CFP "Democracy and Technology", September 19-21, 2013 (Paris)
Call for papers
Democracy and Technology. Europe in Tension from the 19th
to the 21st C.
6th Tensions of Europe Plenary Conference * Colloque
international du projet ANR Resendem ** September 19-21, 2013 Université
Paris-Sorbonne
Deadline paper abstracts: February 25, 2013
Overall Theme of the Conference
The conference will be devoted to the complex
relationship between democracy and technology from a European and transnational
perspective.
The core of this reflection will be the complementarities
and cross-fertilization that arise in the interaction of technology and
democracy, but also the frictions, tensions, and paradoxes that emerge in the
discourses, representations and interplay of actors. The assumption that
technology poses a threat to the liberal democratic political order rooted in
the public debate, has fueled a critical approach to technology in humanities
and social sciences. This also fueled various shared Europe-wide initiatives of
technology assessment. Within the Soviet bloc, on the other hand, technology
was promoted as a tool for building socialism.
More recently, calls for the democratization of
decision-making related to controversial technical changes made the two terms
meet in a dynamic no longer of opposition but of mutual construction:
"technical democracy"
would be an expansion of democracy, defined primarily as
a continuously evolving process rather than a fixed form, open to new questions
and new ways to find answers.
This historical conference is open to a wide range of
interdisciplinary inquiry. It invites proposals for papers addressing an issue
that up to now has mainly been investigated on a national basis. Focusing on
circulations and appropriations of technology in a European and transnational
perspective, the conference should open new ways to think and talk about the
history of Europe.
While European spaces are privileged, papers on the
themes of the conference but covering other geographical areas will also be
considered.
General areas to be explored are:
Technical democracy: serving the citizen or the consumer?
• The concept of technical democracy, its uses, its
meanings, its realities and imaginary through technologies, spaces, periods; •
The role of groups of stakeholders such as consumer associations and civil
society in the design, ownership, development, or resistance and rejection of
technology.
Technology and democracy: a co-construction?
• Democratic regimes facing technological challenges in
their economic, political, industrial, ethical, social and/or cultural
dimensions; • Technology in political discourses (comparative approaches are
welcome); • Technology as vector of democracy: history of voting technologies;
• "Democracy by design": how aspects related to the values of
democracy (privacy, transparency, openness, etc.) are considered in the
invention of artifacts.
Regulating and governing technology: which models, what
practices?
• The evolution, composition, role, challenges and
limitations of the regulatory authorities; • The evolution of governance in the
field of technology; • Soft and hard power of technology in democracy; • The
transition of national and regional governance logics to global governance.
Agoras: spaces for dialogue and debate about technology
in democracy • Public areas of debate around technology and large
sociotechnical controversies; • Sites and actors involved in mediating between
citizens and technologies; • The relationship between media and technology in a
democratic context; • Challenging technology in a democratic context.
Technology against democracy
• Technocracy: confiscated expertise? • Threats to
democracy from uses of technology (surveillance, intelligence, propaganda,
databases, etc.); • Democracies at war and the technical armaments choices
(gas, napalm, nuclear bomb, mines, etc.).
Session formats
The Program Committee welcomes proposals that address the
overall conference themes in the following three formats:
• Individual paper proposals.
• Research sessions with three papers based on original
research, and an invited commentator. Because the conference encourages debate,
appropriate time for discussion should be allocated to the commentators as well
as the members of the audience. The papers will be pre-circulated to all
conference participants.
• Research collaboration sessions which are meant to
present results of a specific project. The session could be paper based, but
could also focus on a discussion of the framing and wider implications of the
specific project connected to the future of Tensions of Europe network.
Please note that paper and/or session proposals not
directly related to the conference theme but relevant for the TOE network will
also be considered. For more information on the TOE intellectual agenda see www.tensionsofeurope.eu and www.makingeurope.eu Deadlines and
Time-line
The deadline for proposals is February 25, 2013.
For paper proposals, please submit a title and abstract
of no more than
500 words. Authors are invited to submit their titles and
abstracts electronically on the homepage of the conference
toe2013paris.sciencesconf.org with a copy sent by email to toe2013paris@sciencesconf.org.
For session proposals, please submit a brief abstract of
the session (maximum 600 words) along with a one-page abstract for each
participant.
The organizer(s) are invited to submit their session
abstracts electronically on the homepage of the conference
toe2013paris.sciencesconf.org with a copy sent by email to toe2013paris@sciencesconf.org.
Please note that on the website, for technical reasons, each abstract, even of
a research session, has to be submitted individually.
The Program Committee will inform about its decisions no
later than April 20, 2013.
Since the conference papers will be made available before
the conference on our website, we will ask you to send them as PDF file to toe2013paris@sciencesconf.org
before July 15th 2013.
We are seeking to provide a contribution towards travel,
fees and/or accommodation costs for those who have no opportunity to
participate otherwise.
Program Committee:
Pr Maria Paula Diogo, Chair, Universidade Nova de Lisboa,
Pr Pascal Griset, Université Paris-Sorbonne Pr Martin Kohlrausch, K.U. Leuven
Dr Léonard Laborie, CNRS Dr Larissa Zakharova, EHESS Please direct queries to
Arielle Haakenstad, conference secretary:
* Tensions of Europe (TOE) is an international scientific
network consisting of almost 300 scientists from all over Europe and the United
States. TOE explores the role of technology as an agent of change in European
history by organizing inspiring conferences and summer schools as well as by
stimulating international research collaboration and disseminating research
results to various audiences.
** “Large technical networks and democracy: innovations,
practices and groups involved in the long term, from 1880 to the present day
(France and Europe)”. Resendem project is supported by the Agence Nationale de
la Recherche. It revisits the history of the fields of mobility, communications
and energy, in terms of community involvement in their construction and
management. http://www.msha.fr/resendem/