Category Archives: Media

CONFERENCE & CALL FOR PAPERS

CALL FOR PAPERS

Care and housing are foundational for human well-being. Both deal with organising and
sustaining livelihoods: while care as a human activity reacts to the ever-given contingency
of life, housing arranges a place for undertaking everyday need-satisfying activities. In both
fields, crises have exacerbated over the last decades, manifesting in care gaps, labour
and care migration, and precarious working conditions of care workers, respectively in
overburdening costs due to the transformation of homes into assets, leading to
gentrification and segregation. Despite being seldomly investigated together, care and
housing as well as their related crises are co-constitutive.
From the 1990s onwards, two simultaneous tendencies can be observed in European care
regimes and housing systems. On the one hand, neoliberal reforms have aimed at
privatisation, commodification, marketisation, and financialisaton. This has rearranged
welfare states, promoting variegated forms of capitalism. Allegedly singular events like the
global financial crisis, subsequent austerity measures, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the
current cost of living crisis have furthermore deepened structural problems of access and
affordability. This has led to increasing socioeconomic and spatial polarisations as well as
social inequalities in the relations of gender, race, and class. On the other hand, these
developments have transformed the provision of care and housing into a contested terrain
leading to labour disputes and struggles, such as care protests, or initiatives for
expropriating institutional investors. The wide range of community-based or infrastructural
projects has to be seen against the backdrop of the increasing search for alternative care
and housing provision. On top of that, rapid technological developments and climate
change further accelerate the reorganisation of care and housing arrangements and
practices built up by all parties involved in both contested fields.

Given these multiple transformations, the conference “Transformative Change in the Contested Fields of Care and Housing in Europe” seeks to analyse the contemporary developments in care regimes and housing systems and respective configurations of care
and housing. 

Of particular interest is research which reflects on the connections of the two
fields. We aim at a broad interdisciplinary dialogue of social sciences to grasp different
perspectives of these multidimensional changes. Thus, we welcome scholars from
disciplines like sociology, socioeconomics, political economy, political science, geography,
philosophy, history, and interdisciplinary strands like gender and intersectionality studies
to contribute to the common investigation and discussion of the contested and entangled
fields of care and housing in Europe. We welcome both, theoretical approaches, and
empirical research, to analyse and reflect on the contemporary transformations, its causes,
and effects as well as commonalities and differences between fields and countries,
between city and countryside.

The conference aims at addressing the following questions with the explicit intention of
using multiple theoretical perspectives and to grasp the broad diversity of European
countries, regions, and cities:

• What are the driving forces of transformative change in the fields of care and housing?
Which social, economic, political, cultural, and technological dynamics and which
norms and values, demands and claims shape modes of care and housing provision?
• How do markets, the state, the family and the community reorganise care and
housing? What are other key actors in different institutional contexts at multiple levels
(from local to global)?
• Which disputes take place in “doing care” and “doing housing”? How do these relate
to multi-scalar struggles over working conditions, wages, and affordability as well as
the design of liveable neighbourhoods?
• What are relevant economic and political orders, welfare regimes, and social policies
and how do they structure different forms of care and housing provision?
• How do new modes, forms, and arrangements of care and housing provision promote
a different understanding of life and work? How are they interrelated with the
reorganisation of paid, unpaid and volunteer, professional and lay work and new forms
of work organisation?
• How are modes of care and housing provision and the transformative change in the
configuration of care and housing affected by the development and implementation of
digital technologies? How does technological change influence the meaning and
organisation of care and housing?
• How are modes of care and housing provision and the transformative change in the
configuration of care and housing affected by the climate crisis? How does it contribute
to changes in the governance of communities, neighbourhoods, and the living
environment to reconfigure care and housing provision?
• How do social, economic, gendered, and ethnic inequalities and socio-spatial
polarisations shape the organisation of care and housing? How do they affect
transformative change, social and ecological demands, and digitalisation of care and
housing arrangements?
• What are the commonalities and differences in the provision of care and housing?
How can theoretical and methodological approaches contribute to a better
understanding of care and housing in Europe? What are the potentials and limitations
of approaches that integrate both fields?

Abstract submission:

We invite researchers to submit an abstract (250-300 words and full affiliation of the
author/s) by 31st July 2023 and will inform you about the acceptance of your paper by 31st
August 2023. Please send your submissions to contestedcareandhousing@jku.at. The
conference language is English. Travel and accommodation costs will not be covered by
the organisers; there are no conference fees.

