Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - RMZ

Description: Politics of concepts is about the ways in which certain concepts are brought into the political sphere and developed by political and policy actors. With politics of concepts, we emphasize how conceptual innovation and modification are constitutive aspects of political argumentation and practices, such as agenda-setting. This panel goes outside the scope of discussing the politicalness or historicity of concepts, and focuses on the use of concepts by political and policy actors.

We are particularly interested in the following questions:
– Why do political and policy actors create and recreate concepts?
– Why do certain concepts diffuse globally and are used in a similar or dissimilar fashion in different contexts?
– How do political and policy actors modify concepts in specific organizational contexts and structural settings?
– How do conceptual uses (or misuses) reflect power distribution/imbalance?

We have no limitations with epistemological or ontological assumptions and are open to political science papers and papers from other relevant disciplines. Contributions can range from conceptual history and political theory to institutional analysis, political sociology, linguistics, discourse analysis, and rhetorical analysis. Our workshop is open for both theoretical papers (such as discussions on essentially contested concepts or concept diffusion) and empirical papers addressing specific questions of political uses and misuses of concepts in various institutional settings (parliaments, international organizations, political parties, bureaucracies, social movements). We welcome both context-specific papers (Finnish, European, or global), and studies of concepts that cut through different contexts.