Deadline for abstracts: 15 November 2016
Date & Place: 15&16 December 2016
Language: English
Organizers: Paul Blokker (FSV UK) and Nicolas Maslowski (CCFEF of Warsaw University)

French pragmatic sociology will be the main theme in the workshop on “French pragmatism and the renewal of contemporary sociology”, held on 15 and 16 December, and organized by the Institute of Sociological Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences), the Department of Historical Sociology (Faculty of Humanities), Charles University, the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES) and the CCFEF UW—Center for French Civilization and Francophone Studies of Warsaw University.

Pragmatic sociology – as a distinct, new type of French social science – probably became most well-known in the global academic community because of the publication in English of the landmark publication by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, On Justification. Economies of Worth, in 2006 (original: 1991, Editions Gallimard).  On Justification is, however, probably best understood as a ‘travail d’étape’ , an intermediate stage in a much larger and highly original social-theoretical enterprise, to which evermore scholars in a variety of disciplines contribute (e.g. historians, anthropologists, economists) in a range of research endeavours. The workshop will explore the fundamentals of this approach and the insights it has brought, and still brings, to contemporary sociological and interdisciplinary research. The upshot is to explore the rich potentialities of pragmatic sociology and to discuss its relevance and usage in Czech sociology.

Prof. Laurent Thévenot will open the workshop with a lecture on the recent and current further developments in his work. Much of prof. Thévenot’s work since On Justification draws on earlier insights while developing an innovative and rich perspective on the analysis of social life. Prof. Thévenot explores the dimensions of social life ‘under the public’ as a condition to enlarge the scope of public critique to oppressions, and to understand the required transformations and obstacles to their exposition in common, to the discord of the political community.

Please send your proposition (150-200 words) to the organizers before November 15th.

A workshop organized by:
Institute of Sociological Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences)
Department of Historical Sociology (Faculty of Humanities), Charles University
French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES)
Center for French Civilization and Francophone Studies of Warsaw University