Call for Paper and Poster Proposals
Workshop: (De-) Constructing Biodiversity
Location: Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany
Date: 23-24 September 2011
The Workshop (De-) Constructing Biodiversity will take place in September 2011 and addresses to the multidisciplinary research opportunity on biodiversity. Participants of the workshop will discuss concepts of ‘biodiversity’ in three different panels with experts from respective fields. The three panels are as follows:
Different perspectives on biodiversity
Keynote Speakers: Prof Paul Sillitoe, Sc.D., F.B.A.
In this initiatory panel we invite scholars from different disciplines such as social sciences, economics, live-sciences and philosophy as well as environmentalists to deconstruct their concepts of biodiversity, research traditions as well as their theoretical and epistemological foundation. We would like to adress the following questions:
- Which epistemological, theoretical and conceptual bases are helpful to understand biodiversity from many perspectives? Which aspects are potential sources of misunderstandings and may hinder interdisciplinary cooperation?
- Which practices of knowledge transfer and networking may influence cooperation in interdisciplinary working groups?
- Which methods and research practices can help to work interdisciplinarily on biodiversity (or other related subjects)?
- How has biodiversity been reported in the media?
- How do different speakers/actors frame biodiversity?
- What impact do these media discourses have on policy decisions?
- Who are the different actors in the negotiation and translation of biodiversity-related problems?
- What interests do actors have in biodiversity and what are their strategies to pursue them?
- How is biodiversity negotiated?
2. Communication of biodiversity
Keynote Speakers: Professor Dr. Bas Arts
Biodiversity has been the central discourse element for environmental politics since the 1980s. The loss of biological diversity had increased media coverage since the later part of 20th century. Mass media has been a platform for communicating scientific and political debate on the issue of biodiversity. But speakers coming from various backgrounds and with different aspirations tend to communicate biodiversity differently. This panel will focus on this aspect of biodiversity via the following questions.
3. Power in negotiating biodiversity.
Keynote Speakers: Professor Dr. Bas Arts
In the last panel biodiversity-related problems regarding negotiation and power will be discussed. Biodiversity can be regarded as both a natural resource as well as a source of power in scientific and political discourse. Different actors see biodiversity with different perspectives which depend on different interests. Some of these actors are more powerful and may dominate others. In (re)constructing power-relations actors permanently negotiate biodiversity. Power relations and processes will be discussed in the following questions.
Oral Presentations
We kindly invite proposals for papers in English, addressing any of the questions of these three panels. For individual papers, please send a 300 word abstract, together with your contact details and a brief CV to the conference contact person Nazmus Sadath at: nsadath [at] gwdg.de
Posters
We also invite proposals for poster in English addressing any of the questions of these three panels. For individual posters, please send a 200 word abstract, together with your contact details and a brief CV to the conference contact person Nazmus Sadath at: nsadath [at] gwdg.de
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is June 25th, 2011.
All the information of this page can also be downloaded here as a PDF.