CURRENT ISSUE
Volume 21, Winter Issue
Announcement
IJCCR joins RAMICS family
The International Journal of Community Currency Research (www.ijccr.net) has become the official publication of the newly created Research Association on Monetary Innovation and Complementary and Community Currencies (https://ramics.org/).
Announcement
IV International Conference on Social and Complementary Currencies
10-14 May 2017
Barcelona (Spain)
The 4th International Conference on Social and Complementary Currencies organized by Universitat Oberta de Catalunya UOC will take place from 10th to 14th May 2017 at the Parque Tecnlógico Nou Barris.
UOC will organize the event together with Research Association on Monetary Innovation and Community and Complementary Currency Systems (RAMICS), International Journal of Community Currency Research (IJCCR), Instituto de la Moneda Social (IMS), Xarxa d’Economia Solidària (XES) and Sustainability School.
The 4th Conference’s goal is to reflect on social and complementary currencies as tools which, on being implemented by people themselves, nurture the social change in favor of a completely sustainable development. Self-management, trust, closeness, respect and benevolence, among others are quite determining elements in the future of such sort of initiatives.
However, as in any type of behavior, it is necessary that such behavior should be well accepted in people’s daily actions so it should last over time. The consciousness-building in the whole process, as well as the drive promoted from the innermost part of our being, from our personal values, are the key to warrant the survival of this sort of initiatives.
We have to ask ourselves whether members of the communities operating with social and complementary currencies are really aware of the motivations which have moved them towards this, as well as of the consequences brought about by their actions.
Is it about an opportunist behavior? Or is it rather a behavior which is really best for sustainability? Is there any reason in this respect? Is there any dominant motivation? What makes some initiatives endure over time than others? Is there any sort of behavior to nurture it?
These and other questions, on the basis of debates, presentations, workshops, experiences… are intended to be answered under a multidisciplinary perspective, either from the own theoretical viewpoint or from the daily practice, either from the academy or from activism. Solely and exclusively, the fusion of both fields can warrant a real progress of this sort of communities, an advance towards the implementation of social and complementary currency systems which are sustainable over time, and are worth of redundancy, are to nurture the whole sustainability of life in Mother Earth.
That is why the conference’s official title is:
4th International Conference on Social and Complementary Currencies: Money, Awareness and Values for Social Change
Click here for the conference’s schedule
Sponsors and Partners
The 4th Conference Organizing Committee makes a call to organizations or initiatives who want to collaborate with us in sponsoring the event. Any contribution (in cash or in kind) that these organizations can donate, will be quite welcome. Our aim is to guarantee the best quality and to make the best use of these days in the conference. Would you like to contribute? For us, it is relevant to count with a network of collaborators and volunteers who, to some degree, want to get involved with the event’s organization, either during the previous stage or during the conference days. In any of these two scenarios cases, you can contact the 4th Conference Organizing Committee here through this web page.
- Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC): www.uoc.edu
- Sustainability School: sustainability.school
- Research Association on Monetary Innovation and Community and Complementary Currency Systems (RAMICS): www.ramics.org
- International Journal of Community Currency Research (IJCCR): www.ijccr.net
- Instituto de la Moneda Social (IMS): www.monedasocial.org
- Xarxa d’Economia Solidària (XES): www.xes.cat
- Shareable: www.shareable.net
Event place
Announcement
6th EMES International Research Conference on Social Enterprise
3-6 July 2017
Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium)
EMES, in partnership with the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Work, State and Society (CIRTES, Université catholique de Louvain) and the Social Enterprise Belgian Interuniversity Attraction Pole (IAP), are pleased to announce the 6th EMES International Research Conference on the theme “Social enterprise for sustainable societies” which will take place on July 3-6, 2017, at the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium).
The aim of this 6th EMES International Research Conference on Social Enterprise is to be one of the world’s central meeting places for all researchers involved in social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social and solidarity economy research across the globe.
CIRTES is one of the founders of the EMES network. It has built up a strong expertise on SE organisations in European and Southern contexts; analysing their socio-economic logics and their expression through public policies, the market and civil society in various fields such as work integration, care, social finance, commons and the popular economy.
IAP – Interuniversity Attraction Pole – is a consortium of four Belgian research centres gathered under the title “If not for Profit, for What? And How?” supported by the Belgian Science Policy Office from 2012 to 2017. It includes the Centre for Social Economy (CES, University of Liege), CIRTES (Université catholique de Louvain), the Centre Européen de Recherche en Microfinance (CERMi, Université Libre de Bruxelles) and the Department of Applied Economics (APEC, Vrije Universiteit Brussel). Around 45 faculty members and researchers in economics, management, sociology and psychology have jointly developed an interdisciplinary and integrated knowledge on social entrepreneurship and social enterprise.
