EVENTS

How is the common city of the future to be produced, created, built and imagined? How are different forms of urban commoning experienced worldwide? What obstacles and struggles should we expect in creating and fostering the urban commons? What are the key facilitating conditions, forms of organising and possible institutions for maintaining the urban commons? How can we define the common city in ways that help overcome capitalist urban and social relations? To what extent are the struggles for the right to the city, and for housing and urban justice at the core of urban commoning?

This conference gathers scholars and activists who are concerned about the above questions. It is promoted by the cooperation project between Uppsala University (Sweden) and the UFMG (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil) that has been developed since 2019, on the one hand, and the Housing & Urban Justice group based at the IBF, on the other. We invite individual scholars/activists and collectives engaged in critical urban studies to join these networks, share their insights during the conference and initiate joint collaborations (publications, research projects, etc.).

Keynote speakers: Don Mitchell, Rita Velloso, Irene Molina, Dominika Polanska and Miguel Martinez.

In the third decade of the 21st century, Capital has already displaced a significant portion of surplus value and profit generation processes from the productive industrial sector to new sectors (speculative-financial, real-estate, tourism, private appropriation and concentration of essential goods – energy, water, telecommunications, etc.). This transformation in the organization of wealth appropriation is accompanied by immediate and disastrous consequences for the future of humanity: wars for the control of energy resources, dismantling of social rights, acceleration of ecological collapse, permanent stock market crashes, increased control and violation of rights through the digital traceability of our lives and bodies, etc. All of this shapes a new historical context of social instability, in which the far-right constitutes the political form best suited for capitalism to maintain order and the system’s permanence. 

In the current phase of capitalism, material production has been largely replaced by financialization and extractivism. While productive capital in the 20th century was interested in promoting consumption through wages and effective consumption, financial and extractivist capitalism is interested in fostering consumption not through wages, but through credit or indebted consumption, where interest-bearing capital multiplies. From the moment that consumption is promoted through credit, social rights that generate well-being are no longer necessary; the only thing required for consumption is personal indebtedness as a form of individualized self-reproduction of labour power.

Simultaneously, precarization of work relations and domination   through continuous indebtedness has deactivated, to a certain extent, the capacity of labour struggles in the workplaces. In this scenario of hegemonic transnational financial capitalism, the far-right and state authoritarianism takes shape as the politico-legal form that allows the system to achieve a triple objective: 1. Carry out an accelerated dismantling of existing social rights and democratic mediation institutions, that are now considered no longer necessary; 2. Build, within societies without collective structures of solidarity, new forms of social cohesion and unity based on the discourse of hatred against a common external and internal enemy (immigrants, countries, etc.); and 3. Shape a penal police state that harshly represses resistances that may arise from social unrest caused by the dismantling of rights while generating fear to prevent their reproduction.

Consequently, we enter a new hostile era in which building alternative political projects is increasingly difficult. It is in this situation that the objective of the third edition of the International Conference Historical Materialism Barcelona is to think about how to confront the current dynamics of capitalist accumulation and the rise of the far-right in its multiple forms worldwide, as well as to articulate social struggles and alternatives that ensure a dignified life for future generations.

We especially (but not exclusively) invite abstracts on the following conference themes: 

1. New dynamics of capitalist accumulation in the 21st century. 

2. Far-right movements, state authoritarianism, precarization, and racial capitalism. 

3. Digital capitalism, social control, and surveillance. 

4. New powers and forms of domination and political alternatives. 

5. Ecological collapse and planetary destruction. 

6. Public services, equality, and social rights. 

7. Geopolitics, neocolonialism, and war in the era of disaster capitalism. 

8. Social reproduction, care crisis, sexuality and feminisms. 

9. Culture and aesthetics to build utopias.

Alternative Futures and Popular Protest is an international, cross-disciplinary conference on social movements, protest and cognate topics. It has drawn participants from over 60 countries, whether based in departments of sociology, politics, cultural studies, psychology, economics, history, geography or elsewhere. Discussions are marked by a long-established spirit of collegial and comradely participation, making for a friendly meeting ground between academia and activism. The 2024 conference will be held in Manchester on 17-19th June. We look forward to welcoming delegates to the city, with all of the informal socialising, organising, and collaborating that that format entails. Whilst the costs of an in-person conference are necessarily higher than an online conference, we value the inclusivity and diversity of AFPP. As such, we are seeking to keep registration fees as low as possible – more details coming soon. We invite offers of papers relevant to the broad conference theme, which might address such matters as:

