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LIA CNRS-ENS Lyon/CASS Post-Western Sociology in Europe and in China : Workshop « Compressed Modernities. Ecological Risks and Disasters in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa »

mardi, 11 juin 2019

Organisers

Organizer : Triangle, CNRS , Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon
Co-organizer : Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Peking

Argumentary

In this workshop we will deal with new risks to health, food, floods, the environment and ecological disasters such as climate change, pollution (fumes, effluent, organic and chemical waste), drought risk etc. New ecological risks are producing uncertain situations, geographies of care and “community of destiny” produce new social solidarities, inequalities, new moral boundaries and new public spaces. Risks and disasters are social constructions rather than natural events striking societies from the outside. And, as such, they are caused by social and economic vulnerabilities, they also sustain new forms of participative democracy.

In each place it is impossible to consider risks and disasters as being solely local ; quite the opposite, we have to realize that a very deep and active process of dislocation is present everywhere in each country. Although the political, economic and social organization might shatter, we should nevertheless consider that societies are always more or less unstable. Disaster is thus a matter of degree, the point at which fragile social equilibrium makes way for stringent turmoil within societies, and at which the social and political ability to control these continuous processes of dislocation is badly altered by this tremendous shock. Since they produce paroxysmal figures of physical and social destruction, ecological disasters also open up spaces for new figures of social restoration and for new processes of reconstruction of societies, and regimes of action. Citizens facing ecological risks and post-disaster consequences develop economies of political judgement by producing regimes of action from the responses of the institutions managing the post-disaster situation ; these regimes of action of the victims mark out other moral boundaries linked to citizen spaces which arise out of silence, complaint, consent, indignation or the distantiation of institutions.

Although we should not confuse risk society and catastrophe society, we can observe some quite similar processes affecting social vulnerability, inequalities and individual and collective capabilities. In Asia social inequality and natural inequality are fusing into “high compressed modernities” – in the sense of Chang Kuyng Sup- and in Europe into “low compressed modernity” Urban ecologies assume the presence of multiple and different representations of the nature-urban culture interface, these same urban ecologies may also be studied for inequalities and environmental injustice, multi-governance and biopolitical order, regimes of action and the citizen’s competencies, and collective mobilizations. Facing new ecological risks or disasters reveals the maintaining of previous inequalities, the production of new ones and the breaking away from previous ones, but also the intersectionality and fractality between economic, social, ethnic, moral, cultural and environmental inequalities.Sociologists are invited to revise the way of defining inequalities and to conceive their plurality around social and ecological change. Individuals and social groups compete for material and social goods. They produce new social and economic frontiers, new social and moral orders in which individuals and groups have to occupy new positions and statuses.

In recent years in Europe, in China, in Indonesia, in Japan, in Venezuela and Guinea, ecological risks and disasters have caused very significant material, social, economic, moral and symbolic ruptures, and tremendous fragmentations in each society. In each place it is impossible to consider disaster as only local ; quite the opposite, it is important to recognize that a very deep and active process of dislocation is ongoing everywhere in each country. We would like to compare also how individuals are able to develop life and survival strategies and to build collective mobilizations. In each country we would like to compare also the complexity of institutional arenas, constituted through the involvement of a plurality of local and international actors who struggle to develop governance patterns while facing situations of ecological uncertainty. We will analyze in each cultural context how collective actions and moral economies are producing new forms of citizenship in local and global public spaces, as well as the process of restoration and re-creation of societies. Adaptive learning entails re-socialization and production of new identities. A central issue thus concerns the processes of society recreation. The recreation of society could entail maintaining previous forms of socialization, inventing new ones, breaking away from previous ones or finding compromises between previous and present social, economic and moral patterns.

Program

JUNE the 16th

Full Day : Arrival and Checking-in

JUNE the 17 th

MSH Lyon St-Etienne, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon 7ème, (salle Marc Bloch)

JUNE the 18 th

MSH Lyon St-Etienne, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon 7ème, (salle Marc Bloch)

Afternoon : ENS de Lyon, site Descartes, salle D4.260

JUNE 19 th

Fieldwork Site Visits organized with Regional Union of Architecture and
Urbanism Councils Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes

JUNE 20th

JUNE 21th