Categoria: Seminari e Convegni
Stato: Archiviata
01-03.09.2022

COMMUNICATION, CAPITALISM AND CRITIQUE: Critical Media Sociology in the 21st Century

DIST - Castello del Valentino, Torino, Italy

The European Sociological Association (ESA) / Research Network 18
Sociology of Communications and Media Research
Mid-Term Conference 2022


We live in times of deepening economic, political, social, pandemic, ideological and ecological crises that are apparent in widespread precarious labour, the commodification of (almost) everything, the rise of new nationalism, populism and authoritarian forms of capitalism, and ecological destruction. The display of power and counter-power, domination and spaces of power struggles, and the commons and the commodification of the commons characterisemodern society. Contradictions and antagonisms between the haves and the have-nots shape contemporary Europe and beyond. Media and communication are fields of conflict in this power struggle: they are power structures and sites of power struggles, able to support both the expansion and the commodification of the commons. RN 18 invites contributions to sociological understanding of these processes at its conference in 2022.

This year’s conference will be in Torino, where the Italian intellectual and political activist Antonio Gramsci lived, and where he set up the weekly newspaper ‘L’OrdineNuovo’ and acted as editor of the newspaper ‘Il Gridodel Popolo’. Gramsci exerted huge influence on the study of culture and communication in society. The meeting will take a particular note of this and invites papers that address the question: What is the relevance of Gramsci and other approaches and thinkers inspired by Marx for the study of communication and society today?