How to act together: From collective engagement to protest

3rd International conference of the Group for Social Engagement Studies
Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade

***How to act together: From collective engagement to protest***

Belgrade, November 19-21, 2015

Keynote speaker: Judith Butler

Description

The conference will explore the broad issue of action – in its various sociological and philosophical traditions – and the particular question of collective engagement in its contemporary forms of protest assemblies.

The question of action and human agency has been extensively debated in social theories of the 20th century. The pendulum moved many times from perspectives emphasizing social and economic determinants to those embracing human rationality, self-reflexivity and the ability to actively construct social reality. While some of the pioneer studies of action focused predominantly on micro-contexts and behavior of actors in concrete situations, the crucial question that social theory is facing today is how to once again shift the analysis from the level of individual action to the macrostructural one, i.e. the level of the ’behaviour of the social systems’ – a shift which would escape the simple structural determinism of action and offer at least a horizon of the possible synthesis of the two analytical planes. The issues that interest us most in this respect concern the prospects of articulating social critique and reconceptualizing the ’political’ from the perspective of individual and group action.

How does one conceptualize adequately the ’everyday’ action of individuals? What is the actual potential of concrete and engaged, albeit fragmented actions in bringing about general, systemic social change? Can social theory build on the actors’ own accounts of their action as the grounds for the critique of power and domination? Finally, could we say that social theory amounts to no more than a methodologically adequate description of the potential for social critique inherent in everyday social action, or can it be an independent constituent of social engagement that brings about progressive change?

The question of action and agency was given a new impetus with recent waves of popular protests ranging from the so-called Arab spring to Occupy movements to anti-austerity protests. We want to see how these acts of collective engagement could be analyzed and interpreted within different traditions of thinking about action. Reversely, we also want to explore different impacts these new forms of engagement may have on theories of action. In particular, we wish to incite a debate on contemporary collective protests and theory of performativity, as it is advanced in Judith Butler’s forthcoming book (Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly), where it is revised to include “concerted actions of the body”. What are the ways in which physical bodies can act in politics? How are we (and are we?) transforming and influencing the public and the politics by employing embodied ways of coming together? Finally, is precarity (precarious bodies) becoming a dominant force of protest, as Butler argues, or, on the contrary, is it the very obstacle to systemic change (tantamounting to “reserve army of labour”)?

Topics

Please send your paper proposals having in mind the following thematic clusters:

- Theories of action: philosophical, sociological, anthropological traditions
- The ontology of action and the questioned autonomy of actors: methodologies of approaching the action
- Action, social theory and social change: historical and disciplinary perspectives
- Who does the action, who thinks it through? The role of intellectuals, civil society, parties and other actors
- Public space and “public” bodies: thinking about the embodied ways of coming together
- Gendered bodies in public assemblies; gender, precarity and collective action
- Performativity and modern-day protest: changing the paradigm of the politics; from online organization (absent bodies) to conquering of public spaces (assemblies of bodies)
- Politics of resilience vs. politics of resistance – challenging the conditions of precarity
- Radical solidarity: towards the new forms of political action

Organization of the conference

The official language of the conference is English.

Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes.

The Program Committee of the conference will select the presenters based on the submitted abstracts. The book of abstracts will be published by the time of the conference.

Conference applications should be sent only via e-mail to the following address: conference@instifdt.bg.ac.rs
We kindly ask you to put in your email subject the following title: ’Your name: title of the paper’. The complete application in the .doc, .docx or .pdf format must contain: the title of the presentation, an abstract of up to 200 words and a short biography, in English.

There will be no registration fees. Conference organisers will provide lunch and light refreshments during the conference program. Participants are kindly requested to make their own accommodation and travel arrangements.

Program Committee

Athena Athanasiou, Panteion University, Athens
Petar Bojanić, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade
Mario De Caro, University of Rome III
Éric Fassin, Université Paris 8
Sanja Milutinović Bojanić, Center for Advanced Studies, Rijeka
Snježana Prijić Samardžija, University of Rijeka
Gazela Pudar Draško, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade
Jelena Vasiljević, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade
Adriana Zaharijević, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade