The Concluding Conference of the German Research Foundation-funded research team “Landnahme, Acceleration, Activation. On the (De)-Stabilisation of Modern Growth Societies” and the Second Regional Conference of the German Sociological Association will be held in Jena from September 23 to September 27, 2019.

Even as the scars left by the economic crisis began to heal, societal division and polarization are rampant, and there is reason to believe that the “Great Transformation”, conceptualized by Karl Polanyi as “a period of profound change, most likely including the abandonment of dominant growth patterns, forms of production, and lifestyle that have been maintained over decades” is occurring.

The double conference in Jena wants to address where such “journey” will bring us and who should set its course.

Event Program:

23 September: opening evening with Branko Milanovic and others.

24 September: presentation and discussion of research findings from the Jena Centre of Advanced Studies, the general theme is “After Rapid Growth”, the main topic addressed are the “contours of future post growth societies”.

25 September: main topics of discussion will include global finan-cial markets, class and social structure, sustainability, gender relations, migration and flight, mobility, labour relations, and social movements.

26 September: individual examples of alternative development options.

27 September: the topic of digitisation, and thereby a key future project of neo-capitalist expansion will take centre stage.

“The conference seeks to provide a platform for ‘Experimental Utopistics’. The well-founded (case- based) debate around diagnoses of time and distinct future trajectories of society shall take place not exclusively among sociologists, but in an interdisciplinary forum and enriched by the expertise from social practice. In this sense, the formal-organisational frame of a double conference is part of the attempt to test possibilities and limitations of such sociological utopistics, to explore, as well as question, its usefulness.”

More information at:

University of Jena’s website (event)

Klaus Dörre, Hartmut Rosa, The board of the German Sociological Association; “The Great Transformation: On the Future of Modern Societies”, abstract