The Sociology of Conventions Workshop is a regular venue for scholars working on Sociology of Critique and Justification, or Économie des conventions. The workshop series exists since 2013 with a first meeting in Basel and since continues growing and developing.

The workshop at the University of Paderborn in September 2024 focuses on the enigmatic and ambiguous promise of ›sustainability‹. Sustainability has become very important in our organizational and institutional lives in the last decades, in education, finance, companies, public administration, development policy, etc. Sustainability is a versatile programme that comes across in terms of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN, the three pillar model including social, environmental and economic goals, or in the form of ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) in companies accounting standards. Sustainability is in many ways a question of measuring and then ranking, a classical theme of conventions of quantification. Besides these more technical questions of operationalization, sustainability also tackles bigger questions of justice and moral order. Sustainability fosters questions of inequality and injustice, as much as public, private and public-private finance, as well as the (plural) relation(s) with nature that humans create and live from. At stake are the political, organizational and institutional forms of society more general that are under scrutiny in a declared sustainable transformation – a process full of societal conflict and controversy. The sociology of conventions, with its focus on processes of measurement and quantification, and its idea of an intertwined moral order that changes through a cycle of critique and justification provides a promising analytical lens to study sustainable transformations.

At this year’s Conventions Workshop in Paderborn, we have Gaël Plumecocq as a keynote speaker. Gaël Plumecocq is Researcher at INRAE (National Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment) in Toulouse, France. He is co-president of the French Association for Political Economics (AFEP) and member of the Toulouse Workshop for Political Ecology (ATECOPOL). His researches bridge convention theory with ecological economics, analyzing how social2 values and shared knowledge shape organizations and structure different relationships to nature. Recent works focus on quantification as a valuation language.

Sociology of Conventions workshops use to have an overarching theme, but they are open to scholars working on different subjects, as well. Scholars from all disciplines are cordially invited to present planned and/or ongoing empirical and theoretical work, not restricted to the topic of sustainable transformation, only. Reflecting the interdisciplinary character of the sociology of conventions, ranging from the field of education, economics, and political and social sciences, the workshop is open to presentations reflecting and dealing with methodological and conceptual questions of research design, more generally. Presentations and input from early career researchers are particularly welcome.

In Paderborn, we will have three formats of participation:

• Paper Presentation with discussant (no full paper required, 20 min. presentation + 20minutes discussion; discussant will be provided/organized by convenors)
• Methodology and research design puzzles (format focused the discussion of ongoing and planned research, with relation to specific methodological challenges and/or open to (experimental) ideas and issues)
• Roundtable with experts on the sociology of conventions, with a particular focus on sustainability research (Gaël Plumecocq, Sarah Lenz, Lisa Knoll, N.N., suggestions welcome)
• Keynote by Gaël Plumecocq on ›Is monetary valuation of biodiversity a ‹bad› convention?‹ (listen, think, enjoy, and discuss)

Please let us know about your participation (title and abstract) until April 30, 2024 indicating in what way you are planning to participate, and/or contribute (Email mpaschen(at)campus.uni-paderborn.de). We make our program decision till May 15th, 2024. We would then need your final title and/or paper till August 30, 2024.

Workshop Location

University of Paderborn
›Stadtcampus‹
Königsplatz 1
33098 Paderborn