Coordinators: Alcides Monteiro [ UBI ] Fernando Bessa Ribeiro [ UTAD ]
Globalization, Politics and Citizenship is a Thematic Area (TA) oriented towards the critical debate of the problems that global dynamics pose to citizens and to states. Involving multiple fields (social, economic, political, environmental and cultural), this thematic area seeks to benefit from the theoretical and empirical contributions of sociologists and other social scientists working on globalization, politics and citizenship in the most diverse geographies and scales.
Washington, January 2017: the FBI and CIA accuse Russia of influencing the US presidential election through "hackers linked to the Russian government" who would have posted thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton's Democratic Party campaign. Paris, October 2017: as in other European countries, the french version of the Kremlin-funded Russia Today news channel starts its emissions. It is presented as a means of "reinformation" in the face of the "infamous counter- truths" that Russia will be targeting. In both cases, two superpower states complain that they are victims of the distortion of reality and react by seeking to diffuse their own versions of "truth."
Without forgetting the street and other arenas, social networks are today the great space of congregation and search of visibility for all kind of groups, movements and voices. Through them citizenship happens, but it is also through them that other groups, companies and even States influence opinions, condition citizens' freedom and even transform it into an illusion. The mediatisation of commitments, debates and combats swings between gains in clarification and political awareness and the reinforcement of manipulations.
In the 80's and 90's of the last century, Beck and Giddens, referring to the emergence of new risks and the importance of reflexivity, and Bauman's thesis of the "liquid modernity", advocate the proper use of reflexive capacity to make decisions about our lives , in a "liquid" world of accelerated and ever-changing information. The triad information - reflection - decision would support a fundamental part of our individual and collective capacity to react to social risks and to guide action towards solving social problems, promoting a just, inclusive and wellbeing society. But how to make decisions, how to draw collective reference horizons in a context of misrepresentation used by some to manipulate others? Can democracy survive this misrepresentation and lack of transparency? Or is it time to start talking about post-democracy?
It is intended that the communication proposals in this thematic area can be built from different theoretical and methodological approaches, and can be supported by empirical research, especially in non-European contexts, and considering one of the following themes:
(i) The quality of democracy: individual reflexivity, the public sphere and the exercise
of citizenship;
(ii) Social networks and political activism: between surveillance and reporting;
(iii) State, social movements and social struggles: theoretical perspectives and case studies;
(iv)Crises, wars, and migrations: political challenges, public action and humanitarian intervention;
(v) Climate change as a social and political issue: conflicts and citizen intervention;
(vi)Global issues, local action: mobilization networks, governance models, modes of organization and forms of participatory democracy.
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