CFP: Social Ontology Faces the Future

Call for abstracts

Dates: Friday May 31 & Saturday June 1, 2024

Location: Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

Keynote: Rach Cosker-Rowland (Leeds), “The Future of Gender”

Submit abstracts of 750-1000 words (inclusive of references) to [email protected] by March 1st. Decisions will be communicated by mid-March.

This two-day workshop will occur at the beautiful and historic campus of Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. On the evening of June 1, we’ll have a workshop dinner.

The theme: Social ontological issues concerning the future (including but not limited to the future of social ontology). Here is an incomplete list of suitable topics:

●      Issues concerning the future for social categories and kinds, such as gender, race, religion, law, ethnicity, social movements (e.g., veganism, feminism, trans rights, anti-racism), disability, nationality, culture, language, and so on

●      Issues in social ontology concerning future generations—their existence and ontological status, their interests, their relations to present generations, and/or our ethical obligations to them

●      Group agency and the future; issues involving temporally extended group agents

●      Collective intention and action across time and into the future

●      Social construction and the future: e.g., is the future itself a social construction?

●      Conceptual dimensions of social ontology and the future: e.g., do our future-oriented concepts call for ameliorative analysis?

●      The academic discipline of social ontology: How will it evolve in the future? How should it evolve?

We will invite but will not require participants to circulate workshop papers in advance for pre-reading. Workshop participants will have an opportunity to offer their papers for consideration for a journal special issue or edited volume that will be assembled after the workshop is completed.

Organizers: Seçil Aracı (Boğaziçi), Zeynep Celik (Bilkent), David Killoren (Koç), and Bill Wringe (Bilkent)