In/di/visible: Social Responsibility in the Age of Entropocene

We are more than individuals. We are more than professionals, researchers, teachers, designers or artists. Living in societies, we create them the same way they create us. Our world is indivisible regarding all the processes shaping contemporary ideas, trends and behaviours. The same applies to global problems. Human rights abuses and discrimination, migration and refugee crises, climate change, deforestation and environmental degradation, wildlife trafficking and biodiversity loss, economic crises and inequalities are all connected. If they occur in one part of the world, they have some repercussions in another one. There is interconnectedness not only between humans and humans but also between humans and the environment.

According to the philosopher Bernard Stiegler, the current geological era, marked by a significant global impact of human activity on the Earth’s ecosystem, in other words, the Anthropocene, should be understood as the Entropocene. We live in a time of ubiquitous entropy at all possible levels: physical, biological, informational and psycho-social. Human activities and techno-economic production and consumption processes have resulted in the disturbance of various systems – disturbance of climate and nature systems, the disappearance of languages and cultures, and the over-exploitation of resources and human force. Our world today is in a state of social, political and economic entropy, requiring immediate actions and strong will not only from the side of policymakers and decision-makers but also from each of us. Therefore, the indivisibility of our decisions and actions could be the force in decreasing the omnipresent entropies. The question is, how can we change the ill-adapted models and re-orient our lives in order to be more responsible?

This conference intends to bring together scholars from various disciplines and sciences concerned about the current state of the world, the inaction of decision-makers, and the ignorance or passivity of individuals and whole societies. We would appreciate papers discussing new trends, transformative ideas and alternative approaches related to the question of social responsibility understood by various professionals – educators, scholars, scientists, business people, policymakers, environmentalists, designers, artists, and activists. We encourage papers addressing the following questions:

How do we understand entropy?
How can we reimagine human-environment and human-technology relations?
How can we rebuild social, economic and political relations to address planetary crises? 
How can we reconceptualize our worldviews to make them more inclusive, pluriversal and open to various cosmologies from different parts of the world? 
How can we avoid divisiveness among people from different professions and various backgrounds? 
How can we shape education and information to encourage greater responsibility?  
How can we build a more equal, just and prosperous world for all of us?

We welcome papers, proposals for workshops and posters. Please, send us: an abstract up to 300 words for a 15-minute paper, workshop or poster and information about your affiliation and a short bio (max. 300 characters).
A monograph with selected articles will be published after the conference (Spring 2023). Please send proposals to konferencja@wse.krakow.pl.

Place: Tischner European University, Al. Jana Pawła II 39a, Kraków, Poland

The conference is co-financed by the European Social Fund under the Operational Program Knowledge Education Development, non-competitive project “Enhancing the competences of academic staff and theinstitution’s potential in receiving people from abroad - Welcome to Poland” implemented as part of 3.3 POWER defined in the application for project co-financing No. POWR.03.03.00-00 PN14/18.