II Seminar – Social Times and the Contemporary World, “The Crisis, the Phases and the Ruptures” Call for papers until 30th April 2013

The 2nd seminar on Social Times and the Contemporary World will take place on 19th and 20th November 2013, at the University of Minho under the theme “The crises, the phases and the ruptures”.
The debate extends to all scientific areas and the exact ciences, engineering and technology are particularly encouraged to participate.
There has been increasing interest in studying how individuals prepare themselves to confront the several crises emerging from several spheres of human and social experience.
One may argue that, under a thin layer of stability and linearity, everyday life is full of marks of fracture, rupture, discontinuity, completion and inauguration, ends and beginnings, restoration and return, precariousness, fragmentation and disruption. Much of these are classified using the words crisis, rupture and/or phase.
Those words generate, in turn, different interpretations and evaluations, according to the degree of autonomy each individual has to participate in them, as well as according to the place, the role and the socio-political implications of the phenomenon (the rite of passage, the catastrophe, the celebration – from abundance to exhaustion; from peace to war; from stability to revolution, from health to disease.
Indeed, in which contexts do we need to apply the words crisis, phase and rupture? What significance do these terms have? How can we explore their meanings in light of present day transformations? What implications for practice do they signal? How does an individual surpass, resist, forget, and coexist with a crisis, a phase or breakthrough? And what kind of crises, breakthroughs and phases can be identified? What are the negative and the positive aspects that emerge from an experience of crisis and rupture?

How do representations of crises, phases and rupture convey different configurations of power relations? How do time and temporalities integrate the repertoires used to legitimate crises, phases and ruptures?
One can state that almost no phenomenon escapes the temporal rhythms marked by periods of strengths and weaknesses, of wealth and poverty, of abundance and decline. If this is the case, then are we living in radically different cycles and crises? Or are we living the normal crises and discontinuities? Furthermore, how do experiences of crises, phases and ruptures create new schemes of cognition, perception, understanding and communication?
These are the main questions to take into account in the seminar “Social Times and the Contemporary World,” which seeks to gather contributions allowing elucidation on, in particular, four key elements: i) the place of discontinuity in
the subjective experience of the world ii) the place of discontinuity in social experience, and political discourse in the contemporary world, ii) the adequacy of theoretical frameworks and methodological devices for the analysis of
living conditions, resistance and/or overcoming crisis/crises , iv) the implications and place of crisis, phases and
discontinuities impacting the relationship between the natural world and the social, political and legal worlds.

Abstracts
Proposals need to follow the given formatting and editing rules and can be submitted until 30th April 2013 to the
address: tempossociais2013@gmail.com
Notification of acceptance will be communicated to authors by the 15th of May 2013.
Publication of an eBook is planned. In order to be accepted for publication, texts sent until August 30th will be
submitted to a blind review process and the results forwarded to the authors by the 30th of September 2013.

Important dates
Call for abstracts: April 30th, 2013
Communication assessment of the proposal: May 15th, 2013
Submission of final text of accepted proposals: August 30th, 2013
Communication of the final decision on the text: September 15th, 2013
Ultimate date to send the final version: September 30th, 2013
Note: The acceptance of the proposal for the oral presentation does not imply acceptance of the written text.

Registration
Applicants must make their registration using the following heading:
Authors and other (non-students) 30 Euros
Authors and other (students) 10 Euros
*Payment on arrival

The registration must be made up until 30th September 2013. In the case of authors, registration is required to
validate the inclusion of the final text in the ebook.

Abstract formatting
The seminar languages are Portuguese, Spanish and English. However, authors must provide written material
(powerpoint or other) in English, so that everyone can, at least, follow the seminar.
Abstracts should be between 300 and 400 words and submitted in two of the following languages: Portuguese and
English or Spanish and English.
- The final text must be written in one of three languages (Portuguese, English or Spanish), with a maximum
extension of 20 pages (times New Roman, double spaced).
Acceptance of the texts is also on the condition of correct use of standard formatting and bibliographic referencing
according to the APA http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/.

Organization
This initiative is coordinated by the Center for the Study of Communication and Society (CECS), in collaboration
with researchers from the Centre for Research in Social Sciences (CICS), Department of Sociology and Political
Science (University of Vigo), Federal University of Paraíba and SOCIUS/UTL

By admin in News on 18/02/2013