SAI Postgraduate Conference

Conference Theme:

The SAI’s 2023 annual PG conference at UCD’s school of sociology focuses on the question “Is one world enough for all of us?” a question posed by thinkers throughout the millennia. Plato’s ideal republic, Kant’s treaty on perpetual peace, and Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population are just three out of many theories that envisioned rules, laws, and regulations to ensure we manage our planet’s finite resources so that one world would be enough. But enough for whom, how, and when? And can universalistic approaches truly serve all of us without creating new forms of imperialism or hegemonic centres of power?

Looking at the current state of global affairs, we see playboy billionaires building spaceships to colonise other worlds, scientists dissecting and disaggregating all elements of our world, and academics debating about abstractions and theoretical concepts within the world of thoughts. At the same time, a growing number of countries are facing wars, famine, and impoverishment, while others seem not to have enough democratic participation, young people to care for their ageing populations, or face masks to protect people from a global pandemic.

At times it seems that modernity, technology, and our social institutions, which have brought us closer together, undermine the fabric of trust, collective institutions, and a healthy ecosphere, the things we need to live together. These tensions further drive unequal distribution, control, and ownership over individual autonomy and power. Thus perpetuating instability and inequalities in access to political power and participation, rights, development, science and technology, labour market, the welfare state, education, health, social security, housing, gender, ethnic and class equity, security, social justice and democracy and ultimately leading to phenomena like accelerated climate change, loss of biodiversity, a global pandemic, economic crises, armed conflicts, and the rise of racist and identity politics.

With the short piece above, we wish to showcase the challenges, complexities, and wealth of perceptions with which the question “Is one world enough for all of us?” can be investigated. Therefore, this year’s theme invites and welcomes papers from a wide range of different research fields, including but not limited to studies on:

Politics

Peace and Conflict

Welfare state systems

Economics and sustainability

Globalisation and inequalities

Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism

Gender, ethnicity, and inequalities

All other works that investigate and discuss what it means to share one world.