The International Social Ontology Society (ISOS), in collaboration with the Journal of Social Ontology, is thrilled to announce its biennial essay prize for junior scholars. This prestigious award includes an invitation to present as a keynote speaker at the ISOS Annual Social Ontology Conference in Dublin next year, along with a prize of €500.

Prize Details:

• Keynote Invitation: The winning essay will be presented as an invited keynote lecture at the next Social Ontology conference in Dublin in August 2025. Travel and accommodation will be covered.
• Publication: The winning essay will be published in the Journal of Social Ontology.
• Prize Money: The author(s) of the winning essay will receive a €500 award.

Submission Topics: 

Submissions may address any issue, problem, or debate within the field of social ontology. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Social facts
• Social action
• Group agency
• Collective intentional states
• Social kinds

Submissions may approach these topics from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including:

• Moral, social, and political philosophy
• Anthropology
• Cognitive science
• Economics
• History
• Law
• Political science
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Linguistics
• Social Theory

Formal Requirements:

• Eligibility: The competition is open to individuals who are either PhD candidates or have received their PhD no longer than five years prior to the competition's closing date.
• Submission Guidelines: Please ensure that your submission adheres to all of our submission requirements for articles, which you can find here: https://journalofsocialontology.org/index.php/jso/submission. For example, we expect all manuscripts to be fully anonymized, which includes the removal of identifying metadata (e.g., Microsoft account details). For instructions on how to do this, please see our guidelines. 
• Deadline: The closing date for submissions is December 31, 2024.
• Submission Method: Essays should be submitted via email to essayprize.isos.philosophy@univie.ac.at, labelled as entries to the essay competition. 
• Required Information: In your email, please include your affiliation, the (expected) date of receipt of your PhD, and the names of your committee members.

Selection Process: The prize is administered by a subcommittee of the Journal of Social Ontology. The winner will be chosen based on multiple anonymous reviews by both internal and external selectors.

We eagerly anticipate your contributions and look forward to an engaging and inspiring conference in Dublin.

For more details about the upcoming conferences, visit isosonline.org.

Submit your essay and be part of advancing the field of social ontology!

Alejandro Arango (Gonzaga University) and Adam Burgos (Bucknell University) are soliciting papers for a volume on the ontology of social identities.  

• Deadline: 15 May 2023
• Length: 7500-10000 words (inclusive of references and notes)
• Abstract: 150-200 words
• *Co-authored contributions are welcome

More information here:  https://philevents.org/event/show/106753 

Saba Bazargan-Forward was interviewed by New Books regarding Authority, Cooperation, and Accountability, just out from Oxford University Press:

https://newbooksnetwork.com/authority-cooperation-and-accountability

11th Annual University of Calgary Philosophy Graduate Conference

Call for Papers

 

Social Ontology and Social Justice

Dates: May 5 - May 6, 2023

Format: In-person

Location: University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada,

2500 University Dr NW, T2N 1N4.

Submission Deadline: February 15th, 2023

 

Keynote Speakers: Robin Dembroff of Yale University and David Liebesman of the University of Calgary

 

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary invites submissions from graduate students for its 11th Annual Philosophy Graduate Conference. We welcome submissions that explore the overlaps between social justice issues and social ontology. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

 

• Race and reparations
• Gender and transfeminist politics
• Medicalisation and social marginalisation
• Money and economic policy
• Institutions and political philosophy
• Group agency and collective responsibility
• Conceptual engineering
• Culture, race, and philosophy of science
• Language and language rights

We especially encourage submissions from members of marginalised groups.

Submission Guidelines: Submissions should be papers of up to 3000 words (excluding bibliography), prepared for blind review, and suitable for a 20-minute presentation. Submissions should include a short (200-word max.) abstract on the first page.

Papers should be submitted in one anonymized document, with no name or contact information in the document or title, sent as an attachment to ucalgarygradconference@gmail.com with a 200-word abstract on the first page.

A cover page document with the following information should be submitted in a separate attachment:

1. Name
2. Institution and Level of Study
3. Contact Email
4. Abstract
5. Paper Title
6. Word Count

Contact ucalgarygradconference@gmail.com with any questions.

For more information:

https://philevents.org/event/show/105838

https://philevents.org/event/show/105842

Call for Papers - Social Ontology 2023

Theme: Social ontology and the social sciences, and the method(s) of social ontology 

August 16-19, 2023, Stockholm University, Sweden

Deadline for abstracts: January 30, 2023

Social Ontology is the internationally leading philosophical and philosophy-related interdisciplinary conference series on social and collective phenomena. Social Ontology 2023 in Stockholm particularly invites contributions on the nature and existence of social phenomena, methodological debates about social ontology, and analyses of collective intentionality and collective responsibility. 

In-person conference with the option of ISOS members to participate online during the keynote lectures and the special panel on the method(s) of social ontology: Social Ontology: What is it? What do we want it to be?

