Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)
Montréal, Quebec
Le Centre de recherche sur les innovations sociales (CRISES) invites you to its conference :
Social Transformation through Social Innovation
The 4th CRISES International Conference "Social Transformation through Social Innovation" invites you, along with more than 80 national and international speakers, to a reflection on the rapid and unprecedented changes that affect both our relationship to time, space and the community. Economic, social and institutional crises, along with political disinterest, growing inequalities and loss of meaning are combining to create a toxic climate marked by a loss of reference points and overall disenchantment. However, many people see in this a period of transition and an opportunity for renewal. For them, the crises give rise to a second modernity and a dynamic of innovation and transformation. From that perspective, the current disruptions, far from pushing civil society toward apathy, are taken as an opportunity to introduce social transformations that aim to redefine society on more solidarity-based, equitable, ethical, ecological and civic-minded terms.
Download the preliminary programme (in French and English)
Register now (deadline March 23rd)
Opening speech:
Enzo Mingione,Université de Milan-Bicocca
Conference speakers:
Gar Alperovitz, Université du Maryland
Luiz Inácio Gaiger, UNISINOS
Florence Jany-Catrice, Université de Lille 1
Jean-Louis Laville, CNAM
Benoît Lévesque, UQAM
Frank Moulaert, Université de Leuven
Marthe Nyssens, Université catholique de Louvain
Bernard Pecqueur, Université Joseph Fourier
More than 80 presenters specialists, students and practitioners of social innovation from Quebec, Canada, United States, Europe, Africa and Latin America will take the floor at the event.
Conference speakers will investigate the diverse aspects discussed above. In particular, they will address the following questions:
- In the current stage of capitalism, how are the new aspirations and collective imaginaries prefiguring new social relations?
- What are the theoretical and epistemological foundations of social innovations that have been created to respond to the different crises evoked (socio-ecological, political, economic)?
- What are the conditions allowing social innovation to contribute to social transformation processes that seek to redefine society on more solidarity-based, equitable, ethical, ecological and civic-minded terms?
- How do social innovations integrate into systems of innovations?
- How can we move from a dynamic of path dependency to one of path building?
- What role can the co-construction of knowledge (in academia and practice) play in getting social innovation processes underway?
- How might we grasp the political stakes and processes that accompany the trajectory (emergence, experimentation, appropriation, spread) of social innovations? Who are its actors and coalitions of actors? What political projects do they promote? Do these projects lead to a rupture with the prevailing order or to an adaptation of its components?
Looking forward to meeting you at this event!