  • contemporary or historical movements and protests from any global region
  • theories of social movements and revolution

  • utopias, experiments in alternative living and everyday politics • ideologies, imaginaries      and strategies of collective action

  • opposition to discrimination and confrontations with capitalism, patriarchy or coloniality

The conference website will be updated periodically here.

We are excited to announce the second webinar in the RC47 Webinar Series .The event will be dedicated to the presentation of the book "Inequalities, Youth, Democracy and the Pandemic" edited by Simone Maddanu and Emanuele Toscano, published by Routledge.

This book brings together studies from various locations to examine the growing social problems that have been brought to the fore by the COVID-19 outbreak. Employing both qualitative, theoretical and quantitative methods, it presents the impact of the pandemic in different settings, shedding light on political and cultural realities around the world. With attention to inequalities rooted in race and ethnicity, economic conditions, gender, disability, and age, it considers different forms of marginalization and examines the ongoing disjunctions that increasingly characterize contemporary democracies from a multilevel perspective. The book is composed by 16 different case studies organized around three main axes: 1) how COVID-19 pandemic worsened social, racial/ethnic, and economic inequalities, including variables such as migration status, gender, and disability; 2) how the pandemic impacted youth and how younger generations cope with public health alarms, and containment measures; 3) how the pandemic posed a challenge to democracy, reshaped the political agenda, and the debate in the public sphere.

The webinar speakers will be:

 Simone Maddanu. University of South Florida

Emanuel Toscano. Università degli studi G. Marconi

 
Moderated by Antonio Álvarez-Benavides (UNED – RC47 Board member)

Link for the event: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86720550773?pwd=SkIwaEYyRDJvcFU1VEdpUnozL0dhdz09

 

About the RC47 Webinar Series

The ISA RC47 Webinar Series aims to create a virtual space of communication, communal work, and sharing for the RC47 members. This space will also provide a more in-depth view of the different research conducted by RC47 members and contemporary topics on social movements, opening the possibility of collaborations and articulating new research projects, events, and publications. This event series will be hosted bimonthly.

Organizer: Antonio Álvarez-Benavides, Researcher at GEPS, GRESCO-UCM, and CIMAS and ISA RC47 Board member (2023-2027)

Global online symposium around the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Social Movements, eds. Laurence Cox, Anna Szolucha, Alberto Arribas Lozano and Sutapa Chattopadhyay

Link here

We are excited to announce the first webinar in the RC47 Webinar Series coordinated by RC47 board member Antonio Álvarez-Benavides. The event is entitled "Mobilising in Solidarity with the Palestinian People" and will be held on 18 March, from 1:30 to 3:30 pm GMT. The webinar speakers will be Federica Stagni (Scuola Normale Superiore di Firenze), Omar Barghouti (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement), and Pablo Sapag (Complutense University of Madrid). The main objective of this webinar is to foster a debate on the role of mobilizations in solidarity with the Palestinian people in the context of a war and the resulting humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Our discussion aims to tackle the following questions:

1. Understanding the Role of Mobilizations in Solidarity with the Palestinian People amid the Gaza Conflict.
2. Interpreting the Repression of Solidarity Mobilizations Across the Globe, censorship and the role of information in the conflict.
3. Exploring Alternative Forms of Protest and Action.
4. The Role of Critical Sociology in this Context.

