Mounia Bennani-Chra\u00efbi, Youssef El-Chazli, and Olivier Fillieule (CRAPUL\/IEPHI, University of Lausanne)<\/p>\n
(Click here<\/a><\/strong> to see this call for papers as PDF)<\/p>\n New Deadline for submission of proposals for papers: February 15, 2016<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n The 2011 cycle of mobilization triggered a frenetic wave of academic activity, and calls from all directions to \u201crenew\u201d, \u201crevisit\u201d, and \u201creframe\u201d the debates, and to launch \u201cnew\u201d research agendas. On this occasion, attempts at de-compartmentalizing (between anthropology, social movement theories, the study of democratic transitions, political economy, socio-history, etc.) were proposed to better understand these events. Yet, despite all these aspirations to create a dialogue between these different literatures, the individual level has been rather neglected: individual actors are sometimes subsumed, reduced to archetypes or dissolved in social categories (\u201cyouth,\u201d \u201dwomen,\u201d \u201cworkers,\u201d etc.), and, at times, merely invoked by way of example. Furthermore, the invitation to take macro, meso and micro scales into account in an interactive and process-oriented perspective rarely goes beyond a declamatory or prescriptive stage.<\/p>\n The goal of this conference is to bring together approximately twenty-five researchers from diverse scholarly and disciplinary backgrounds, working in different geographical and cultural contexts, to address the following question: how do individuals experience political events? The concept of a political event is \u201celusive\u201d due to \u201cits symbolic plasticity, its historical elasticity, and the weight of its subjective dimension\u201d (Ihl, 2002, p. 138). In this symposium, we will focus on events which turn to be \u201ctransformative\u201d after they happen (Sewell, 1996), which offer occasions for political socialization\u00a0\u201cthrough direct contact with a collective dynamic\u201d (protest mobilization, revolution, and civil war (Ihl, 2002, p. 138).<\/p>\n Employing dense empirical data (direct observation, interviews, digital traces, life calendars, etc.), as well as longitudinal studies, the goal is to examine these experiences from two particular angles:<\/p>\n Such an investigation is at the juncture of two approaches:<\/p>\n Four caveats<\/u>:<\/p>\n 1) Focussing on individual experiences does not exclude consideration of dimensions raised by St\u00e9phane Latt\u00e9 in terms of the role of emotions during mobilization: \u201ctheir collective character (a joint production rather than an individual creation), established (produced by inherited constraints associated with the role, observed and adapted), reflexive (with the actors as aware as the observers of the constraints and opportunities of various emotional registers) and relational (the meaning and weight of emotional prescriptions varying from one social configuration to another, from one context of mobilization to another)\u201d (Latt\u00e9, 2015).<\/p>\n 2) While focussing on the political<\/em> event, it is important, on one hand, to think of different modes and forms of politicization simultaneously<\/em> and in terms of their connections and, on the other hand, to understand their entanglements with other spheres of existence.<\/p>\n 3) In a group dynamic approach, it is a matter of considering the plurality of individual actors who participate differentially in the event (for example, protestors, members of security forces, spectators, etc.), with particular attention to their interactions, both nonviolent and violent.<\/p>\n 4) Finally, one of the issues to be addressed by this conference is the promotion of \u201cdeep-rooted\u201d comparativism, both in the disciplinary debates and in the field. This would encourage the provision of more detailed descriptions, an attention to vernacular vocabularies, and clarification of any methodological issues.<\/p>\n The papers presented will be based only on empirical investigations in various protest and political arenas. Interdisciplinarity and longitudinal studies combining a number of methods would be especially welcome.<\/p>\n Proposals should be between 3,500 and 4,000 characters, spaces included, may be written in French or English, in the form of an abstract describing the issue and the researched field, as well as a selected bibliography. Funding for travelling and accommodation expenses shall be provided.<\/u><\/strong> The abstracts should be sent to: mounia.bennani@unil.ch<\/a>, olivier.fillieule@unil.ch<\/a> and youssef.elchazli@unil.ch<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Key Dates <\/strong><\/p>\n – Call for papers: December 2, 2015<\/p>\n\n
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