Christoph Haug | University of Gothenburg (original) (raw)

Papers by Christoph Haug

The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, 2022

Meetings are ubiquitous in social movements. Taking an active role in building a social movement ... more Meetings are ubiquitous in social movements. Taking an active role in building a social movement coalition or organizing a protest event almost inevitably entails numerous meetings. Yet, in accounts of social movement processes, meetings often become invisible. The reason for such omissions is that meetings are a taken-for-granted phenomenon in modern societies and from a commonsense perspective, writing about them would appear as trivial. It took a social anthropologist, Helen Schwartzman, to "walk into meetings backwards" (as she calls her way of defamiliarizing meetings) and to ask what meetings actually are, how they work, and why there are so many of them. A meeting, she concludes in her widely cited definition, is "a communicative event involving three or more people who agree to assemble for a purpose ostensibly related to the functioning of an organization or group … A meeting is characterized by multiparty talk that is episodic in nature, and participants either develop or use specific conventions … for regulating this talk... Participants assume that this talk in some way relates to the ostensible purpose of the meeting and the meeting form frames the behavior that occurs within it as concerning the 'business' of the group or organization" (Schwartzman 1989, 7). Because the "meeting frame" labels whatever happens during the meeting as organizational or community action, the meeting becomes "the organization or community writ small" and "provides individuals with a way to create and then discover the meaning of what it is they are doing and saying" (Schwartzman 1989, 39). This is particularly relevant in social movements settings characterized by informal networks and unclear authority because meetings provide shared reference points at the mesomobilization (interorganizational) level. Because meetings require the synchronization of activist itineraries, they also contribute to the temporal integration of the activist community. Haug (2013) therefore suggests that meetings can be seen as a social movement infrastructure which includes elements of formal organization, interpersonal networks, and institutional (e.g. cultural) expectations. These formal and informal expectations structure the meeting and condition what kind of behavior is (im)possible (or (in)appropriate) during a particular meeting. If meeting participants agree on nothing else, they nevertheless commit to upholding the "interaction order" (Goffman 1983) of the meeting form, lest the meeting itself breaks down. This commitment acts as a "glue" that allows participants to accomplish things together and understand them as joint accomplishments. So, what exactly do meeting participants agree to when they agree to engage in meeting talk? Drawing on the diverse literature from the emerging interdisciplinary field of "meeting science" (Allen, Lehmann-Willenbrock, and Rogelberg 2015), I distinguish three kinds of comparison that have been used to clarify the nature of meetings: comparison of meetings with other types of talk, comparison of meetings across cultures, and historical comparison.

The Transnational Condition

This paper identifies six elementary interactional constraints in face-to-face meetings: frames, ... more This paper identifies six elementary interactional constraints in face-to-face meetings: frames, sequential relevance, face, status, physical boundaries, and temporal boundaries. It argues that these constraints are not absolute but subject to cultural interpretation and modification in practice, thus giving rise to numerous meeting styles. Each of these meeting styles can be analytically understood as a set of regimes which determine to what degree and in what way the elementary constraints will be effective in the actual meeting as it takes place. These meeting styles are then examined with regard to the question of empowerment: How can we understand that some meetings are experienced as energizing and empowering while others seem to be fruitless and disempowering? Based on the inherent logic of the different meeting regimes, the paper identifies three contrasting styles: disempowerment, inclusive empowerment, and exclusive empowerment and exposes the mechanisms that account for t...

Communiquer. Revue de communication sociale et publique, 2020

This interview with Francois Cooren, professor in the Department of Communication at the Universi... more This interview with Francois Cooren, professor in the Department of Communication at the Universite de Montreal, discusses his best-known contribution to communication theory, his metaphor of communication as ventriloquism. According to this perspective, we all have a “capacity to make other beings say or do things while we speak, write, or, more generally, conduct ourselves” (Cooren, 2012, p. 4). More specifically, the notion of “meetings” and the contribution of ventriloquism to their studies are at the core of this interview. Initially, this interview was conducted by email in the fall of 2019 for a community of meeting researchers and meeting professionals, and then slightly edited for the present publication.

