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Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology lance un appel à contribution pour son 4e séminaire interdisciplinaire annuel, 9-11 février 2012, Bielefeld University: Control’s Other Side. L'un des thèmes proposés est religion et contrôle. Envoyer les propositions avant le 31 octobre 2011, à annualseminar@uni-bielefeld.de.&#160;Key Note Speaker (among others): Andreas Glaeser (University of Chicago)Organiser Team: Olga Galanova, Anna Henkel, Julia Breittruck, Clemens Eisenmann, Rory Finch, Andrea Kretschman, Vera Linke, Rumin Luo, Malte StöckenContributions &#38; deadlines: We welcome all contributions that deal with emergences, changes, disputes, failures and consequences of control regimes. Examples for possible research-fields are specified in the conference-description below. We explicitly welcome contributions that deal with other empirical areas or tackle the overall conference topic on a theoretical or conceptual level.The conference language is English. Abstracts should be not longer than 500 words.&#160;Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology Bielefeld University Universitätsstr. 2533501 Bielefeld&#160;3. Control and religionSince ancient times, religion has played a significant role in establishing and maintaining social order. The influence of religion can be traced on different levels from macro-institutional structures (i.e.in church-state relationships, comparative secularisms, etc.) down to individual agency (i.e. to norms and values, worldviews and aspirations). But religious control has also been questioned from within and without. Prophetic traditions have been influential correctives to religious power in most religious traditions, and religion has been used to formulate strong critiques of control – while the Enlightenment questioned religious control at large. The secularization thesis predicted a disenchanted world, with an individual freed of ‘superficial’ and ‘traditional’ control. But not only is (public) religion still very vivid in late modernity; religion also plays a role for innovation and change of social order, whilst at the same time also offering rationales for resisting such change. Phenomena such as Pentecostals in South America, Islamic fundamentalism, New Age counterculture, or holistic spirituality – to mention a few – may shed some light on control and its other side. How are religious forms – conformist and nonconformist, world renouncing and world affirming, individualized and organized – used to both establish and resist social control? We therefore especially invite proposals dealing with transformations of religions in their – at times ambiguous – relation to social order and control at various levels.4. Control and natureTo control nature has been an aim of science and technology since Francis Bacon’s traditional formulation. But this was not always the case. Nature for a long time counted as uncontrollable and as the encompassing setting for society. Which relationships did societies have with nature? How did the will to control and the means to control change over time? And in which regards does nature still retain some its uncontrollability and incalculability? Apart from this, the scientific control of nature itself requires control: After the great success of the natural sciences in the 19th and early 20th century, control’s other side becomes more and more obvious in the recent environmental and technological catastrophes: dying forests, Chernobyl, climate change – this is only the tip of the iceberg of disturbances and resistances that the control of nature now encounters. Science- and Technology studies, riskresearch and research in governance reflect those disturbances and the way that societies deal with them. Looking at Fukushima, the failure of technology and scientific control over nature seem more than just a current topic. But how do attempts to control and failures of control change over time? Are the different types of controls and its other side distinguishable? And what can we learn from that ambivalenceof control in general?5. Control and cultural discoursesIn every historical period and social context the production of arts and cultural discourses have always been objects of control and evaluation as main forms of representation of moral and of a cultural specificity of its time and space. How do such discourses nevertheless develop opposing points of view against established norms? What new social tendencies arise due to critique and resistance in mass media and arts?One example of the extreme threatening character of control of mass media and art is the restriction of freedom of opinion and of additional forms of representation in dictatorial societies, in which representatives of unofficial art or oppositional actors of media discourses are prosecuted. At the same time there are also controlling institutions in democratic societies that reveal their paradoxes and problems in attempts to influence the media discourses and the cultural production of their society.6. Control and the bodySelf-control and the correct presentation of the body are important criteria to show the determination and discipline with which actors can claim to adhere to their societies’ virtues. At the same time sufferings can be used as positive semantics for the demonstration of compliance.In these examples, the body can be conceptualized as a medium but also as an object of external control or of self-control. Since health and prevention have appeared as new semantics, the distinctions between insanity and society, health and illness, normality and pathology become more important. Health is defined and thus constructed by the medical and the political-economical discourses. In the context of such discourses it could be interesting to discuss the following questions:How can the pathological, the abnormal, be normalized despite a social stigma. And when is it found, how can it be defined as unproblematic?How can control also be internalized as self-control? How does control over all expressions of the own body and soul and the ability to competently handle even unusual situations (expressed for example by the semantic of ’coolness‘) become important, despite the increased pressure for the individual to take responsibility?