Conference thematic lines and conveners
Can social enterprise help overcome the current crises? Issues such as growing social inequalities, massive unemployment, the lack of economic democracy, and environmental unsustainability have increased the global expectations of social enterprises. Each in its own way, governments, civil society actors, non-profit leaders as well as the business sector, are seeking to discover, or rediscover, new possibilities of promoting economic approaches while targeting social aims. Indeed, examples of social enterprise and initiatives to support these goals have dramatically increased.
However, do these innovative practices promote institutional economic diversity and democracy or do they contribute to the weakening of solidarity through the marketization of society? Likewise, is their potential to address the major current and future economic, social, environmental and societal challenges fully understood?
Social enterprises naturally cross various types of borders, in terms of sectors (public, business, cooperatives, associations), resources (drawing them from the market, public procurement and grants, volunteering, etc.) and activity fields. Their social mission usually marks the activity field where they operate, ranging from more traditional fields such as access to social services and health and work integration to the most innovative ones, such as social and ecological transition, social finance and culture.
In a truly worldwide and interdisciplinary perspective, this conference will discuss the challenges faced by social enterprises in this critical period and the opportunities and challenges they face to build sustainable societies. The conference will aim to bring together research communities from all over the world related to the third sector (non-profit sector, cooperatives, social economy, solidarity economy and civil society) and researchers working on social innovation, social entrepreneurship, commons, sustainable transition, popular economy, etc.
In order to organize the discussion across fields and disciplines, the conference will be structured along the following 10 main thematic lines, each of them supported by various conveners. The titles and conveners of the 10 thematic lines are included below; for a detailed description, please download the “Full call” on the right.
Important dates
- October 3rd, 2016 Opening of abstract submission
- January 9th, 2017 Abstract submission deadline
- February 13th, 2017 Notification of acceptance/rejection to authors
- February 15th, 2017 Conference registration opens
- March 27th, 2017 Early-bird registration at reduced fees deadline
- April 17th, 2017 Deadline for conference registration for presenters
- June 5th, 2017 Deadline for full paper submission
- June 15th, 2017 Deadline for conference registration (non-presenters)
The registration deadline for Presenters is Monday, April 17, 2017; for Non-Presenters, it is Thursday, June 15, 2017.
Please find the original article here.
How to get to Louvain-la-Neuve
Location:
Announcement
Global Forum on New Economy & Social Innovation
from 19th to 22th of April
Malaga, Spain
NESI Global Forum “New Economy and Social Innovation”, to be held on 19-22 April in Málaga (Spain) is a meeting place for people and organisations working to create a more sustainable, fair, collaborative and people-oriented New Economy.
Professionals and citizens are calling to participate in this “Call for Proposals” open for those who want to share their good practices and/or solve a challenge through a collaborative process.
What?
PROPOSALS MAY BE EITHER:
Good practices to be replicated:
Real good practices or positive experiences implemented by the applicants in any of the four main tracks of NESI.
Collaborative challenges:
Challenge/opportunity/goal that either businesses /NGOs/social movements or governments are facing. They must be framed under any of the 4 main tracks.
Who?
Any person, organisation, business, NGO, government as well as academic and research centres with some innovative story/experience to tell or challenge to face can send a proposal.
When?
The deadline of this call for proposals finishes at 5pm 10th January 2017
YOU’LL GET:
- Opportunity to present your proposal during the Global Forum NESI.
- One Free ticket for each speaker to the Global Forum NESI and 3 more tickets with special discount. (accommodation is not included)
- Promotion of your project through NESI international networks.
Any questions, please contact programme@neweconomyforum.org
Announcement
UNRISD at Resilience 2017
from 21st to 23rd of August
Stockholm, Sweden
If you are researching policies that support resilience and social-ecological transformations to sustainability, UNRISD would like to hear from you. We are organizing a session on “The Transformation we want: Towards a global policy environment for resilient futures” at the Resilience 2017 conference, taking place in Stockholm, Sweden on 21-23 August 2017 and are seeking abstracts on policy reforms and innovations which will produce environmentally sustainable and socially just solutions.
About the UNRISD session
The session is part of the theme on social-ecological transformations for sustainability. Starting from the definition of transformative change proposed in the UNRISD 2016 Flagship Report the session aims to advance the understanding of the political processes underlying eco-social policy approaches that integrate environmentally sustainable and socially just solutions. It seeks to inform global policy debates with an analysis of the processes of change required to promote sustainability and resilience.
What we are looking for
For the UNRISD session, we are looking for national or subnational level examples of policy reform that combine and prioritize social and environmental goals for more sustainable and transformative outcomes. In these examples, we are particularly interested in the politics and power relations that shape transformative change. Abstracts are invited for papers that will address the following questions:
- How does the new or adjusted policy prioritize environmental and social objectives in an integrated “eco-social” framework?