Journal of Deliberative Democracy, 2008

Contemporary social movements can serve as a critical case for the empirical study of deliberatio... more Contemporary social movements can serve as a critical case for the empirical study of deliberation. In countless face-to-face meetings activists often discuss long hours before a decision is reached. In this context, we try to analyse the conditions under which deliberation is successfully employed as a method of discursive conflict resolution. As we develop participant observation in a comparative approach we encounter three methodological challenges which this paper addresses. First, we look at some characteristics of the global justice movements, briefly addressing the different settings in which controversial discussions occur. Second, we give a rationale for applying a semi-standardised multi-level participant observation in order to allow the collection of comparable data by various researchers in several countries. Focusing on participant observation on the level of controversial discussions we thirdly conceptualise competitiveness, power, and asymmetry as three theoretical dimensions to identify eight different practices of discourse, one of them being deliberation. We are currently implementing this model for regular observations of group meetings on a local, national and European level. First results should be available in the near future.

Power and Deliberation in Global Justice Movements

Organization Studies, 2013

In recent years, social movement scholars have shown increasing interest in the internal lives of... more In recent years, social movement scholars have shown increasing interest in the internal lives of social movements, but this turn from “social movements as actors” to “social movements as spaces” has not yet led to a conceptual apparatus that addresses the key role of face-to-face meetings, especially in the inter-organizational domain of mesomobilization. Building on the concept of “partial organization”, the paper develops the concept of “meeting arena” as a hybrid of three forms of social order: organization, institution, and network. It is argued that the complex figuration of meeting arenas in a social movement or protest mobilization constitutes an infrastructure that synchronizes the dispersed activities of movement actors in time and space. This infrastructure is not an entirely emergent phenomenon but is also the result of conscious decisions by organizers. Heuristic, methodological, and theoretical implications of this novel perspective on social movements are discussed, h...

Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen, 2005

Based on audio-recordings of 8 and participant observation in about 200 activist meetings in the ... more Based on audio-recordings of 8 and participant observation in about 200 activist meetings in the Global Justice Movements in Europe (especially Attac and the Social Forum process), the thesis addresses two main questions: 1. In what way do the constraints of the ...

Communiquer. Revue de communication sociale et publique, 2020

Cette entrevue avec Francois Cooren, professeur au Departement de communication de l’Universite d... more Cette entrevue avec Francois Cooren, professeur au Departement de communication de l’Universite de Montreal, discute de sa contribution la plus connue a la theorie de la communication, sa metaphore de la communication comme ventriloquie. Selon cette perspective, nous avons tous une « capacite a faire dire ou faire faire des choses a d’autres entites lorsque nous parlons, ecrivons ou, de facon plus large, agissons » (Cooren, 2010, p.4). Plus particulierement, la notion de « reunion » et l’apport de la ventriloquie a leur etude se retrouvent au cœur de cette entrevue. Initialement, cet entretien a ete realise par courriel, a l’automne 2019, pour une communaute de chercheurs et de professionnels interesses aux reunions, puis legerement edite pour la presente publication.

The emergence of a transnational public sphere in Europe is expected to facilitate democratic con... more The emergence of a transnational public sphere in Europe is expected to facilitate democratic control and public debate about European issues as well as enable the formation of a European collective identity. Taking this claim seriously, though, reveals that empirical research has so far taken a rather restricted view on the European public sphere by assuming that the mass media constitute the core framework in the transnationalisation of the public sphere. This paper argues that such an approach reinforces the dominant ‘top-down’ perspective of EU institutions and should thus be complemented by including ‘lower’ levels of the public sphere in the analysis. Transnational social movements, for example, have often contributed to the diffusion of vital information across borders, thus creating public spheres ‘from below’. However, because of their capacity to mobilise public opinion across borders, social movements have mainly been seen as actors who are engaged in contentious debates ...

