About conference
Europe is currently sinking into its deepest morass since the 1960s. Questions about the sustainability of European political economies, social solidarity, party systems, values and the project of European integration abound. Paraphrasing the famous quote from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s great novel The Leopard, that “for things to remain the same, everything must change” many argue: if Europe is to reinvigorate its economy, society, politics and culture, transformations are necessary.
Sustainability, a concept borrowed from and often linked to ecology, refers to the capacity to survive, to remain diverse and productive into the foreseeable future. We invite panels and proposals that investigate the sustainability of current European policies and dynamics, as well as explore ways political actors can promote or damage sustainability. Threats to sustainability often emerge from exclusive attention to improving efficiency, reducing risk, boosting legitimacy, or strengthening social cohesion at the local level at the expense of the survival of the wider system in which these efforts are embedded. Companies successfully pursuing profit threaten their natural and social environment, investors trying to hedge their own risk endanger financial markets, national politicians pandering to voters and shunning international responsibilities to keep power imperil the global order, efforts to achieve ethnic, regional and national unity by fanning tribalism and xenophobia fracture relationships with other groups and generate largescale conflicts. Are the refugee policies of the European states sustainable in the long run, or will shortterm solutions destabilize Europe as a whole? Can the current policies governing the management of the European monetary union work for both individual countries and the entire union in the end?
Transformation refers to major change, in either form or substance. We invite panels and proposals that investigate the transformations Europe currently faces as well as the major changes required to respond to them. For example, emerging technology is on the verge of making renewable energy viable; advances in genetics are confronting European societies with new ethical and medical dilemmas; the combined power of communication technology and artificial intelligence is now poised to profoundly reorganize the way people live, think and work and even the way crime and terrorism occur or can be averted. Dramatic shifts in the transnational movement of people and the demographic profile of European societies are intersecting to create new challenges for European politicians and citizens. The drift towards right-wing populism is destabilizing democratic political institutions. These transformations are posing difficult problems and call for other major changes that deliver sustainable solutions.
How to apply
Proposals may be submitted from August 15th to October 4th, 2016. Priority will be given to panel submissions. Participants will be notified of the Program Committee’s decision by December 14th, 2016. Information on how to submit proposals will be posted on the CES website.
For more information click "Further official information" below.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/conferences/upcoming-conferences/11-meetings-and-conferences/269-24th-international-conference-of-europeanists-call-for-proposals