Call for Abstracts

The idea of social resilience has become a buzzword circulating across academic, political, activist, social media and other circles.  The popularity of this concept can be understood as a response to challenges and “wicked problems” that in these uncertain times seem to dominate everyday life. Within this context, social resilience is narrated as a resource that promotes adaptability and an ability to cope with adversity. In the social sciences and humanities we find numerous cases where resilience is revealed, such as borderlands, border communities and situations where the arts and artistic creation stimulate social-emotional growth and help overcome traumatic experiences.

Interest in resilience has been spurred by socio-political impacts of anxieties and insecurities. These  are captured, for example, in narrations of “geographies of discontent” in which a sense of deprivation related to economic issues, questions of community identity and a lack of wellbeing feeds into anxieties that threaten social cohesion. Moreover, the Covid pandemic, political crises related to migration, and wider security concerns generated by the Russia-Ukraine War have heightened the salience of thinking in terms of resilience.

At the same time, resilience is not a straightforward concept that offers ready solutions to societal challenges. Resilience requires that we work with our uncertainties and recognise the changing nature of the world. Thinking in terms of social resilience potentially situates us as navigators and attenuators of difference either real, imagined or manufactured. From the viewpoint of Borders, Mobilities and Cultural Encounters, we can relate resilience to flexible understandings of borders and greater recognition of the interconnections that exist across social, cultural, political difference and geographical distance. Indeed, when we reflect on social, cultural and political borders, rather than just taking them for granted, we are forced to think in complex and creative ways.

This year’s BoMoCult conference will build on the ideas and address questions related to conceptualisations, critical interrogations and practical applications of social resilience. We welcome panels and papers that offer cross-cutting perspectives on resilience from fields related to the study of borders, mobilities and cultural encounters. We particularly encourage submissions that elaborate interdisciplinary approaches from diverse perspectives as well as methodological and geographical vantage points.

Abstracts (max. 200 words and a short bionote) should be sent by email to the organizers by 31 August 2024. 

Email: uef-bomocult@uef.fi

The conference will be an on-site event at the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu campus.

More information about BOMOCULT Research Community.