""Wenn Beschäftigte der PIN-AG gegen ihre eigene Lohnerhöhung demonstrieren und linke A... more ""Wenn Beschäftigte der PIN-AG gegen ihre eigene Lohnerhöhung demonstrieren und linke AktivistInnen einen Heiligen verehren, dann muss sich im »Kampf um Teilhabe« etwas geändert haben. Die Beiträge in diesem Band gehen der Frage nach, mit welchen Strategien Gewerkschaften und soziale Bewegungen den sich wandelnden kapitalistischen Verhältnissen begegnen. ■ Wie beziehen sie sich aufeinander? ■ Welche Suchbewegungen gibt es? ■ Wo ist effektiver Widerstand möglich? ■ Welche Relevanz haben soziale Kämpfe in anderen Ländern, transnationale Vernetzungen und Migration?""

The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, 2022

The Transnational Condition

Communiquer. Revue de communication sociale et publique, 2020

Journal of Deliberative Democracy, 2008

Power and Deliberation in Global Justice Movements

Organization Studies, 2013

Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen, 2005

Communiquer. Revue de communication sociale et publique, 2020

Policy Dialogue 10, 2013

Civil society organisations are today considered crucial in development partnerships. This Policy... more Civil society organisations are today considered crucial in development partnerships. This Policy Dialogue argues that current aid programs tend to turn such CSOs into businesses that are required to meet donor demands for reportable results, rather than to serve the needs of intended beneficiaries. Based on case studies drawn from HIV and AIDS work in Mozambique, Rwanda and South Africa, the report explores the methods donors use to govern development partnerships and their effect on the distribution of responsibility among partners. It further examines the responses by recipient organisations to these requirements, ranging from acquiescence to resistance. These case studies, drawn from the field of HIV/AIDS, are also invaluable in shedding light on wider issue of the governance of international development cooperation with civil society.

"Based on audio-recordings of 8 and participant observation in about 200 activist meetings in the... more "Based on audio-recordings of 8 and participant observation in about 200 activist meetings in the Global Justice Movements in Europe (especially Attac and the Social Forum process), the thesis addresses two main questions:
1. In what way do the constraints of the meeting-form influence the discussion and hence the decision-making process?
2. How do meeting participants navigate across the various and potentially controversial junctures in the decision-making process to eventually establish what they call “consensus”?
Four elementary structural constraints in meetings where identified: sequentiality, face, status, and frames. While these constraints are thought to be universal, they can be dealt with in culturally contingent ways, which are described as ‘regimes’ governing the interactions in the meeting.

The turn-taking regime of a meeting determines the way in which sequentiality is handled. It prescribes whether a queueing mechanism (e.g. a list of speakers) is used to determine the order of speakers (formal turn-taking), whether speakers self-select at what conversation analysts call turn-transition points (informal turn-taking), or whether the chair or facilitator arbitrarily switches between these two modes (casual turn-taking management).

The politeness regime (or the etiquette) of a meeting determines the range of conflictual issues that may be addressed without causing loss of face and embarrassment. In the regime of avoidance, few conflictual issues can be discussed without risking serious offense and eventually the decline of the meeting. In the regime of fight, on the other side, conflict and potentially harsh controversial debate about any kind of issue is possible, if not encouraged. In the regime of candour, the range of controversial issues and the harshness of adequate debate is considerably reduced, though allowing participants to express their views candidly as long as they take personal feelings into consideration.

