[liberationtech] CfP: Democracy & Technology (Paris) / March, 12 2013

[Yosem Companys]

Call for papers - 6th Tensions of Europe Conference

Democracy and Technology. Europe in Tension, from the 19th to the 21st century

Extended deadline for paper abstracts: March 12, 2013

Homepage of the conference (informations and submission): http://toe2013paris.sciencesconf.org/

Overall Theme of the Conference

The conference will be devoted to the complex relationship between
democracy and technology from a European and transnational
perspective. The core of this reflection will be the complementarities
and cross-fertilization that arise in the interaction of technology
and democracy, but also the frictions, tensions, and paradoxes that
emerge in the discourses, representations and interplay of actors. The
assumption that technology poses a threat to the liberal democratic
political order rooted in the public debate, has fueled a critical
approach to technology in humanities and social sciences. This also
fueled various shared Europe-wide initiatives of technology
assessment. Within the Soviet bloc, on the other hand, technology was
promoted as a tool for building socialism.

More recently, calls for the democratization of decision-making
related to controversial technical changes made the two terms meet in
a dynamic no longer of opposition but of mutual construction:
"technical democracy" would be an expansion of democracy, defined
primarily as a continuously evolving process rather than a fixed form,
open to new questions and new ways to find answers.

This historical conference is open to a wide range of
interdisciplinary inquiry. It invites proposals for papers addressing
an issue that up to now has mainly been investigated on a national
basis. Focusing on circulations and appropriations of technology in a
European and transnational perspective, the conference should open new
ways to think and talk about the history of Europe.

While European spaces are privileged, papers on the themes of the
conference but covering other geographical areas will also be
considered.

Where: Université Paris Sorbonne
When:  September 19-21, 2013