“Transformative Change in the Contested Fields of Care and Housing in Europe “

We invite you to participate in the conference, which aims at addressing diverse questions with the explicit intention of using multiple theoretical perspectives and to grasp the broad diversity of European
countries, regions, and cities.

31st July, 2023

Submission Deadline

We invite researchers to submit an abstract (250-300 words and full affiliation of the
author/s) by 31st July 2023 and will inform you about the acceptance of your paper by 31st
August 2023. Please send your submissions to contestedcareandhousing@jku.at. The
conference language is English. 

Organised by:

Johannes Kepler University Linz, 
WU Vienna,
Austrian Academy of Sciences – ÖAW,
University of Graz,
Competence Centre for Infrastructure Economics, Public Servies and Social Provisioning,
Sorgenetz

Organizers and chairs:
Brigitte Aulenbacher
Andreas Novy
Valentin Fröhlich
Benjamin Baumgartner
Florian Pimminger
Hans Volmary
Administration:
Tobias Eder

 

Program & Streaming Link for Public Lecture by 5th visiting professor Julia Steinberger

PUBLIC LECTURE BY julia steinberger

Find our Program and the Streaming Link for the event here:

More Information

“Living Well Within Limits”

For our international community, we provide a streaming of the event.

LINKS

Living Well Within Limits

Visiting Professorship - Julia Steinberger

Living well within limits
public lecture

May 30th, 2023 

Speakers:
Julia Steinberger, professor of Ecological Economics at University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Andreas Novy, WU Vienna, IKPS
Jürgen Essletzbichler, Head of the Department for Socioeconomics, WU Vienna
Ulrich Brand, ÖFSE
Marina Fischer-Kowalski, University of Natural Resources & Life Sciences
Daniel Huppmann, IIASA

On May 30th, 2023 the Viennese Karl Polanyi Visiting Professorship will be awarded for the fifth time. This semester’s Visiting Professor Julia Steinberger will hold her Public Lecture at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien). The event will also be streamed here.

Kenyote: Living Well Within Limits

This talk will report on the multiple research streams resulting from the Living Well Within Limits project. The Living Well Within Limits project investigates the energy requirements of well-being, from quantitative, participatory and provisioning systems perspectives. In this presentation, I will communicate individual and cross-cutting findings from the project, and their implications. In particular, I will share our most recent results on global energy footprint inequality, implications of redistribution, as well as modelling the minimum energy demand that would provide decent living standards for everyone on earth by 2050. I will show that achieving low-carbon well-being, both from the beneficiary (“consumer”) and supply-chain (“producer”) sides, involves strong distributional and political elements. Simply researching this area from a technical, social or economic lens is insufficient to draw out the reasons for poor outcomes and most promising avenues for positive change. I thus argue for the active involvement of the research community.

“Simply researching this area from a technical, social or economic lens is insufficient to draw out the reasons for poor outcomes and most promising avenues for positive change. I thus argue for the active involvement of the research community.”

We are looking forward to seeing many of you there! 

Permanent Call for IKPS Polanyi Papers

Permanent Call for Polanyi Papers

Polanyi Paper series​

March, 2023

The “Polanyi Papers” series of the IKPS plans to collect texts which deal with ongoing transformations and explore contemporary challenges inspired by Karl Polanyi or further the debates on Polanyi’s work and concepts.

The series is open for contributions by international scholars but also, students, doctoral students and/or Ph.D. holders who have written a paper on his work or on a topic on current issues which utilizes Polanyi’ work as a theoretical framework and starting point. The paper series aims to contribute to the international debates on the contemporary relevance of Karl Polanyi’s work. In particular for young researchers, it offers the opportunity to contribute to the international debate on Polanyi’s work and have their work discussed by international experts. Papers should not exceed 6000 words and will be reviewed by the IKPS team.

If you wish to submit a paper, please send it to Maria Markantonatou or Roland Atzmüller

Emails: markantonatou@gmail.com, roland.atzmueller@jku.at

Author’s Guide​
All submissions should be prepared in accordance with this guideline and submitted to the series editors by email
• as a WORD document (set in Calibri)
containing,
• Full title (& subtitle)
• all authors’ full names
• short author CV – 150 words max. each
• abstract – 200-300 words
• main text file – under 6000 words subdivided into at least 3 sub-sections including titles
• references in APA 7th style

The IKPS will use an uniform cover page, Impressum and format the paper text, images and graphs according to the series’ formatting style.