The leadership regime of a meeting determines how status differences are dealt with, namely whether they are accepted and reinforced by granting high status participants special authority, or whether status differences are denied or resisted on the basis of egalitarian values. The regime of authority readily accept and install a central decision-making authority who is usually the chair of the meeting. In the egalitarian regime, on the other side, participants tend to work against rather than reinforce the public production of status and prestige by refusing to award high-status participants superior decision-making authority. In the regime of complex equality, there is also a strong sense of equality, but limited authority is nevertheless temporarily granted to participants with a special status in a relevant field of knowledge. Seven types of leaders can be distinguished, each of which is based on a different source of authority: veterans (experience), brokers (connections), experts (expertise), representatives (a constituency), mobilizers (mobilizing-capacity), organizers (maintenance of a meeting arena), and facilitators (focus on process)).

The preparatory regime of a meeting determines to what degree preparatory efforts are made before the commencement of the meeting are accepted as a fait accompli and hence to what degree (pre)established frames (such as the points on the agenda) are allowed to structure the discussion. In the regime of pre-structuration the results of ‘external’ preparations are highly valued and cannot easily be overturned. In order to be relevant, participants have to respect these prepared frames. In the open space regime, on the other side, relatively few contributions will be dismissed as irrelevant, let alone illegitimate. The regime of evolving structures values a certain degree of structure in the discussion, some of which may also come from ‘outside’, but these elements are not automatically established but always subject to discussion so that the autonomy of the meeting is respected.

The decision-making process was modelled as an incremental construction of the public opinion of the meeting. In this continuous process, six critical junctures were identified: the topic, the problem, the task, the options, positions, and determination. Conflicts are likely to occur around the process of establishing these decision-elements. Depending on the meeting culture, the participants use different practices to deal with (or avoid) controversies around these critical junctures. Some of these practices are described in detail in chapter 6 of the thesis. In total, the empirical findings show that (1.) the role of the facilitator has gained crucial importance in the global justice movements, (2.) decisions often are made implicitly first and made explicit later (post-hoc decisions), (3.) the productive role of interruptions, pauses, and ‘new beginnings’ in the decision-process.
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"Wenn Beschäftigte der PIN-AG gegen ihre eigene Lohnerhöhung demonstrieren und linke AktivistInne... more "Wenn Beschäftigte der PIN-AG gegen ihre eigene Lohnerhöhung demonstrieren und linke AktivistInnen einen Heiligen verehren, dann muss sich im »Kampf um Teilhabe« etwas geändert haben. Die Beiträge in diesem Band gehen der Frage nach, mit welchen
Strategien Gewerkschaften und soziale Bewegungen den sich wandelnden kapitalistischen Verhältnissen begegnen.
■ Wie beziehen sie sich aufeinander?
■ Welche Suchbewegungen gibt es?
■ Wo ist effektiver Widerstand möglich?
■ Welche Relevanz haben soziale Kämpfe in anderen Ländern, transnationale Vernetzungen und Migration?"

Magisterarbeit im Fachbereich Politik- und Sozialwissenschaften der FU Berlin. Mai 2003, May 2003

(Research Committee 47, Session 7 on Alterglobalism and social movements. Part 1) ... 1. Introd... more (Research Committee 47, Session 7 on Alterglobalism and social movements. Part 1) ... 1. Introduction: Deliberative Democracy and the Global Justice Movement ............................ 3 ... 2. Mapping the field: Communicative Spaces within Global Justice Movements..................... 5

Paper presented at the workshop on "The Structure and Structuring of Work within and across Organizations", 2013

Large parts of coordination and strategizing in social movements takes place in meetings. Despite... more Large parts of coordination and strategizing in social movements takes place in meetings. Despite the ubiquity of meetings and assemblies, they have received little attention in social theory. Scholars tend to be more interested in what happens in meetings (decision-making, deliberation, identity construction etc) and less in the social form of the meeting itself. As a result, meeting talk is either viewed as mere reflection of larger societal or organizational structures and inequalities or as a "blank slate" or "free space" where participants can engage in non-coercive discourse and resist dominant structures. Both views fail to understand the inherent logic of meetings themselves.

