Welcome to Knowledge/Culture/Ecologies – the 4th conference in the Knowledge/Culture series, a sequence of international conferences created by the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), Western Sydney University, Australia.  The conference is taking place in Santiago, Chile from 15-18 November and is hosted by Universidad Diego Portales in partnership with Pontificia Universidad Católica; Núcleo Milenio de Investigación en Energía y Sociedad (NUMIES); and Centro de Estudios de Conflicto y Cohesión Social (COES).

Ecological change and catastrophe are proliferating in a world in flux and crisis. These new socio-ecological assemblages are creating forms of interspecies intimacy and environmental emergency that challenge existing knowledge practices and demand different modes of collaborating and acting. If life on earth is changing for everybody and everything how can we invent different habitats, milieus, ways of being together that enable more things to matter and make a difference? How are novel forms of social cohesion emerging around socio-environmental conflicts and justice? What experimental knowledge and political practices do we need to understand these emergent socioecologies and provoke new ones? And how do these profound earthly challenges intersect with obdurate and unevenly distributed forms of violence and inequality/exploitation particularly in the ‘global south’?

As the idea of the ecological has undergone massive renovation across numerous disciplines from geography to philosophy to science and beyond, the  key aim of this conference is to explore current transformations in socioecologies and to generate knowledge practices capable of understanding their formation and complex reverberations. These conceptual shifts, including novel approaches to temporality and materiality, have not only extended the metaphorical impact of the ecological but also its analytical force. What this new ecological thinking foregrounds is the value of knowledge and methods capable of challenging the boundaries between the social and physical, human and non-human, and material and non-material.

The focus of the conference is on six major themes / streams:

• Socio territorial conflicts & ecologies of social cohesion
• Anthropocene ecologies
• Energy ecologies and infrastructures in everyday life
• Ecologies of urbanism
• Decolonial ecological politics & Post-capitalist ecologies
• Ecological imaginaries, experimentation & design ecologies

We invite academics, practitioners and activists from a range of backgrounds and knowledge institutions to debate the shifting roles of knowledge, culture and ecologies in historical, contemporary and future scenarios of crisis, environmental justice and inequality, governance, socio-environmental change and reckonings with nature and a diversity of cosmologies.

We invite interdisciplinary panels addressing a wide range of themes in the environmental social sciences and humanities and from a broad range of disciplines – including geography, sociology, anthropology, STS, cultural studies, environmental humanities, philosophy, history, creative arts, media studies, design, politics, and environmental studies. Contributions from engaged scientists, policy-makers, not-for-profit actors, activists, maker communities and other forms of p2p practitioners are also encouraged.

Panels can be proposed as Open Panels (only a title and brief description and a minimum of 1 paper and maximum of two papers) or Curated Panels (with a title and a maximum of four pre-agreed papers within them). Sessions run for 90 minutes. Individual papers should not exceed 20 minutes. Panel and paper proposals can be submitted in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Please note than only keynote talks and panels will have simultaneous translation english-spanish. We encourage presenters to prepare handouts and slides in English (if presenting in Spanish or Portuguese) and in Spanish (if presenting in English or Portuguese) to facilitate linguistic diversity in the section and to engage with the conference location.

Artists, activists, academics, designers are encouraged to submit films, photographs, audio works, installations and web-based formats that speak to the core themes of the conference. Submissions may be in any language but if not in Spanish or English they must include subtitles.

On submission of the proposal, only the proposing author will receive an email confirming receipt. The conference organising committee will assess all proposals anonymously and communicate results by the due date.

More information is available in the conference website knowledgeculture.org. For any further information, please contact: kcechile2017@gmail.com

All panel, paper, and audiovisual proposals must be made via the online form.