Alert: CFP coming

“Interdisciplinary Futures: Open the Social Sciences 20 years later”

Conference on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Open the Social  
Sciences (1996)
19-20 January 2017, Lisbon

Organised by INTREPID <www.intrepid-cost.eu> and TINT  
<www.helsinki.fi/tint> in collaboration with the Galouste Gulbenkian  
Foundation

The slim but remarkable volume (Open the Social Sciences: Report of  
the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences)  
was published in 1996. The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation had  
established, in 1993, the multidisciplinary Gulbenkian Commission on  
the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. After three years of work,  
led by Immanuel Wallerstein, the multidisciplinary Commission  
published its report (with Stanford University Press). The Report  
analysed the situation in the social sciences, its origins, and  
possible futures, making recommendations for improvement largely based  
on ideals of interdisciplinarity – ideals that have gained ground more  
broadly since then in the academia. The report attracted attention and  
incited commentary and some debate within the social sciences.

This year, 20 years have passed, and it is now an opportune time to  
revisit the themes and suggestions of the Report. Many of them are  
still very timely, awaiting further examination and debate. On the  
other hand, some things have changed, and it will be important to  
update the diagnoses and proposals accordingly. Reconsidering the  
Report and its messages collectively at a conference will provide an  
opportunity to address the challenges in a way that is respectful for  
historical continuity and generative of novel and updated insights.

The conference will focus on three general themes around the Report of  
the Gulbenkian Commission:
1. The Report itself, its background, its context, its diagnoses, its  
messages, its arguments, its recommendations -- both historical and  
analytic contributions are welcome.
2. The issue of how to update the Report, based on what has changed  
since 1996 regarding the themes and claims and arguments in the  
Report, asking how the report would look like if written today.
3. Present and future directly addressed, examining current trends  
plus anticipating and designing the future of the social sciences from  
the point of view of interdisciplinarity.

A call for papers will be circulated soon. It recommends approaching  
the themes in terms of case studies and detailed (more detailed than  
was possible in the short Report) analyses of trends and practices of  
scientific inquiry, its changing cognitive structures, institutional  
contexts, and interdisciplinary interconnections. The goal of the call  
is to attract proposals from scholars active in a variety of research  
fields, from history and philosophy of (social) science to the various  
disciplinary perspectives applied to the study of social science and  
higher education (from economics, sociology, political science,  
anthropology, management, education, communication studies,  
bibliometrics etc). Mixing such perspectives will yield a rich and  
comprehensive picture of the future of interdisciplinarity in social  
science.

Keynote speakers:
Immanuel Wallerstein on "How Much Opening Has Occurred?"
Two other keynote speakers will be invited to provide complementary  
perspectives.





-- 
Uskali Mäki
Academy Professor
TINT - Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Department of Political and Economic Studies / Philosophy
University of Helsinki
http://www.helsinki.fi/tint
http://www.helsinki.fi/tint/maki
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