The aim of this paper is to explore this logic of meetings as a social form in its own right. Based on ethnographic material from numerous social movement meetings, it suggests that every meeting comes with six elementary structural constraints (or forces): time, place, cognitive frames of reference, status hierarchies, the needs of face, and sequentiality. These forces, however, do not simply determine the meeting talk but they can be handled in culturally contingent ways. The paper describes a variety of meeting cultures and how they regulate the meeting talk in different ways.

This paper starts from two basic observations. (1) Despite repeated lament about the lack of know... more This paper starts from two basic observations. (1) Despite repeated lament about the lack of knowledge about internal decision-making processes in social movements, these are still today black-box processes. (2) Despite the fact that any ethnographic field work in social movement activities involves attending numerous meetings, meetings rarely figure as a prominent category in studies of social movements.
The paper argues that both phenomena are due to a lack of an unambiguous conceptual framework that is capable of grasping the peculiarities of internal social movement structures, and the sets out to provide such a framework in two steps. First, it introduces the concept of meeting arena, as the structure-side of meetings and specifies mesomobilization arenas as the place where movement level coordination takes place. These meeting arenas thus constitute an important infrastructure in mobilizing processes. Second, the paper explores how meeting arenas are a source of order in social movements and finds that their structure is threefold: meetings are consciously organized, institutionalized over time, and interconnected through personal contacts. Meeting arenas hence combine and intertwine elements of organization, institutions, and networks, forming a social movement infrastructure that cannot be adequately understood in terms of either one of these forms of order alone.

On the one side, Schwartzman (1986) deplored that meetings are “a neglected social form in organi... more On the one side, Schwartzman (1986) deplored that meetings are “a neglected social form in organizational studies”, a situation which has hardly changed in the last decades. On the other, social movement researchers found that “[c]ontemporary movements resemble an amorphous nebula of indistinct shape” (Melucci 1996: 114) and complained about “insufficient information on internal processes” because decisionmaking in social movements is typically “treated as ‘black box’ processes within SMOs [social movement organizations]” (Minkoff and McCarthy 2005: 289, 304).

In my paper, I argue that meetings, especially inter-organizational meetings, are the place to look in order to understand internal social movement processes. While it is commonly accepted that social movements are not organizations but networks of groups, organizations, and individuals, it is also clear that social movements are nevertheless organized, or rather: engaged in organizing processes. If organizations provide the structural context for organizational processes, I contend that meetings provide the structural context for organizing and mobilizing processes in social movements. In other words, meetings constitute a core infrastructure for these processes. Yet, the importance of meetings is not reflected in the literature on social movements or on organizations.

This paper makes a first step towards a better understanding of the internal infrastructure of social movements by presenting a typology of meeting arenas which helps to map this communicative infrastructure. Based on several years of participant observation in various organizing processes of the global justice movements at the local (Berlin), national (Germany), and transnational (Europe) level, the paper describes some core characteristics of social movement meetings and explores what actually happens inside them, focusing on the culturally defined role of the facilitator and how the practices of consensus decision-making is also culturally contingent.

Processes of decision-making within social movement assemblies have rarely been studied systemati... more Processes of decision-making within social movement assemblies have rarely been studied systematically even though such assemblies are considered the central decision-making bodies within these movements. In these arenas discursive decision-making plays a vital role: Due to the absence of (formal) institutions as a locus of decision-making power, various actors will try to influence public discourse if they want to influence collective decisions. Influencing which procedures are considered democratic and which are not is thus an essential part of the decision-making process. Especially in heterogeneous movement assemblies where different cultures of decision-making collide, conflicts about how to take decisions democratically are likely to emerge. This paper analyzes major and minor decision-making processes within the European Preparatory Assemblies for the European Social Forum 2006 drawing on data collected mainly through semistandardized form of participant observation (but also semi-structured interviews and short questionnaires filled in by the participants). Particular attention is paid not only to the discussions themselves but also to the norms of democracy by which they are apparently guided. As an analytical framework, three functions of a decision-making arena are distinguished: the input into the arena (involvement and participation), the throughput (styles of discourse and individual behaviour) and the output (modes and types of decision). Analyzing the practices of discourse regarding each these three aspects the paper identifies relevant mechanisms of control (or influence) and discusses them with regard to how they are used by different actors trying to gain control over the decision-making process.

