ABOUT THE CONFERENCE:

MOSEC 2023 or Modernization by the State and its Ecological Consequences Conference 2023 is an interdisciplinary online conference for the environmentally focused humanities and social sciences, organized by the Center for Economic and Social History, University of Ostrava, Czechia. MOSEC 2023 aims to explore, discuss and disseminate new cross-disciplinary scientific knowledge about the global environmental crisis with a particular focus on the role of the state and state institutions.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

BART ELMORE, Associate professor of Environmental History at the Ohio State University. Author of the praised Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism and Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future. Recipient of the Dan David Prize in 2022. 

ZSUZSA GILLE, Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prize winning author of the highly influential From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History most recently co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies.

ANNUAL CONFERENCE THEME: “THE STATE AND PLANETARY BOUNDARIES”

Anthropogenic forces have reduced ecosystem resilience by decreasing biodiversity, altering the physico-chemical environment via climate change, pollution, and land clearance. Today, the global environmental crisis is the single most important challenge humanity faces. Regarding sustainable development, the sovereign nation-state has been the most important actor and stakeholder. Essential part of state sovereignty is the ownership of resources, which often have been sources of conflict and violence, as well as ecological degradation.

Critics of the modern state pointed out that the ecological impact of bureaucratic regimes has been substantially contributing to the worsening of the global environmental crisis. Modern states organized their societies according to the technocratic principles of “high modernism” and have failed to take local knowledge into account thus amplifying the forces of ecological homogenization and uniformity.

In 2023, the Center for Economic and Social History at the University of Ostrava cordially invites contributions from all social sciences and humanities disciplines as well as adjacent scientific fields to explore, discuss and disseminate new cross-disciplinary scientific knowledge about the global environmental crisis with a particular focus on the role of the state and state institutions.

MOSEC 2023 welcomes papers with all geographical-, and thematic focuses.

Recommended themes, however include to explore and reflect on the role of the state with regard to climate change, biodiversity loss, resource-, and energy scarcity, toxic emissions, environmental diseases, marine pollution, urban congestion, and sustainability from the perspective of human values, stories, qualitative reasoning, case studies, and traditional-, and sensory knowledge.

Individual paper proposals should consist of 300-word abstracts accompanied with brief, approximately 50-word long bios of the contributor.  

Complete panel proposals consisting of three to four papers should consist of a 500-word panel-abstracts which include the overall themes of the panel and papers presented as well as brief, approximately 50-word long bios of all contributors.

Roundtables, posters and unconventional formats are also welcome. For details please contact organizers.

All proposals should be sent by 31 March 2023 to organizers at cesh@osu.cz

REGISTRATION INFORMATION FOR ACCEPTED PRESENTATIONS:

50 EUR/ 1250 CZK (regular registration fee*)

40 EUR/ 1000 CZK (discounted registration fee**)

90 EUR/ 2250 CZK (solidarity registration fee***)

Free participation (limited availability****)

*Full registration fee: participants with income above 1,000 euros a month

**Discounted registration fee: available for participants with income below 1,000 euros a month

*** Solidarity registration fee: participants with income above 3,000 euros a month. Paying a solidarity fee enables the participation of another scholar from the Global South and Ukraine (recommended to scholars based in United States, Canada, UK, Norway, Iceland, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as selected EU countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden.)

****Free participation: University of Ostrava employees and students, limited number of selected participants from war zones and the Global South.