19/12/2018
2nd SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES RESEARCH CONFERENCE
ATENEO DE MANILA UNIVERSITY
Can the Social Sciences Emancipate?
Exclusion, Entrenchment, and the Engaged Scholar
3-4 APRIL 2019
ATENEO DE MANILA UNIVERSITY
LOYOLA HEIGHTS, QUEZON CITY
Social scientists have extensively examined patterns and processes of exclusion and entrenchment. Contemporary social, economic, and political challenges magnify the nature and breadth of these patterns and processes. As globalization expands, intensifies, and deepens, the extent of and ways vulnerable groups suffer from systematic disenfranchisement, marginalization, and persecution have become more palpable. The persistence of global, national and local inequalities engendered by oppressive colonial histories, the preponderance of corporate monopolies, and the failure of states to consistently provide basic resources and services also merits critical study. While building just and inclusive societies is a cumbersome undertaking, the emergence of nonviolent movements, humanitarian interventions, and peace processes that have attempted to empower communities, reduce violence, and promote justice provides hope, and demonstrates the capacity to question and contest dominant perspectives and practices that alienate. Nonetheless, structural hindrances to such interventions remain.
The second School of Social Sciences Research Conference intends to focus on how scholars, public intellectuals, policy makers, journalists, and activists of diverse social science backgrounds can and do contribute to our understanding of exclusion and entrenchment as dual processes operating simultaneously. It is informed by attempts to expand social science paradigms and practices, one of the main objectives of the first conference in April 2018. As a platform for engaged scholarship, this conference also seeks to highlight how the social sciences can assume an emancipatory and transformative character as they attempt in varying ways to mitigate the effects, and dismantle structures of injustice and inequality.
PANELS
Institutions, Inequalities, and the Philippine State
Institutions are largely social artefacts—they are constructed through social interactions between and among various actors. Norms, institutional scripts and narratives are conjured for the sake of functionality, for the purpose of survivability and in this regard, institutions are meant to serve certain constituencies. Institutions thus are inherently political.
This panel seeks to interrogate the discourse and practice of institutions in the period of the archetypal ‘strong man regime’ that has been antithetical to the liberal democratic narrative of the Philippine State. As such, it aims to provide a platform for critical conversations on populist authoritarianism, militarisation and securitisation of the government bureaucracy, and local political warlordism elevating itself in the national political arena and how all these have been implicated in the transformation of institutions in the country. Of special interest is the unraveling of institutional discourses and infrastructures that perpetuate, justify, and legitimize various forms of injustices—in other words, injustices are what the State make of them.
Cultures, Communities and Conditions at the Margins
Understanding everyday life in the peripheries necessitates a nuanced and critical appreciation of local cultures and conditions. These cultures and conditions are often concealed, misrepresented, and misunderstood in view of the propensity to privilege dominant narratives and perspectives that overlook the diversity and plurality of backgrounds and experiences. Glaringly neglected are the experiences and perspectives of groups historically bereft of economic, social, and political capital due to ethnicity, class, politics, and geography. Needing extensive scrutiny as well are the ways these groups exercise their agency or the capacity to assert, contest, complicate, and introduce actions and solutions to what ails them or limits their capacities to realize their aspirations. This panel examines the circumstances that promote and inhibit the creative power and agentive capacity of vulnerable groups and communities, the nature and scope of marginalization, and cultural and social barriers that legitimize distinctions and disparities.
Policy Dynamics, Dilemmas, and the Social Sciences
The notion of social embeddedness in the social sciences prompts the view that personal relations, kinship, stratification, knowledge, religion, and state and government institutions as well as materiality and physical environments inform the policy-making process. Successful policymaking and implementation benefit from an understanding of the process of translation of policies in everyday practices and the channeling of insights back to policymakers. The perspectives of the social sciences are thus useful in understanding how policies are diffused and domesticated at various levels and in relation to existing norms, interests, and social practices which might contradict or support such policies and regulations, and vice versa. The twin-challenge for every social scientist is to be part of the generation of data and ideas from across disciplines and cultures of knowledge, and to effectively analyze and communicate not only evidence, but also the evidence's embedding context. This panel welcomes papers that raise questions on, among others, how public policies in the Philippines are created, implemented, and domesticated amidst national and local concerns, which may not always be aligned with each other; and role of social scientists in closing the loop between policy and social reality.