Presentation at the European Preparatory Assembly in Stockholm

This report presents some preliminary findings about the decision-making procedures at the Europe... more This report presents some preliminary findings about the decision-making procedures at the European Preparatory Assemblies (EPAs). It does not provide a comprehensive view of all for EPAs let alone a history of the ESF process. It is however based on intensive participant observation and note taking in all EPAs since September 2005 as well as interviews
with EPA-participants from various backgrounds. While a full evaluation of all this material will be part of my PhD-thesis, I am presenting some first findings in order to discuss them with activists involved in the ESF process.

Kunsido is an independent online community of meeting enthusiasts: facilitators, meeting designer... more Kunsido is an independent online community of meeting enthusiasts: facilitators, meeting designers, event planners, workshop organizers, team leaders, and anybody else concerned with meetings. Meeting enthusiasts don’t necessarily love all meetings (who does?) but they care about them, perhaps a bit more than many others. While others complain about bad meetings, meeting enthusiasts are looking for ways to improve them. They do research, they share experiences, they try to understand, they discuss, and they experiment with innovative ways of organizing meetings. This site aims to facilitate such activities and foster a global community about meetings.

The aim of this 2-day international symposium scheduled for 23-24 May 2017 is to assess the state... more The aim of this 2-day international symposium scheduled for 23-24 May 2017 is to assess the state of the emergent research field of meeting science (or meeting research) as evidenced by recent edited volumes and special issues (Allen et al. 2015; de l’Estoile 2015; Brown, Reed & Yarrow [forthcoming]; Clarke, Wodak & Kwon [forthcoming]; Sandler & Thedvall [forthcoming]) and to foster interdisciplinary dialogue through a multidisciplinary network of scholars with a shared interest in face-to-face meetings.

It is the first attempt ever to bring together meeting researchers from all social sciences to create synergies and cross-fertilization between meetings related research that has so far taken place in relative isolation from each other in social anthropology, organizational communication, sociology, workplace studies, sociolinguistics, political science, psychology, management, and even applied IT (Group Support Systems).

Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen

"There is a tension in social movement studies between seeing organization(s) as a mere means for... more "There is a tension in social movement studies between seeing organization(s) as a mere means for achieving a goal (social change) and seeing certain forms of organization and organizational culture as a goal in itself. This tension among scholars reflects a tension among activists regarding their strategy for making the world a better place for all. While some aim to organize the masses in order to force power holders to yield (some of) their power to them, others engage in prefigurative politics and cultural resistance, aiming to change the very way we organize.
In this joint session, we want to explore this tension as it plays itself out both in social movement activism and in academic debates. We are particularly interested in how processes of globalization affect these dynamics; after all, the Weberian/Leninist model of bureaucratic organization that many activists want to change or abandon is a Western invention provoking Western countermodels. What happens where the dominant model is a different one? Or where alternative forms have failed? What happens when prefigurative activists aiming to create horizontal forms of organization among equals are faced with vast global inequalities? What do the organizers of the masses do when they find that their opponents have adopted organizational forms that diffuse power, making it difficult to identify the power holder that needs to be replaced? What is the role of indigenous movements in the innovation of organizational forms? Does the multiplication of organizational cultures and languages facilitate or hamper change in established ways of organizing? How do the global communication infrastructures affect organizing? We welcome papers that address these questions as well as any other papers that speak to the overall topic of the session.
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Research Stream Coordinators: Christoph Haug, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Neil Fligstein, ... more Research Stream Coordinators:
Christoph Haug, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Neil Fligstein, University of California at Berkeley, USA

The theme of the 11th ESA conference – Crisis, Critique and Change – reminds us that the problem of stability and continuity is not only a pressing practical challenge in times like these, but also a theoretical one.