- What are the inclusive and democratic characteristics of the reform process?
- What new institutions, coordination mechanisms or partnerships have emerged from the new/adjusted policy?
- How is the policy design based on human rights and part of a comprehensive and integrated strategy?
- What fundamentally different outcomes (transformative change) are driven by the new/reformed policy ?
- How is the new/reformed policy financed?
Submissions are welcome from scholars, practitioners and policy makers. Priority will be given to developing country examples.
How to submit an abstract
In order to submit your 300-word abstract, please visit http://resilience2017.org/, create an account and select the following options:
Track S – Accepted Sessions
Topic: S55 The Transformation we want: Towards a global policy environment for resilient futures
Conference theme: Social-ecological transformations for sustainability
UNRISD will select up to five abstracts for the session. Other submissions may be considered for inclusion in an upcoming UNRISD Think Piece series on eco-social policies for resilient futures.
Deadline for submission is 13 January 2017. Please contact us at krause@unrisd.org, indicating “Resilience 2017” in the subject line, if you have questions regarding the abstract submission. Please do not send submissions directly to UNRISD; use the conference website as indicated above.
Cost and funding
Accepted speakers will be responsible for covering their own travel and accommodation costs. Limited funding for developing country scholars may be made available by the conference organizers.
About the Resilience 2017 conference
Following previous Resilience conferences held on triennial basis since 2008, Resilience 2017 will discuss resilience as a key lens for biosphere-based sustainability science. It will reflect back on the scientific progress made, and aim to set out exciting future directions for research. A main focus will be on global sustainability challenges and opportunities, which today are heavily influenced by the speed, scale and connectivity of the Anthropocene.
For the original article please click here.
For the web page of the conference please click here.
Announcement
WINIR Conference on Institutions & Open Societies Utrecht University (Utrecht, Netherlands)
from 14th to 17th of September
Utrecht University (Utrecht, Netherlands)
Democracies and open societies have recently suffered a number of setbacks. As the adverse impacts of financial crises, inequalities in wealth and income, globalized trade and capital mobility have become more pronounced the world is increasingly threatened by authoritarian populism. In this context of turmoil, many of the accepted doctrines and policies that had previously been taken for granted have been challenged, and concerns have been raised regarding the possible futures of economically and politically “open societies“.
Organised in close collaboration with Utrecht University‘s “Institutions for Open Societies” research programme, the Fourth WINIR Conference is set against this backdrop. The conference especially welcomes contributions from any academic discipline that address the challenges and dynamics of the economic, political, legal and social institutions of our time. Submissions on any other aspect of institutional research are also welcome.
The conference will open on the afternoon of Thursday 14 September and end on the evening of Saturday 16 September 2017. There will be an optional tour of historic Utrecht on the morning of Sunday 17 September.
Keynotes lectures, representing three academic discriplines, will be given by:
Johanna Mair (Hertie School of Governance, management)
James Robinson (University of Chicago, politics)
Juliet Schor (Boston College, sociology)
The conference will also feature a round table on “ICT, Open Societies and New Institutions” with José van Dijck (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, media studies), Haroon Sheikh (Dasym Investment Strategies, philosophy) and Fredrik Söderqvist (Unionen, economics), and will be preceded by a PhD workshop.
Abstract submissions (300 words max.) from any discipline and theoretical approach are welcome. All submission must be about institutions, organisations and/or institutional thought.
Submissions will be evaluated by the WINIR Scientific Quality Committee: Bas van Bavel (Utrecht University, history), Simon Deakin (University of Cambridge, law), Geoff Hodgson (University of Hertfordshire, economics), Uskali Mäki (University of Helsinki, philosophy), Katharina Pistor (Columbia University, law), Sven Steinmo (European University Institute, politics), Wolfgang Streeck (Max Planck Institute Cologne, sociology), Linda Weiss (University of Sydney, politics).
Please note the following important dates:
13 March 2017
Abstract submission deadline
30 March 2017
Notification of acceptance
31 March 2017
Registration opens
15 May 2017
Early registration deadline
31 July 2017
Registration deadline for accepted authors
1 August 2017
Non-registered authors removed from programme
15 August 2017
Registration deadline for non-presenters
16 August 2017
Late surcharge for non-presenters applies
1 September 2017
Full paper submission deadline
Organising subcommittee:
Bas van Bavel (b.j.p.vanbavel@uu.nl), Koen Frenken (k.frenken@uu.nl), Francesca Gagliardi (f.gagliardi@herts.ac.uk),
David Gindis (d.gindis@herts.ac.uk), Geoff Hodgson (g.m.hodgson@herts.ac.uk), Rutger Claassen (r.j.g.claassen@uu.nl), Erik Stam ( e.stam@uu.nl).
The WINIR Conference on Institutions and Open societies is organised in collaboration with
For the original article please click here.