Mechanisms of Meaning-making, Systems of Communication
Viewing society as made up of individuals interacting with one another in socially meaningful ways is one of the most persuasive theoretical approaches in the social sciences. People act on the basis of meanings, which do not only reside in individual’s minds but which are communicated through and in the social world. This panel seeks to examine the socially meaningful world by bringing about a dialogue between the creation of meanings and the communication of such meanings. Meanings are rooted in particular contexts and filters of who, what, when, where, why, and how affect the reading and understanding of messages by different audiences. The panel welcomes papers that illuminate broad institutional patterns, be they politics, economics, or religion, through micro-level processes and connect large issues, be they social inequality, climate change, or cyberbullying, to the everyday life-world. Of interest are papers that examine the symbolic interactions between individuals, the social construction of reality through objectifications of subjective processes, the social world that exists in and through digital spaces, the diffusion of ideas and meanings in various media, and emerging research areas on the mobilization of data including algorithmic capitalism and data tracking.
Quantities and Social Realities
The social sciences frame questions about the way the social world is ordered, and how different societies create, respond and adapt to concerns such as poverty, inequality, corruption and poor governance, crime, and environmental degradation. Many issues long within the purview of the natural sciences, such as climate change and diseases, also require social science understanding. While social science research has distinguished itself for generating cutting edge qualitative methodologies, the utilization of quantitative approaches across all social science disciplines remains integral to their practice. This is an offshoot of impressive infrastructure developments in data collection, storage, processing, and analysis. This session intends to showcase the state of the art in quantitative social science research—choice and behavior modeling, cost-benefit analysis, longitudinal studies, data analytics, econometric models, among others.
PROPOSING A PANEL
Apart from the panels mentioned above, participants may propose a panel composed of papers addressing a common theme. A minimum of three and a maximum of five participants should comprise a panel. A panel proposal form is provided for this purpose.
PROPOSING A PAPER
Participants are invited to submit an abstract of no more than 250 words. An abstract submission form is provided for this purpose.
REGISTRATION FEES
All program participants must pay a full registration fee on or before 15 March 2019.
Early bird registration fee (before 15 March 2019): PHP 2,000
Regular registration fee (after 15 March 2019): PHP 2,500
Students (graduate and undergraduate):PHP 500
The conference fee includes two lunches, a welcome dinner, two morning and two afternoon snacks, and a conference kit.
Information on how to pay can be accessed via the conference website (sossrc.wordpress.com).
Only participants (presenters, chairs, discussants) who have paid the registration fee by 15 March 2019 will appear in the Conference Program and Abstracts Book.
For co-authored papers, at least one co-author must pay the registration fee by the 15 March 2019 deadline in order for a paper to appear in the program; the names of other co-authors will be listed as well. If other co-authors wish to attend the conference they must pay the registration fee.
PUBLICATION OPPORTUNITIES
Participants who want their work considered for publication in Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, and Social Transformations: Journal of the Global South are encouraged to submit a full paper. The deadline for submission is 12 April 2019.
For more information about the aforementioned, participants may visit the following sites:
• Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints (http://www.philippinestudies.net/ojs/index.php/ps)
• Social Transformations: Journal of the Global South (https://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/st)
KEY DATES
Deadline for abstract submission and panel proposals: 18 February 2019
Announcement of accepted papers and panels: 22 February 2019
Deadline for conference participation confirmation: 18 March 2019
Deadline for submission for full version of papers: 12 April 2019
FOR INQUIRIES
Enrique Niño Leviste, PhD
Convenor, 2nd SOSS Research Conference
[email protected]
Tel.: (02) 426 6001
Loc.: 5270 or 5271