Call For Abstracts

Submit abstracts (300-500 words, prepared for blind review) by January 30,

2023, at EasyChair: https://easychair.org/account/signin?l=8Mcn1YrKqlUM4zSvKSBYBT

Notification of acceptance: March 6th, 2023.

Interdisciplinary contributions are strongly encouraged. This year, we particularly invite contributions from sociology, economics, political science, and applied perspectives.

Topics include:

• The ontology of the social world; the nature and existence of social phenomena 
• Collective intentionality 
• The ontology of social kinds (e.g. race or gender or class)
• Social structures and opaque kinds of social facts
• Shared, joint or collective action
• Shared, collective, and corporate responsibility
• Collective or shared beliefs, intentions, and emotions
• Linguistic or mental representations of social phenomena 
• Social skills, habits and practices
• Trust, cooperation, and competition
• The concept of social power and stratification 
• The nature, evolution, and functioning of social norms
• The structure of institutions, firms, and organizations
• The ontology of economics including unintended effects
• The method(s) of social ontology 
• Approaches to the metaphysics of the social world
• Critical social ontology 

Keynote speakers

Michael E. Bratman, Stanford University

Katharine Jenkins, University of Glasgow

Muhammad Ali Khalidi, City University of New York

Emma Tieffenbach, University of Geneva

Vanessa Wills, The George Washington University

Panel: Social ontology — What is it? What do we want it to be?

Confirmed participants: Ásta, Hans Bernhard Schmidt, Miguel Garcia-Godinez

Social Program

The City of Stockholm has kindly invited us to the City Hall for a tour and dinner. This is the place of the annual Nobel Prize Dinner. There will be trips to Stockholm archipelago and other social events. 

Bursaries

ISOS hopes to offer some bursaries to contribute to conference costs for students and precariously employed social ontologists who are accepted to give papers at the conference. Please consider this when deciding whether to submit.

Organizers

The International Social Ontology Society and the organizing team consisting of Åsa Burman, Gunnar Björnsson, Erik Angner, Staffan Carlshamre and Anandi Hattiangadi (Stockholm University). In case of questions, feel free to reach out to Åsa Burman. 

The Conference Series

The Social Ontology conferences are held under the auspices of the International Social Ontology Society. Previous events in this series have been held at the Universities of Basel, Helsinki, Konstanz, Leipzig, Munich, Manchester, Neuchâtel, Palermo, Rome, Rotterdam, Siena, and Tampere, as well as the University of California San Diego and Berkeley, Delft University of Technology, Tufts University, Indiana University, Bloomington, and the University of Vienna.

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our dear friend and colleague, David Dick. 

David was an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary and a Fellow in the Haskayne School of Business’s Canadian Centre for Advanced Leadership in Business. These academic titles only hint at the depth of his public engagement with questions in business ethics. He oversaw Calgary’s Integrity Network and gave many invited lectures to the business community. He was also frequently asked to comment on issues in business ethics by the Canadian news media.

David’s most recent work focused on the philosophy of money. He presented on this topic at the 2022 Social Ontology and Collective Intentionality Conference in Vienna, an event which he enjoyed immensely. His research in this area has become an integral part of the recent resurgence of interest in the philosophy and politics of money. David also wrote about commodification and inequality. Besides his characteristic wit and way with words, which were on display in conversation as much as in his writing, he brought clarity and precision to his subjects of interest. In his paper “What Money Is and Ought To Be,” published in the Journal of Social Ontology (2021), he pointed out that we find teleological arguments that infer what money is from what money is for in both Locke and Aristotle, but that these arguments are of different kinds and are more successful in some cases than in others. In his paper “Impure Semiotic Objections to Markets,” published in Public Affairs Quarterly (2018), he intervened in the polarizing debate about whether commodification is an expressive wrong. His argument was that we need to pay careful attention to the variety of expressive objections in considering whether these objections are successful or not. 

These professional achievements and academic interests do not do justice to what a large and beloved personality David was. David was self-effacing and funny. He would start class by writing his name on the board, waiting a beat, and then announcing: “You will call me by my first name, for obvious reasons.” David was a sharp dresser: many of us are familiar with the black t-shirt and black jacket that made him look like a European intellectual, but friends from grad school remember him wearing a tweed suit and skull ring, when he wasn’t wearing his red union t-shirt. Above all, however, and most memorably, David was deeply kind. In any gathering he was the best storyteller, yet he would always shine the spotlight away from himself. He gave his attention and time generously to his colleagues, his graduate students, and even students at other institutions.

There is a fundraiser to support David Dick’s widow, Erin Dick-Jensen. You can read about it and donate here.

 - Julian Jonker and Graham Hubbs

Dear fellow social ontologists,

Here is some information about the Social Ontology 2023 in Stockholm. 

We hope to see you there!

 

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