CSR to arrange panel at Needs 2020

The panel theme is set to be Towards what futures? The political dimensions of sustainable development and resilience and will be led by CCS-researchers: Mikael Granberg, David Olsson and Tove Bodland.

Theme Background:

Different concepts used in political and policy processes can be understood as the interstices, where the formulation of possible futures takes place. Two such concepts with great relevance over later years (1980s and onwards) is sustainable development and, with increasing importance lately, resilience.

This panel focuses on two issues related to the formulation of possible futures through these concepts: 

• The first issue concerns how the concepts are used, with what connotations and impacts in political and policy processes? These concepts are not neutral but pliable constructions that can be used for different political purposes. Concepts with mainly positive connotation such as sustainable development and resilience can be very powerful political concepts as they, through their lack of precision and flexibility, can facilitate political agreements without the mess of agreeing on detailed measures etc. At the same time these properties also mean that they are less efficient when it comes to implementation in administrative settings.
• The second issue has to do with the value rationalities and power relations underpinning the mainstream conceptualizations of sustainable development and resilience. In the research literature several competing conceptualizations of sustainable development and resilience have emerged. Explicitly or implicitly, these entail different priorities in terms of values and norms. Each conceptualization is also based on distinctive assumptions about what is need to reach what is defined as positive futures. In light of this, it becomes important to discuss questions such as: where are we currently going? Why? Is this development desirable? For whom? Who gains and who loses from this, and by which mechanisms of power?

Call for abstracts

Abstract submissions (max 400 words including references) to the NEEDS 2020 panels are open until November 17. Submission link and more information are available through the conference webpage linked below.

The Northern European Conference on Emergency and Disaster Studies, NEEDS

NEEDS, aims to explore the status quo of disaster research and management. The conference wishes to harness its broad, interdisciplinary expertise by gathering disaster researchers from academic institutions and practitioners from the disaster management community (European and beyond) to build networks and to discuss the most pressing issues in disaster research across the academic and practical disciplines.

Next years conference shifts the focus away from the hazardous event in itself and place it in the interstices, the in-between-disasters spaces where our imagining of possible futures takes place. We interrogate the means through which we imagine, visualize, and construct possible alternatives of the future: various art forms, scenario building, table-top exercises, high tech simulations, as well as the way we communicate, manage and respond to them.

Read more:

• NEEDS 2020, the fifth edition of the Northern European Conference on Emergency and Disaster Studies.