New deadlines are:

15 March 2012: 500‐600 word abstracts
31 March 2012: Notification of acceptance
15 May 2012: Definitive registration
1 June 2012: Submission of full papers

The updated call for papers is available for download: Call for Papers RC51 Faro II 2012-02-13.

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In this issue:

RC51 letter from the President, 11th International Conference of Sociocybernetics, June 2011 Faro, Portugal [Call for papers], Journal of Sociocybernetics Thematic Issue on »Liquid Democracy« and »Complexity of Migration« [Call for papers], New RC51 website, ISA Forum 2012 in Buenos Aries, Review of the International Encyclopaedia of Systems and Cybernetics Edited by Charles Francois (2nd Edition, 2004), Book announcements: Second Order Cybernetics: Reflections on Cybernetics, Psychology and Education and Gordon Pask: The Cybernetics of Self-Organisation, Learning and Evolution. Uses and Abuses of Intelligence: Studies Advancing Spearman and Raven’s Quest for Non ArbitraryMetrics, Messages from the RC51 Secretary, Sixth ISA Worldwide Competition for Junior Sociologists.

Fulltext PDF Newsletter download: RC51 Newsletter I_25

The conference will be dedicated to “Complexity and Social Action: Interaction and Multiple Systems”.

Excerpt from the call for paper.

“Recent events throughout the globe have put into perspective the need for new theory settings, new approaches and new insights into the current social dynamics that many consider on a verge of rupture. Financial crises, social uprisings, forced governmental collapses, and increasing inequalities within several spheres of the social world are some of the events that necessarily put collective and individual social action into new perspectives.

(…)

From the variety of subjects relevant in this respect, the next RC51 2012 Conference in Faro, will emphasize the following:

1. Decision Making and Action: Decision making is a highly complex embodied process resulting from the concerted action of a diverse set of interconnected systems that allow for the development of social action under the uncertainty that the future holds. Under this theme, we intend to explore the complexity of the intra-systemic and inter-systemic pathways framing decision-making and subsequent social action.

2. Violence: Violence is an interconnected system, socially and culturally produced and reproduced, and therefore embedded in individuals, institutions and states. The production of violence is a phenomenon with deep interconnections between the social, cultural, biological, emotional and symbolic systems. The discussion between the articulation of the individual system (composed of responses/actions/reactions/interactions), and the social and cultural system which provide the actor with the symbolic, and many times, unconscious tolls of actions and interactions, is crucial to advance the production of knowledge in this area.

3. Social Movements: The new social movements, now emerging in many countries, with different levels of economic development, combine a variety of new dimensions that exceed previously sociologically knowledge. The sociological analysis of these movements’ actions requires, primarily, an intersystem approach of the complexity of all its dimensions, and secondly, two other dimensions of the social actors’ selves: the relationship between themselves and the relationship that each social actor wants to have with old and new groups, organizations and institutions.

Papers are welcomed which address these issues. Beyond that other papers addressing conceptual and theoretical issues in sociocybernetics or reporting relevant empirical findings are also welcomed.”

Please keep in mind the following deadlines:

15th of January 2012: 500-600 word abstracts
1 March: Notification of acceptance
15 May 2011: Definitive registration
1 June 2011: Submission of full papers

15 March 2012: 500‐600 word abstracts
31 March 2012: Notification of acceptance
15 May 2012: Definitive registration
1 June 2012: Submission of full papers

And don’t forget to read the full call for papers before submitting your abstract.

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We aim to promote the development of sociocybernetic theory and research within the social sciences. Sociocybernetics is broadly defined here as applications within the social sciences of first- and second-order cybernetics, general systems theory and the various combinations and variations of these that can be subsumed under the term “the emerging sciences of complexity”.

Read more on RC51 in the about section.

The topics addressed will be “Complexity of Migration” and “Liquid Democracy”.

We invite you to read both CFP (1 | 2) and to submit your paper proposal.

RC51 will organize the following sessions:

1. Sociocybernetic Principles: Technology & Ecology & Globalization (session organizer: Eva Buchinger)
2. Modern Sociological Systems Theory in Social Practice – Applications to Societal Problems (session organizer: Karl-Heinz Simon)
3. Systemic perspective to think knowledge and cultural management development (session organizer: Margarita Maass)
4. »Diaspora« and Complexity of Migration (session organizer: Michael Paetau),
5. Observing, Measuring and Reconstructing Emergent Meaning (session organizer: Liliana Ramírez Ruiz)
6. Sociocybernetic approach to democratization processes (session organizer: José A. Amozurrutia)
7. and a slot for presenting two books “Society, Ciberculture and Sociocybernetics” and “Sociology on the move” (session organizer: Margarita Maass).

Abstract submission: from 25th of August to 15th of December 2011.

Please check ISA Forum website for more information on how to sumbit.