Speakers
Lorenzo Zamponi (Scuola Normale Superiore, European Consortium for Political Research & Società Italiana di Scienza Politica)
Simin Fadaee (University of Manchester, International Sociological Association)
Elena Pavan (University of Trento, European Sociological Association)

Moderator: Guya Accornero

Across Europe, the far right is rising. Almost 25 years ago, shockwaves reverberated throughout Europe after Jörg Haider’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ) won just under 27% of the vote and entered government in Austria. Today, far-right social movements are shaping the political life of the Old Continent, showing an unprecedented mobilizing capacity. As far-right movements become increasingly widespread throughout the world, the sociology of social movements is confronted with unprecedented interpretative challenges. Far right studies have rarely addressed the axiological neutrality of the research process and its ethical and methodological implications. The intersubjective distance between researcher and research object, in worldview and lifestyles, has led to a distance in the research relationship that leaves important epistemological and methodological questions of “researching evil” unresolved. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Emanuele Toscano will explore the ethics and politics of researching far right movements.

The international conference on November 9 and 10, 2023 aim to explore, discuss, and redefine the relationship between the radicalized margins and the mainstream across different social, regional and historical contexts. 

Radicalized actors/ideologies and the mainstream are usually considered opposing poles. The mainstream is often portrayed as moderate and centrist in terms of its convictions and policies and placed in opposition to the far-right and far-left. However, with the recent rise of the far-right in many countries and regions worldwide, a rapidly growing body of research is exploring how the electoral successes of the far-right are enabling parties, social movements, agendas, and discourses to move from the fringes to the mainstream. This body of research focuses predominantly on far-right actors and how they strategize, in other words on whether and how far-right parties and movements adapt their narratives, rhetoric and repertoires of action to move closer to mainstream norms in order to appeal to the majority. In this context, the mainstream is predominantly seen through the lens of its interaction with fringe ideologies being adopted or absorbed, which Wodak (2020) has dubbed “shameless normalization”. However, findings from the German National Racism Monitor, for example, have shown that attitudes like racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia are deeply rooted within society and are not only held by radical far-right actors – a phenomenon that has been observed in many countries around the globe. In spite of that, the mainstream is only rarely considered as an agent beyond the conceptual framework of an interaction with the far-right. Research on radicalization, in turn, draws often on the concepts of terrorism and violent extremism, focuses on the social and psychological transformation of the individuals that adopt extremist belief systems. The symposium and workshop aim to bring together research that pays particular attention to “the mainstream” as a (heterogeneous) agent accommodating, aligning, justifying, and normalizing far-right actors, actions, and attitudes, as well as the reasons why and the circumstances under which, this happens. 

Interdisciplinary contributions using different methodological approaches have been selected to respond to key questions related to:  

• the conceptualization of a radicalized mainstream and what implications does it have for our understanding of the relationship of far-right actors/attitudes to the centre. 
• which local, national, or transnational networks (including discursive networks) trigger the radicalization of the mainstream, and what new configurations of actors and issues arise from it. 
• what are the specific mechanisms and influencing factors from within the mainstream through which radicalization occurs and how can we empirically identify and measure these phenomena, both qualitatively and quantitatively. 
• what philosophical and identity-forming concepts are present in far-right and mainstream discourses today and how these concepts are historically situated. 
• what are the consequences of radicalized mainstreams for society and specific social groups within it, and how discrimination against specific groups can be more effectively. 
• which strategies there are to prevent processes of radicalisation of the mainstream. 
•  what extent social conflicts and forms of discrimination intertwine across issues (e.g., climate crisis and racism, racism and antisemitism) for the radicalized mainstream. 

ACADEMICS FROM UNAM, UAM, UACM, COLMEX, UAEMX, UAEM, BUAP

On Tuesday 23rd January 2024 an important number of academics from UNAM, UAM, UACM, COLMEX, UAEMX, UaEM, BUAP will present several initiatives against the genocide in Palestine in CDMX. We invite all college students and college communities to attend the day and join the initiatives.

Salvador Allende’s Legacy Fifty Years After the Coup
 September 11, 2023 // 17:00 CET - 12:00 Santiago de Chile 

Speakers: Karla Henriquez - Marie-Christine Doran and Ricardo Peñafiel - Alexis Cortés - Manuela Badilla Rajevic