Schedule

Democracy in Crisis … Democracy in Peril?

19th Annual Conference of the International Social Theory Consortium
June 17-19, 2021

Note: All Times are Eastern Daylight Time

17-Jun

17-Jun 9:00-9:30 Welcome

Stephen Turner and Harry F. Dahms

17-Jun 9:30-11:15 Session One
Illiberalism

Rafał Wierzchosławski Nomads, sovereigntists and the post-truth condition: Why liberal democracy suffers in Central Europe
Brian Singer Trumpism and the Defense of Individual Liberties: Considerations on Marcel Gauchet's Discussion of Individual Liberties
Jerome Braun The Legitimation of Government, with Ramifications for Democracy
Minoo Mirshahvalad Crisis of Modern Reason in Italy and the New Path of the Italian Traditionalism

17-Jun 9:30-11:15 Session Two
Big Picture Classical issues

Christopher Schlembach Reconsidering Anti-Modernity. The Theories of Schütz, Voegelin and Parsons
Charles Turner Keeping it in the family, or why you should read Emmanuel Todd
Anthony L. Haynor Social Theory, Moral Vision, and the Liberal Social Order
Robert Jackson ‘Disfigurations’ of Democracy? Pareto, Mosca and the Challenge of Elite Theory

11:15-11:30 Coffee Break

17-Jun 11:30-1:15 Session Three
Trump and Jan. 6

Krzysztof Lepcyzynski The Promise of the Middle Class as Part of Neoliberal Ideology
Oliver Simpson January 6th, insurgency or riot? Populism Democracy and The Exception
Daniel Krier Totalitarianism and the Critique of Ideology after 2020
Douglas Kellner Donald Trump, the Media, and the Crisis of Democracy

17-Jun 11:30-1:15 Session Four
Technology

Daphne Esquivel-Sada When democracy and (bio)innovation interlace: on nuts and bolts of the neoliberal model of DIYbio democracy
Eugene Halton The Other Others: Tracking, Writing, Clocking and the Contraction of Mind
Roslyn Fuller Structure, not Control: Capturing the Democratic Potential of Populist Movements
Kresimir Žažar Advanced Technology and Democracy – What Artificial Intelligence Has to Do with It?

1:15-1:30 Coffee Break

17-Jun 1:30-2:30 Keynote

Elizabeth Goodstein Returning to Simmel on the Future of the Public Sphere

2:45-3:00 Coffee Break

17-Jun 3:00-4:30 Session Five
Digital and Mass comm

Charles Gattone Challenges to Democracy in the Age of Electronic Communication
Stelios Panageotou Democracy Without Humans: Democracy With Corporations and Cyborgs
Joel Crombez Perils of Sociological Irrelevance in Times of Crisis: Toward a Theory and Practice of Critical Socioanalysis
Thomas Bechtold The persistence of democracy: how a demos insists

17-Jun 3:00-4:30 Session Six
Critical Social Ontology and the Prospects of Critical Reason

Michael Thompson Immanent Critique and Critical Social Ontology
Reha Kadakal Recovering Durkheim's Ontology
Marcucci The Mind within Society: Durkheim’s Sociological Critique of Enlightenment’s Rationalist Ontologies

18-Jun

18-Jun 9:00-10:45 Session Seven
Indian Society

Vivek Khanna and Prabhjot Dutta Khanna Democracy and the Post-Truth World
Priyanka Devi Kshetrimayum Political instability in the largest democracy: Relation among State, Civil Society and Non-state militant groups in Manipur, India.
Raja Swamy Neoliberal Hindutva - democracy and resistance in contemporary India
T. Jeyaraj, A Ghosh, M. Rayen and U. Faruk Is the Indian (University) Campus Democratic ?

18-Jun 9:00-10:45 Session Eight
Global

William Outhwaite Democracy, national and transnational
Yufan Sun Towards A Sociological Theory of Historical Actors and Agencies
Kosuke Sakai The Evolutionary Theory of Niklas Luhmann and Its Meaning for Historical Sociology
Anthony J. Knowles Sociology as Social System: Luhmann, Enlightenment, and the Gap between “Facts” and “Norms”

18-Jun 9:00-10:45 Session Nine
Michael Brown's The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Humanities and the Social Sciences

Jeffrey Halley, organizer and moderator
Allen Dunn The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Humanities and the Social Sciences, by M. Brown
Ilaria Riccioni The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Humanities and the Social Sciences, by M. Brown
Daglind Sonolet The Concept of Sociality in the Literary Criticism of Georg Lukács, Lucien Goldmann and Theodor W. Adorno
Harry F. Dahms Divergent Forms of Sociality under Conditions of Neoliberalism
Michael Brown Reply to Critics

