Publics in Global Politics
Annual conference of the Working Group “Sociology in International Relations”
of the German Political Science Association (DVPW)
in cooperation with
the Section “Political Sociology” of the German Sociological Association (DGS)
November 11 and 12, 2021
Organising team:
Ulrich Franke (Erfurt)
Janne Mende (Heidelberg)
Thomas Müller (Bielefeld)
Jasmin Siri (Erfurt/München)
Venue:
Zoom. No prior Zoom registration or software installation necessary. Log-in details will be
circulated to all presenters and registered participants. Please turn your cameras on, and
your microphone off when listening.
Registration:
The conference is open to guest participants. We ask guests to register with the organising
team (aksib@dvpw.de) by November 9th. The Zoom link will be circulated on November 10th. Access to the short papers will be circulated by November 4th.
Topic
Publics are crucial to global politics. They shape our idea of how political decisions are to be made and disputed. Publics are the social spaces in which various actors compete over attention and support for their political agendas and in which political decisions on inter- and transnational issues are demanded, justified, contested and debated. These spaces depend on publicness – the availability of knowledge about political issues and the way they are communicated to those that are governed – and often feature appeals to global public interests in the sens...
Publics in Global Politics
Annual conference of the Working Group “Sociology in International Relations”
of the German Political Science Association (DVPW)
in cooperation with
the Section “Political Sociology” of the German Sociological Association (DGS)
November 11 and 12, 2021
Organising team:
Ulrich Franke (Erfurt)
Janne Mende (Heidelberg)
Thomas Müller (Bielefeld)
Jasmin Siri (Erfurt/München)
Venue:
Zoom. No prior Zoom registration or software installation necessary. Log-in details will be
circulated to all presenters and registered participants. Please turn your cameras on, and
your microphone off when listening.
Registration:
The conference is open to guest participants. We ask guests to register with the organising
team (aksibdvpwde) by November 9th. The Zoom link will be circulated on November 10th. Access to the short papers will be circulated by November 4th.
Topic
Publics are crucial to global politics. They shape our idea of how political decisions are to be made and disputed. Publics are the social spaces in which various actors compete over attention and support for their political agendas and in which political decisions on inter- and transnational issues are demanded, justified, contested and debated. These spaces depend on publicness – the availability of knowledge about political issues and the way they are communicated to those that are governed – and often feature appeals to global public interests in the sense of interests shared by humanity as a whole.
In International Relations as well as in Sociology, there is diverse and rich research on the relation between publics and global politics. The internet and social media are described as having brought about a structural transformation of the public sphere that is as revolutionary and momentous as the invention of the printing press, transforming the ways in which transnational and global publics and politics are constituted and shaped. Against the background of this radical transformation of the public sphere, we want to take stock of the debates about the relation between (the) public(s) and global politics. What is the role of the public(s) in global politics? Which publics matter in global politics? How do inequalities shape access to these new publics? And, more generally speaking: How has the relation between (the) public(s) and global politics changed?
Programme
Thursday November 11th
12.45-13.00 Log-in and Coffee
13.00-13.15 Welcome
13.15-14.00 Conceptual discussion
14.00-14.15 Break and joint coffee in breakout rooms
14.15-15.45 Roundtable 1: The Nature of Publics
Chair: Ulrich Franke
Benjamin Herborth (Groningen): Publics and their Politics
Sebastian Schindler (München): Public Happiness and Public Freedom
Achilles Skordas (Heidelberg): The Manchurian Candidate and the 2016 US Presidential Elections
15.45-16.15 Break and joint coffee in breakout rooms
16.15-17.45 Roundtable 2: Politics and the Public Spotlight
Chair: Janne Mende
Julia Drubel (Giessen): Public(s) in the European Union and the Development of Sustainable Forest Governance within the Global Bio-Economy
Anne Krüger (Berlin/Potsdam) and Leopold Ringel (Bielefeld): Shaping the Globe by Shaping Global Publics: Disentangling Infrastructures of Quantification in the World Polity
Thomas Müller (Bielefeld): Transparency, Ambiguity and Global Nuclear Politics
17.45-18.45 Breakout bar and Zoom drinks
Friday November 12th
09.00-10.30 Roundtable 3: The Boundary between the Public and the Private
Chair: Thomas Müller
Jutta Joachim (Nijmegen) and Andrea Schneiker (Friedrichshafen): Public or Private? Blurring the Lines through YouTube Recruitment of Military Veterans by Private Security Companies
Janne Mende and Franziska Plümmer (Heidelberg): Personal Information, Private Actors, and Public Values: The Role of Public(s) in European Data Governance
Katharina McLarren (Kleve): Why the Religious Public Matters in Global Politics
10.30-11.00 Break and joint coffee in breakout rooms
11.00-12.30 Roundtable 4: International Institutions and their Publics
Chair: Jasmin Siri
Melanie Coni-Zimmer (Frankfurt am Main): Civil Society, International Organizations and the Public Sphere: The (Im-)Possiblity of Virtual Dialogue
Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt (Duisburg-Essen): The Personal/Intimate in IO Social Media Communication
Diane Schumann (Frankfurt am Main): Stuck in Semi-publicness – How the G20 Engagement Groups Fail to Translate their Work into the Digital Public Space
12.30-13.15 Lunch break and joint coffee in breakout rooms
13.15-14.00 Concluding remarks
14.00-14.45 Mitgliederversammlung des AK SiB (held in German)
For more information about the DVPW Working Group “Sociology in International Relations” and the DGS Section “Political Sociology”:
- https://www.dvpw.de/gliederung/ak/soziologie-der-internationalen-beziehungen
- https://www.sociohub-fid.de/s/politische-soziologie/custom_pages/view?id=11
