Dear Fellow Theorists,

This email is a reminder that the deadline for this year’s conference is approaching, and includes information about submission, registration, specific sessions, accommodations, etc.

1. The deadline is this Friday, March 15.  The call for papers is posted here:  http://socialtheory.org/istc-2019--cfp.html
2. We have set up the same kind of abstract submission system we used in Innsbruck two years ago, which makes the process of reviewing and accepting submissions and notifying participants much more efficient and expeditious (a BIG thanks to 2019 co-organizer and 2017 host Frank Welz!!).  The submission site can be accessed HERE – or at http://socialtheory.org/istc-2019--cfp.html (scroll down to the submission link).  Please create an account, fill out your relevant information and add the abstract – it only takes a few minutes.  If you would like to submit a paper also, please send it to istc2019@PROTECTED.
3. The submission site also will function as the means to register for the conference.  The registration window will open April 1.  We are planning to send out acceptance notifications at that time as well.
4. Since the Inter-University Center Dubrovnik charges fees for using its facilities, we have adjusted the conference registration fee to reflect this fact.  To keep the fee low, we will not be able to schedule a formal reception.  However, since Dubrovnik is a city with lots of restaurants, etc., and as is typical for ISTC conferences, groups of participants will meet at suitable restaurants to continue conversations and engage in stimulating exchange.  The IUC also as a cafeteria on site.  For recommendations and opportunities for lodging, please consult the Inter-University Center web-site:  Accommodations:  https://www.iuc.hr/accomodation.php -- Useful Information:  https://www.iuc.hr/useful-info.php.
5. Four special sessions have been proposed by co-organizer Ilaria Riccioni and other prospective participants (see below).  You will find links to these sessions, along with a set of other “special sessions” without abstracts in the submission site; please submit your abstract under GENERAL SESSION if it is not intended for any of the sessions marked as “special.”  All submissions will be treated equally!

1. “Avant-garde as social critique”; organizers:  Ilaria Riccioni (Free University of Bolzano) and Jeffrey Halley (University of Texas, San Antonio)

When and how does art become social critique? At what conditions can avant-garde art overcome its artistic function and become a social action? Avant-garde art has the specificity to delegitimize existing forms of domination in society, economy, culture, and politics. It does so by holding up the contradiction between meaning and configuration. This session invites papers that examine the relation of art to an extended conception of politics, focusing on the contribution of avant-garde practices.  What are past or contemporary examples of this praxis? How can we distinguish in sociological terms between art and avant-garde art?  What can we learn from the avant-garde in terms our analysis of the current and past economic and political crises? Papers can focus on, for example, case studies, movements, relations of art/politics, key figures, theorists or theories.

2. “Southern Feminist Perspectives on Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy”; organizer:  Manisha Desai (University of Connecticut)

Southern Theory (Connell 2012) was Connell’s call to engage the theoretical labor of scholars and activists not located in the global North or elite institutions in the Global South. Later, she made a similar call (Connell 2015) to democratize the global structure of feminist theory by disrupting the hegemony of Northern theory and the political economy of knowledge production.   Responding to her call, this session invites feminist scholars and activists to discuss how feminists located in the Global South or the South within the North are thinking through the contemporary challenges of capitalism and democracy as they intertwine with gender, sexuality, race, and disability among other social axes of domination with the aim of facilitating border thinking beyond the binaries of Northern or Southern Theory and towards articulating alternatives everywhere.

3. “In Defense of Democracy: Political Implications of Contemporary Social Theory”; organizer:  Christopher Schlembach (University of Vienna)

In The Structure of Social Action, Talcott Parsons gave an answer to Thomas Hobbes’ question, how is social order possible, by showing that a two-pronged structure must be assumed theoretically in order to distinguish democratic and fascist societies in the late 1930s at the empirical level. From this time on, Parsons took the side of democracy (and its defense), when he theorized the social world of his day. His tenets of a specifically modern sociology in the wake of Weber (and Simmel) – the proposition that the conditions of modern sociology are the conditions of modern society – are still valid and important today for a much more complicated and pluralized scenario. Social scientists addressed these problems from the standpoint of the society of their day, when democracy might represent his or her implicit or explicit model image of (good) society which informs the system of relevances within which the social world is analyzed. The aim of the session is to ask what democratic societal structures and processes as well as their opposite might mean in the real world as pictured in social theory.

4. “Reconsidering the Nature of Democracy in the 21st Century”; Steven Panageotou (Arkansas State University)

The glaring contradiction between the self-description of modern societies as “democratic” and the reality of actually existing democratic systems deserves theoretical scrutiny. For decades, democratic theorists have navigated this tension by devising pragmatic strategies to make the material circumstances within actually existing democracies commensurate with idealized models of democracy (i.e. by theorizing how to make actually existing democracies more democratic). But actually existing democracies have defied democratization and are today beset by a variety of crises, which call into doubt the viability of prevailing academic orthodoxy. The purpose of this session is to consider the lessons of critical theory and systems theory in order to chart an alternative path within democratic theorizing that considers how the recoding of democracy by non-human systems and logics has subverted substantive democratization.

If you have any questions, please contact any of the co-organizers or the ISTC at istc2019@PROTECTED.  As always, in urgent cases, contact me directly.

Best regards, and looking forward to the event!

Harry F. Dahms

(for Steffen Roth, Ilaria Riccioni and Frank Welz, co-organizers)

Harry F. Dahms, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology
Co-Director, Center for the Study of Social Justice (CSSJ), UTK
Co-Chair, Committee on Social Theory, UTK

Editor, Current Perspectives in Social Theory (CPST)
Director, International Social Theory Consortium (ISTC)

Affiliated Faculty, Sociology, University of Innsbruck (Austria)

Member, Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity (DySoc)
University of Tennessee

901 McClung Tower
Knoxville, TN 37996-0490
email hdahms@PROTECTED
phone (865) 974-7028
fax (865) 974-7013

http://sociology.utk.edu/faculty/dahms.php
http://hfdahms.utk.edu