10:45-11:00 Coffee Break

18-Jun 11:00-12:45 Session Ten
Emotions

Bryce Anderson Pitilessly Blocked Futures and Violently Choked Passions: A Case for Fatalistic Suicide in Understanding Student Suicide in South Korea
Philip Walsh Theorizing Emotions in Liberal and Illiberal Societies
Amanda Rebman Legalizing Prostitution
Verena Knerich Lessons from Early Feminist Advocators for Social Change: Contrasting Harriet Martineau and Jane Addams

18-Jun 11:00-12:45 Session Eleven
Critical Theory and film

Jeremiah Morelock Siegfried Kracauer and the Interpretation of Films
Daniel Sullivan Awaking from the Film-as-Dream: Kracauer and Tarkovsky
Stefanie Baumann How to Mediate Reality: Thinking Documentary Film with Adorno and Horkheimer
Harry F. Dahms Critical Theory and Science-Fiction Film: Darko Suvin in Perspective

18-Jun 11:00-12:45 Session Twelve
Individualism/Socialism

Bettina Mahlert Norms, interests and desirable futures: A Parsonian view on democracy in the 21th century
Daniel Fanta Micro, Macro and Meso in the Individualism-Holism Dispute. A analysis in Logical Quantification
Kerry Hunter Democratic Socialism in the U.S.: Arrested Development or Entirely Different Course?
Niamh Mulcahy The enclosure of social housing: Britain’s path to “property-owning democracy”

12:45-1:00 Coffee Break

18-Jun 1:00-2:00 Keynote

Craig Calhoun Degenerations of Democracy

2:00-2:15 Coffee Break

18-Jun 2:15-4:00 Session Fourteen
Populism

Sarah MacMillen American Democracy aboard the Pequod: Insights from Melville for 2021
Kire Sharamanov The reasons for the growth of populism and the establishment of illiberal democracy
Christian Schlaerth Democratic Socialism in the U.S.: Arrested Development or Entirely Different Course?
Robert Garot The Viability of Democracy in Light of the Current Global Ecological Crisis

19-Jun

19-Jun 9:00-10:45 Session Fifteen

Adorno
Alexander Stoner Negative dialectics, Sociobiophysical Disintegration, and the Future
Zeinab Nobowati Critical Theory and the (Im)Moral Psychology of Racism
Kevin Amidon On the Micro-Dialectics of Democracy: Adorno, Right Radicalism, and the Fate of the Subject

19-Jun 9:00-10:45 Session Sixteen
Authoritarianism

Claude Barbre When Trauma is Us: Christofascism and Religious Authoritarianism as Collective Enreiss in the United States
Jonah Benjamini The King's Revolution: A Prolegomenon on De-Democratization at the Dawn of the 21st Century
Aydin Atilgan The anatomy of the dual states: The pathological formation of liberal democracies
Richard Coughlin Conquest of the state by the nation or the crisis of American democracy

19-Jun 9:00-10:45 Session Seventeen
Marx, Simmel, and Saint-Simon

Naoki Iso A Simmelian Theory of Differentiation and Integration
Roderick Condon Capitalism, Democracy, and Social Evolution: Neoliberalism as Inverted Development
Harrison Patten Henri Saint-Simon’s Unrealized Avant-Garde and Its Potentialities
Paul Zarembka Engels’ Deficiencies in Editing Marx’s "Capital"

10:45-11:00 Coffee Break

19-Jun 11:00-12:45 Session Eighteen
Weber

Hans-Peter Müller "Race" and Racism. Max Weber as a Political Thinker
Paul Joosse The Less Agreeable Side of Charisma: Incredulous Onlooking and Anti-structural Power
Frank Welz Two Versions of Legitimation: Democracy (in Crisis) and its Delegitimizing Critique
Elyesa Koytak Impossible Vocation? Rethinking Weberian Scientific Ethics in the Context of Marketization

12:30-12:45 Lunch Break

19-Jun 12:45-1:45 Keynote

John Levi Martin Critical Theory, The Imagination, and the Critique of Judgment

1:45-2:00 Coffee Break

19-Jun 2:00-4:00 Session Twenty
After Democracy

Stephen Turner, chair
Robert Antonio The “Big Lie” and Failed Coup: Trumpism in the Interregnum
David Smith Anti-Democratic Culture and the Usurpation Complex
Lauren Langman The Dialectic of Movements: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

19-Jun 2:00-4:00 Session Twenty-One
Beyond the Liberal Self: Explorations in Transformation
Michael Thompson
Michael Miller
James Block