Conference

The aims of the conference

Over the past decades, populism has increasingly gained ground both on a national and global scale,
turning from an epiphenomenon into a structural aspect of contemporary world politics. Despite its
idiosyncratic features within the manifold socio-historical contexts worldwide, at the core of
populism lies the constitution of an anti-establishment and anti-intellectual group claiming
sovereign powers for a putative homogeneous collectivity, “the people” (Laclau 2005).

1. Due to the international conditions of the coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, the dates of the III World Congress of Transdisciplinarity are moved for the first week of November 2021, in face-to-face modality. All accepted registrations are maintained for the 2021 event program: the registration process remains open through Easy Chair until January 31, 2021. Prepayments can be made from July 1, 2020 until March 31, 2021.

The rapid spread of the previously unknown coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has led to political decisions in many countries which have had a profound impact on the lives of all people in societies. In the public discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic these political decisions and their consequences for certain social groups are vividly discussed. The panel aims at investigating and (critically) discussing facets of inclusion and exclusion in the public discourse by the means of discourse linguistic analysis.

A research network at the University of Warsaw, University of Bremen, Technical University of Dresden, Åbo Akademi University (in Åbo/Turku) and Stockholm University address questions of social positions and positioning in a conference series on contradictory discourses of marginality and demarginalizations.