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RN22 Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty 2-5 Sept 2009 (deadline 26 Feb 2009)
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SAMRISK networking project workshop 24-25 April 2009 (deadline 30 March 2009)
Lisbon, Portugal
2-5 September 2009
RN 22: Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty
The topic of the 9th Conference of the European Sociological Association is “European Society or European Societies?” The event aims to explore whether we can look at European society as an increasingly cohesive entity or whether divisions of nation, class, ethnicity, region, gender and so on continue to be more salient.
These issues are particularly important for the experiences and management of risk and uncertainty, whether it is about the responses and management of terrorism, climate change, the life course, intimate relationships, or health and illness. We would like to discuss such issues in national as well as in comparative perspective. However, the session stream is also a place to explore recent developments in theorizing and research on risk and uncertainty.
For this conference we would like to group sessions around specific risks (such as terror, death, intimate relationship) rather than specific approaches or areas (such as health and illness, media, crime). The idea is to create sessions which produce comprehensive overviews about a specific topic rather than a specific approach to improve our understanding of the regulation, perception and responses to specific risk issues such as terrorism, nuclear power or welfare.
A number of sessions are already agreed, such as:
Risk and Children’s Play (Chair: Ute Navidi, Ute@londonplay.org.uk)
Climate Change (Chair: Piotr Matczak, matczak@amu.edu.pl)
Risk and Development (Chair: Lena Bloemertz, lena.bloemertz@gmx.de)
Nuclear Power & Technological Risks (Chair: Leonardas Rinkevicius, leonardas.rinkevicius@ktu.lt)
Patient trust: exploring the relationship between perceptions of the institution and the
professional (Chairs: Mike Calnan, M.W.Calnan@kent.ac.uk, Patrick Brown, P.R.Brown@kent.ac.uk)
International Terror (Chair: Gabe Mythen, G.Mythen@liverpool.ac.uk)
Zoonotic diseases (Chair: Julie Barnett, J.Barnett@surrey.ac.uk)
Hospitals & Health Service, Retirement and Pensions, and more
Further possible topics are, e.g.:
War, Security and Combat
Genetically Modified Food/Biotechnologies
Financial Crises
Internet/ICT
High Risk Organisations - Safety Culture
Inequality in Health and Illness
HIV/Aids
Food Safety
Vaccination
Death and Dying
Surveillance
Probation / Rehabilitation
Pathways into and out of Crime
Mental Health
The Life Course
Youth Transitions
Retirement / Pensions
Work
Intimate Relationships
Welfare State
Globalisation
Migration
Capitalism/Liberalism
Methodologies of Risk Research
Theorizing Risk – Different Approaches
Please send an abstract no longer than 500 words by 26th February 2009 to Jens Zinn at: rn22@gmx.com and shorter abstracts to ESA directly (online submission system, http://www.esa9thconference.com/).
SAMRISK networking project:
Societal risks and risk society: A cross-disciplinary and cross-stakeholder dialogue perspective
Seminar Invitation 24-25 April 2009.
Call for Papers for an interdisciplinary exchange workshop: Deadline 30th March 2009
Please send abstracts for your contribution to the workshop to jzinn@unimelb.edu.au
Overview about the whole networking project and further seminars.
The Samrisk programme, of which our network building project is a part, puts forward
topics such as vulnerability of societal infrastructure, humanitarian relief and
international coordination, man-made accidents, international threats to public health,
terrorism, as examples which should be focused on (cf. www.forskningsradet.no/samrisk).
A key purpose of this first seminar is to set an agenda for all five network meetings, by
discussing common themes of the Samrisk programme, promises made in our
application, and the special interests and perspectives of the participating individuals and
their diverse working contexts and disciplines. This meeting will begin an exploration of
possible interdisciplinary contributions to understanding societal risk management,
taking stock of state of the art knowledge in behavioural biology, psychology, risk
governance and regulation, risk communication, law, economics and sociology, to set the
stage for further workshops on specific topics such as law, insurance, and risk
communication).
The idea of the Samrisk networking project:
Risk and uncertainty, and insurable and uninsurable dangers are addressed
by different academic disciplines and by different societal actors in different
ways. These different actors aim for precise description, holistic
understanding, good enough prediction on the one hand, and proper risk and
uncertainty management on the other. However, good cross-disciplinary and
cross-sector communication seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
Our networking project aims at helping to address and to transcend
such communication barriers, using responsible handling of large scale
threats to societal safety and security as a reference.
The seminars as a whole aim at presenting state-of-the art reports and
research work in progress about how different disciplines suggest
approaching these issues, by progressing form breadth to depth and from
theory to application in practical cases.
In short, risk and uncertainty research is a broad, both theoretical
(sometimes super-theoretical) field and applied field of research with multiple
disciplinary foundations.
The seminars are organized in such a way that most PhD students with
interest in such topics should be able to obtain course credits for their
participation.
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