Public Lecture by 4th visiting professor Bernhard Ebbinghaus

We cordially invite you to our next Public Lecture!

Public lecture by 4th visiting professor bernhard ebbinghaus

Welfare state resilience as a countermovement in economic crises?
Europe facing the Great Recession and the Pandemic

January 2023

The lecture will be held in German.

The lecture discusses the use of employment policy in the two major economic crises of the twentieth century. It explores the two crisis periods: the Great Recession following the global financial market crash of 2008 and the health challenge plus economic crisis during the Coronavirus pandemic since early 2020. These have been laboratories of ad hoc and lasting changes in welfare states. Comparing welfare states across Europe, the analysis will investigate the social and employment policies to increase the resilience of welfare states through enhancing the absorptive and adaptive capacity during a crisis. It also pays attention to the role of social partners in coping with the two crises. The empirical analysis focuses on the use of job retention and other policies to stabilize income and reduce unemployment during the crisis, using policy trackers and macro-indicators.

NEW DATE!!!
January 18th 2023, 7:00 pm (CET)
Urania, Dachsaal 
The lecture will be held in German


Organized by:

University of Vienna
Institute for Multilevel-Governance and Development (WU Vienna);
International Karl Polanyi Society

 

In cooperation with Stadt Wien

 

More ‘News’: 

In celebration of Kari Polanyi-Levitt’s 100th birthday on June 14, 2023 the International Karl Polanyi Society is releasing a podcast
Linz, 04th – 06th December 2023: Transformative Change in the Contested Fields of Care and Housing in Europe
You can now read the final Program & find the streaming link for the Public Lecture by Julia Steinberger here!
Visiting Professorship – Julia Steinberger Living well within limits public lecture May 30th, 2023  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlUnHgC4_UU Public Lecture SLIDES Public Lecture
Now Open! Permanent Call for contributions by international scholars but also, students, doctoral students and Ph.D. holders.
POSTPONED! Join us for the public lecture by our fourth Vienna Karl Polanyi Visiting Professor Bernhard Ebbinghaus on January 18th
We invite you to dive deeper with us into the topic of “provisioning” with the fields of care & housing
We are delighted to invite you to our New Webinar Series on “Shaping Provisioning Systems for Social-Ecological Transformation”
Einstieg in das Leben und Werk Karl Polanyi’s – die Vorträge als Videos

Read our new Debate on the Contested Provisioning of Care & Housing

New Debate!

the Contested Provisioning of Care & Housing

15th of September, 2022

Andreas Novy & Brigitte Aulenbacher

The Austrian Academy of Science has funded a three year research project coordinated by Johannes-Kepler University Linz and Vienna University of Economics and Business on “The Contested Provisioning of Care and Housing” (www.contestedcareandhousing.com). The project, which finances four PhD-students, investigates current transformations of care and housing provision by drawing on insights from Karl Polanyi. Care and housing are undergoing profound changes in contemporary market societies: on the one hand, we are witnessing a market shift towards enforced commodification of care and housing, on the other hand, there is a community shift potentially going along with their decommodification. Both, market- and community-based forms of care and housing provision are embedded in relations of dominance and inequality and are thus contested. In this context, the IKPS has organized a debate on the “Contested Provisioning of Care and Housing”. It invited contributions shedding light on the contestation of care and housing provision by drawing on Polanyi’s core concepts:

(1) his substantive understanding of the economy, defined broadly as the organization of livelihoods,
(2) his four economic principles of (market) exchange, reciprocity, redistribution and householding,
(3) his concept of fictitious commodities and the related research on the commodification of goods (like housing) and services (like care) which have not been produced for exchange on markets and
(4) his analysis of a double movement of marketization (movement) and social protection (countermovement) that characterizes market societies. The contributions to this debate ideally try to discuss some of the following questions:

  • What are commonalities and particularities of care and housing provision/regimes in different countries? How can Polanyian concepts enrich such (regime) analyses?
  • What are commonalities and particularities of double movements, of marketization and social protection in care and housing?
  • How does the sector-specific composition of the principles of economic behavior and dynamics of the double movement impact relations of dominance and inequality as well as their contestation in the field of care and housing?

The debate strived to bring together experts from both research areas, to exchange and advance perspectives on care and housing and, moreover, to discuss how Polanyi’s work can inspire the investigation of their contested societal provisioning.

Benjamin Baumgartner

Valentin Fröhlich

Florian Pimminger

Hans Volmary

Read the essays on the Contested Provisioning of Care and Housing here: 

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