The XI International Conference of COES, to be held on November 7 and 8, 2024, invites the submission of academic and professional works that address the growing uncertainty and its impacts on social cohesion and conflict. Admissible topics include population aging, birth rate crisis, migration, climate change, social inequalities, and more. Submissions will be open until August 20, 2024. For inquiries, please contact coordinacion@coes.cl.
Uncertainty is an inescapable characteristic of life and reality that describes a state at the limits of knowledge; it allows us to analyze beliefs that lack certainty, as well as what is unknown. Uncertainty can be analyzed from a subjective perspective, in which an individual may experience uncertainty about their knowledge or the consequences of a decision, impacting their behavior, which is in turn affected by the social context. Objective uncertainty suggests that certainty about all phenomena in the world is unattainable; that is, it is neither a perception nor an emotion, but a characteristic of the complex world we live in (Wakeham 2015).
Crises and shifts in social paradigms challenge the boundaries of the known world, thereby increasing the uncertainty in which we live. Today, there is a perception that the limits with which society faces uncertainty have been surpassed, as we live in times of multiple profound changes and crises that call into question the premises upon which contemporary societies have been built: technological changes, climate change, and geopolitical changes, among others. All this occurs in a context of global economic slowdown: international reports from the IMF and the World Economic Forum suggest that uncertainty has been a key factor in the poor recent economic performance in many economies.
Different social sciences propose that the experience of ambiguity and uncertainty is perceived negatively by individuals, both cognitively and emotionally, and that humans seek certainties. Moreover, uncertainty in the globalized world we live in is unevenly distributed: while countries (or individuals) with greater power and wealth manage to minimize the uncertainty in which they live, those with lower levels of wealth are exposed to higher levels of uncertainty (Beck 2009). The negative individual perception of uncertainty, along with its unequal distribution between groups with lesser and greater power and/or wealth, can threaten social cohesion.
To understand and address the challenge of growing uncertainty in the context of multiple crises, diverse perspectives on the causes and effects of this phenomenon are required, as well as individual and collective ways to confront them. The COES conference, with its multidisciplinary character, can contribute to a different and innovative way of analyzing the relationship between uncertainty, conflict, and social cohesion.
To broaden and enrich the discussion, academic papers from various perspectives of the social sciences, as well as evidence from professional practices and experiences, are invited to analyze the underlying processes of growing uncertainty in our region, or the impacts of uncertainty on various dimensions of social cohesion and conflict. Some of these dimensions, for example, are:
- Population aging
- Birth rate decline
- Migration and its borders
- Challenges to our common life
- Climate change and socio-environmental disasters
- Adaptations in quality of life
- Employment insecurity
- Social inequalities and economic gaps
- Polarization and weakening of democracy
- Crises, uncertainty, and economic transitions
These topics and dimensions are just some of the issues that societies face in contexts of greater uncertainty. Research on other social processes that contribute to deepening and enriching the debate on conflict and social cohesion in light of greater uncertainty is also welcome.
Submissions
To submit a paper to the XI COES International Conference, either in the format of a presentation or an academic poster, you must access the following form.
- Complete all fields in the form, including your personal information (name, email, occupation, and institutional affiliation), along with the option to submit a presentation or an academic poster.
- Attach an extended abstract of the paper, with a maximum length of 1,000 words (excluding bibliography), in PDF format.
III. Indicate the preferred topic(s) to which the paper is being submitted (as indicated in the call).
Submissions through the form will be open until Tuesday, August 20 at 11:59 PM Chile time.
Contact
For inquiries and comments about the submission process, please contact the email address coordinacion@coes.cl.