday 30 June – Tuesday 4 July 2017 –

2016 – Conference Presentations – 

Thursday, 14 July 2016: 09:20