THE FULL CONFERENCE PROGRAMME IS NOW AVAILABLE – SEE THE SECTION “PROGRAMME”
The 13th Annual Conference of IACR will be held in Padova, Italy on July 19-21, 2010.
Venue: Department of Sociology, via Cesarotti, 12
35123 Padova
PLENARY SESSIONS
Introductory keynote speech, Roy Bhaskar (World Scholar, Institute of Education, University of London)
Session I
Social ontology and a new historical formation: time and structure in emergent institutions
Maurizio Ferraris (University of Torino, Italy)
Nicos Mouzelis (London School of Economics, UK)
Frederic Vandenberghe (IUPERJ, Brasil)
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Session II
Being human and the adventure of agency in the XXI century: towards a sociology of engagement
Laurent Thévenot (Ehess, Paris, France)
Margaret Archer (University of Warwick, UK)
Pierpaolo Donati (University of Bologna, Italy)
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Session III
The constitutionalization of the new world: realism and global order
Douglas V. Porpora (Drexel U., Philadelphia, USA)
Alan Norrie (University of Warwick, UK)
Helmut Willke (University of Konstanz, Germany)
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Session IV
Religions, spirituality, and the gift in the global era. Some perspectives from realism and meta-reality
Roy Bhaskar (World Scholar, Institute of Education, University of London, UK)
Peter Beyer (University of Ottawa, Canada)
Sergio Belardinelli (University of Bologna, Italy)
Global society is often regarded as disrupting identities and blurring boundaries, one which entails giving up ideas of structure and fixity. Globalization supposedly introduces a “liquid” era of fluidity where everything is possible, and anything goes. Nevertheless, its current dynamics are developing into a harder reality: wars, economic crisis, the haunting risk of pandemics, the ever worsening food supply crisis, and the environmental challenge. These all call for a dramatic shift in the optimistic cosmopolitan mood and the thought that we can build and rebuild ourselves and our world as we please, at least for the most developed countries. The challenges we face produce new forms of social life and individual experience. They also require us to develop new frameworks to analyze emergent contexts, institutional complexes and morphogenetic fields, and new ways to understand human agency and the meaning of emancipation. In all of this, the challenge is to engage with this “new world” in a meaningful way, a task for which a realist mind set is badly needed. Critical realism provides a strong theoretical framework that can meet the challenge, and the conference explores its contribution to making sense of, and coming to terms with, this historical formation.
We are delighted to welcome you to a Conference that promises to set landmarks for the further development of critical realism and the realist perspective, in philosophy and the social sciences more generally.
You are warmly welcome to Padova,
Andrea M. Maccarini
