Duration
14 Sep 2021 - 17 Sep 2021
In the year 2020, the world was hit by an unprecedented and ongoing crisis in the form of a pandemic announced after the detection and global spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus. This pandemic as well as the corresponding mitigation measures affected most countries not only as a health issue, but also as an economic, legal, or educational challenge. As the probably most obvious effects, the crisis caused administrative responses of so-far unknown intensity, including massive influence on social and mass media activities. These and further call for academic attention.
However, the coronavirus pandemic is not the only current world crises. The world climate crises, the refugees’ crises of the Middle East, Central Africa and Southern Europe, together with a political crisis manifesting itself in a growing mistrust of political institutions and populism, all pose significant challenge to world society and its segments.
Against this backdrop, the conference convenors invite contributions that reflect upon the consequences of the present world crises from the perspective of Niklas Luhmann’s social system theory. The conference series has always been characterised by fruitful interactions of scholars with diverse paradigmatic and empirical backgrounds in disciplinary fields as different as political sciences, aesthetics, sociology, theology, history, economics, health, psychology, ecology, education, and organization studies.
We therefore encourage scholars from all disciplines with an interest in social pathologies, crises, and risk communication to contribute to the conference. The conference invites presentations of both conceptual work and empirical studies. Contributions are welcome that either build on the work of Niklas Luhmann or compare or combine social system theory with other theories, thus further developing systems theory by including thoughts from other traditions (e.g., Foucault, Bourdieu, Deleuze, discourse analysis, critical theory, critical management studies, posthumanism, etc).
Abstracts of 400–800 words should reach the corresponding conference convenors (*) via this submission form by 15 August 2021 at the latest.
Full papers should be circulated prior to the conference.
* Convenors:
Lars Clausen, UCL University College, Denmark, and Next Society Institute, Lithuania* (lacl@ucl.dk)
Gorm Harste, Aarhus University, Denmark
Klaus Laursen, Aarhus University, Denmark, and Next Society Institute, Lithuania* (klausb.laursen@mgmt.au.dk)
Steffen Roth, La Rochelle Business School, France, and University of Turku, Finland
Kresimir Zazar, University of Zagreb, Croatia* (kzazar@ffzg.hr)
Video lectures 2021:
Stine Piilgaard Porner Nielsen - Framework Law′s Destabilisation of Normative Expectations: Is Framework Law a Legal Pathology?
Kristof Van Assche - Systemic Risk in Newfoundland: How Difficult is a 'Reset'?
Nicholas Weaver - Crisis in Recovery from Addiction Problems: The Impact of COVID-19 at the Sociological and Individual Level
Gunter Bombaerts - First Thoughts for a Research on a Normative Social Systems Theory
Richard Pretorius - Illuhmannating Technological Innovation Systems
Sören Möller - Risks and Pathologies of/in/with Statistical Evidence