The problem of mesolevel social order is the central problem of a social science interested in how people engage in collective action, how they construct the opportunity to do so, the skills they bring to the enterprise, how they sometimes succeed, and if they do succeed how they seek to stabilize and maintain the resulting order.

While Fligstein and McAdam’s “A Theory of Fields” (OUP 2012) claim to successfully combine the strengths of a number of existing theoretical traditions and to overcome at least some of their weaknesses, other field theorists might disagree and insist on the superiority of other approaches to the problem of mesolevel social order. In particular, it remains subject to debate, whether the dynamics of strategic action fields can be reduced to the essence of “who gets what” and hence winners and losers, as Fligstein and McAdam maintain, or whether interpersonal ties that bind the actors in a field together (can) take precedence over the competition for whatever is at stake in the field. Others may question whether the theory is actually successful in injecting a greater sense of agency into other versions of field theory and (new) institutionalism. Again others may wonder why language and communication, which the authors grant a key role in human evolution, is otherwise so strikingly absent from the theory.

The theory of strategic action fields obviously raises many more questions, including the one that any new theory will be confronted with: what (new) answers does it actually give and to what kind of knowledge does it contribute. Fligstein and McAdam’s theory, as such remains a skeleton, which may be seen both as a strength and a weakness, and it is the aim of this research stream to provide a forum for debate and exchange around these questions and to assess how the theory relates to various fields of ongoing research.

We invite
• Empirical applications and tests of field theory or specific parts of it
• Theory comparisons, especially with:
o institutional theory
o structuration theory
o the work of Pierre Bourdieu and related theories
o network theory
o social movement theory
• Methodological papers (e.g. correspondence theory, network theory)
• Conceptual discussions (introduction, refinement and critique of field related concepts)
• Meta-theoretical reflections on how “A Theory of Fields” may reconfigure existing research fields and relations between them.

In order to facilitate the discussion across papers, we would like to ask authors to relate to the following concepts wherever possible (if only to dismiss them):

• Strategic action fields
• Incumbents / challengers, and internal governance units
• Social skill
• field environment (esp. the state)
• exogenous shocks, mobilization, and the onset of contention
• episodes of contention
• settlement

These are defined in the first chapter of “A Theory of Fields” as well as, more briefly, in Fligstein & McAdam (in Sociological Theory 29(1), 2011), but in the context of this research stream, they are not meant to prescribe a particular theoretical angle, rather a common point of reference.

Please note that abstracts must be submitted through the conference website at http://www.esa11thconference.eu/call-for-papers/submission/01RS07/
Abstracts received by email cannot be accepted.

Deadline for abstract submission: 1 February 2013

Call for Papers for a session at the 5th ECAS conference on "African dynamics in a multipolar world", 27-29 June 2013, Lisbon

In the last decade there has been a huge influx of resources to manage the HIV/AIDS epidemic worl... more In the last decade there has been a huge influx of resources to manage the HIV/AIDS epidemic worldwide. Although there are indications that this trend is soon to be reversed due to the global economic downturn the increased availability of funds have so far had profound impact on the landscape of HIV/AIDS work in Africa. One effect has been that substantial amounts of aid money are now being channelled to and through local civil society organisations. Hence, civil society now appears to be recognized by both international donors and African governments as important partners in the HIV/AIDS response, including prevention, impact mitigation and treatment. The aim of this panel is to analyse and critically discuss how local civil society is influenced by the enormous inflow of foreign aid and by the various modes of governance that comes with the new funding schemes. How do these modalities of government affect the rationalities and everyday practices of civil society organizations and to what extent is it possible for the organizations to negotiate or resist them? We are particularly interested in critical papers that discuss how power is articulated, reproduced, resisted and/or transcended in the relationships between international donors and local civil society actors involved in HIV/AIDS work on the African continent.