CFP “Interdisciplinary Futures: Open the Social Sciences 20 Years later”
“Interdisciplinary Futures: Open the Social Sciences 20 years later”
Conference on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Open the Social Sciences (1996)
19-20 January 2017
Lisbon, Portugal
Organised by INTREPID <www.intrepid-cost.eu> and TINT <www.helsinki.fi/tint> with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation <https://gulbenkian.pt/en/>
Conference web site here: https://ifoss20.
Keynote speakers:
Immanuel Wallerstein on "Forty Years Later: Are the Social Sciences More Open?”
Björn Wittrock on "Social Sciences in Their Contexts: Five Transformative Periods"
Felicity Callard on “The social sciences, life sciences and humanities: shifting plate tectonics”
BACKGROUND
The
slim but remarkable volume (Open the Social Sciences: Report of the
Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences) was
published in 1996. The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation had established,
in 1993, the multidisciplinary Gulbenkian Commission on the
Restructuring of the Social Sciences. After three years of work, led by
Immanuel Wallerstein, the Commission published its report (with Stanford
University Press). The Report analysed the situation in the social
sciences, its origins, and possible futures, making recommendations for
improvements, largely based on ideals of openness and
interdisciplinarity. These deals have gained ground more broadly since
then in the academia. The report attracted attention and incited
commentary and some debate within the social sciences.
This year,
20 years have passed, and it is now an opportune time to revisit the
themes and suggestions of the Report. Many of them are still very
timely, awaiting further examination and debate. On the other hand, some
things have changed in the social sciences and their various boundary
conditions. It will be important to update the diagnoses and proposals
accordingly. Reconsidering the Report and its messages collectively at a
conference will provide an opportunity to address the challenges in a
way that is respectful for historical continuity and generative of novel
and updated insights.
CONFERENCE THEMES
The conference will focus on three general themes related to the Report of the Gulbenkian Commission:
1.
The Report itself, its background, its context, its diagnoses, its
messages, its arguments, its recommendations -- both historically and
analytically considered.
2. The issue of how to update the Report,
based on what has changed since 1996 regarding the themes and claims and
arguments in the Report, asking how the report would look like if
written today. How has the situation changed? What are the urgent issues
of interdisciplinarity today?
3. Independently of the Report itself,
contemporary developments and future scenarios, examining current
trends plus anticipating and designing the future of the social sciences
from the point of view of interdisciplinarity. This includes mutual
relations amongst the social sciences as well as their relations to
other disciplines (such as neuroscience, genetics, evolutionary biology,
ecology, geography, archaeology, physics, computer science, and
others), to methodological developments (e.g. computational and
experimental techniques), to developments in the institutions and
organisations of research and higher education, and to various
non-academic partners and pressures.
We invite contributions that
approach the themes in terms of case studies and detailed (more
detailed than was possible in the short Report for the Gulbenkian
Foundation) analyses of trends and practices and possible futures of
scientific inquiry and education, its changing cognitive structures,
institutional contexts, and interdisciplinary interconnections.
We
welcome proposals from scholars active in a variety of research fields,
from history and philosophy of science to the various disciplinary
perspectives applied to the study of science, science policy, and higher
education (those from economics, sociology, political science,
anthropology, management, education, communication studies,
bibliometrics etc). Mixing such perspectives will yield a rich and
comprehensive picture of the future of interdisciplinarity in social
science.
Examples (just examples!) of possible themes:
• Ways of opening the social sciences – promises, obstacles, risks
• Hopes and prospects of unified social science
• Cognitive and institutional conditions of interdisciplinarity
• “The two cultures” – past, present, future
• Forms of collaboration and dominance between disciplines
• Natural sciences, social sciences, humanities: chances of (un)learning
• Roles of neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary biology in social sciences
• Consequences of big data and data processing technologies
• Roles of techniques (e.g. of modelling, simulating, experimenting) in bringing disciplines together
• Roles of social sciences in projects led by natural sciences
• Policy relevance of research and interdiscplinarity
• Roles of social sciences in addressing and solving wicked problems
• Consequences of extra-academic participation for the sciences of society
• Consequences of contemporary governance of science and higher education
• Reconfigurations of science-society relations
• The West and the rest in the (social) sciences
• Challenges in the management of interdisciplinarity.
SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS
In
addition to submitting an abstract of a single paper, you are also
welcome to propose a whole session of 3 (or 4) papers (sessions are
envisaged to be 90 minutes).
Abstracts of single papers should be
500-600 words. Proposals for full sessions should include a general
abstract of 300-400 words describing the theme of the session plus
separate abstracts of each paper of 300-400 words.
Please submit your abstracts through EasyChair. https://ifoss20.
DEADLINE
The deadline of submitting your abstract is 15 September 2016
CONTACT
In
all matters concerning the conference, please first contact research
assistant Sofia Blanco Sequeiros at sofia.blancosequeiros [at] helsinki.fi