[Commlist] Call for paper - "Participation in a world of communication"

Call for papers:


International colloquium

" Participation in a world of communication"

September 12 & 13, 2019 – UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

New deadline for abstract submission: 30 April, 2019



Presentation of the theme

“Participate in citizen consultations”, “Participate in fundraising 
projects”, “Participate in idea tournaments”, “Participate!”,… The 
issues of participation overwhelm discourses and practices, while 
questioning at the same time the visions of communication that they 
involve. In this respect, they echo Dewey’s reflections, who sees in the 
concept of participation a criterion able to offer a hierarchy of the 
degree of communication (Quéré, 2014). Participation and communication 
encompass the idea of a universal link, of a “communitarian fusion” 
ideal (Mattelart, 1999) or of a “planetary communication” (Breton, 
1992). The imaginaries of communication as a universal link or as a way 
of living together are intertwined with those of participation as an 
ideal of exchanging, sharing, debate and concertation. “Participative 
management or participative communication (…) are perhaps the 
illustration of a migrating concept which manifests itself whenever a 
need of ‘reliance’ (Bolle De Bal, 1996), in a functionalist perspective, 
is revealing itself between the sender and the receiver” (Monseigne, 
2009: 32). To understand this transition, this conference will attempt 
to consider the active, multiple and ambivalent participation of the 
“public” as placed in the center of the continuously growing 
“mediatisation” of social relations.

Participation remains nevertheless a polysemic concept, reinterpreted by 
different disciplines, as it can be employed by multiple and diverse 
lines of activities: politic, social, economic, cultural, etc. As a 
scientific concept, it is used in different fields of research such as 
political sciences and management sciences, but also in sociology, 
cultural studies… and information and communication sciences. During 
this conference, we wish to revisit and question the concept of 
participation, while making these different approaches interact with 
each other.Exploring the concept of participation with a communicative 
approach, beyond disciplinary differences, is making us question 
peripherical concepts such as collaboration, debate, mobilization and 
even engagement. During this conference, we acknowledge participation as 
a “boundary object” (Star, 2010). It can be defined as a “rhizome” in 
which different points of views encounter each other and cooperate. 
Participation can indeed emerge in a spontaneous way. At the opposite, 
participation can be “calculated” and planned. However, this doesn’t 
mean that its social scope would be reduced to the creation of an 
simulacrum, whose purpose is to legitimize or reinforce the domination 
of an organization or collective for example. Furthermore, we want to 
explore this underlying tension between process of participation and 
rhetorical instrumentalization of participation, but also discuss about 
the implications that this dynamic and flexible object can entail.

The proposals for communication will be articulated around four axis:

Axis 1 – Participation and organization

This axis explores participation with a constitutive communicative 
approach. This approach, known under the name of “Communicative 
Constitution of Organization”, considers organization as emerging “from 
a communication layout, from a coordination of sense production allowing 
to identify, to describe and to make it evolve” (Hachour, 2011, p.196). 
In other words, organization results from “a significant layout which 
frames collective activities and qualifies their degree of 
accomplishment” (Hachour, 2011, p.201). Through this communicative 
approach, the objective is to better understand the contemporary 
organizational phenomenon which relates itself to the concept of 
participation. How can the tensions between the roles and discourses 
which emerge from participation be analyzed, may it be spontaneous or 
calculated? How does a participative project get built and what does the 
coordination of the project on organizational dynamic teach us? Which 
performative value do the discourses on participation have in the 
organizations? How can we decode and understand the practices of 
participation with a communicative approach?

Axis 2 – A communicative and participative apparatus

First, we will question the apparatus, as an “assemblage” of elements – 
may them be discourses, procedures or a combination of technical 
objects. How are the mechanisms of participation built? How do they 
organize participation? How have they evolved in recent years with the 
deployment of social media, platforms, etc.? What place is reserved to 
the participants by the mechanism and by the implemented procedures? How 
can the place given to the participants in the discourses around the 
participative mechanism be analyzed? Second, questioning the mechanism 
in the context of participation entails questioning its purpose, from 
the point of view of both developers and promoters. The implementation 
and the usage of the mechanism can lead to an undesired result, even 
contrary to the initial aim. What happens then? How do developers and 
promoters of the participative mechanism react?

Axis 3 – Professions of communication and participation

This axis questions the construction of careers and professional 
profiles related to the creation, management and “capture” of 
participation (Bonaccorsi & Nonjon 2012, Gourgues 2016). It is about 
understanding how and in what manner communication professionals are 
sometimes called to “manage” and intercept the forms and movements of 
participation. Communicators and “relationists” can thus become 
specialists of participation. The profession of community manager is 
only one example among others. How and to what extent do communicators 
integrate the skills of creating and managing participation within their 
already existing ones? How can this phenomenon be analyzed? What are the 
impacts on their skills and on the ethical dimension of their activity? 
Finally, what tensions arise?

Axis 4 – Reception and appropriation of communication and participation

This axis focuses on the appropriation of the mechanisms and the process 
of participation, which may involve diversions and crafts, from the 
point of view of the public. This brings us to explore the 
representation that the public has of participative mechanisms and 
processes, the way they perceive them and the motivations that animate 
them. What objectives do they have? What kind of interactions are 
included in this context? Is there a certain ideal of participation 
included in the configuration of relations? Thus, this axis interrogates 
how the participants perceive and appropriate a mechanism, more 
specifically a participative process. What “directory of actions” do 
they use? How is participation received, appropriated, and even 
diverted, reinvented, transformed or exported? How do they give 
themselves room for maneuver to improvise other forms of participation, 
to imagine other types of engagement?

Submission procedures

The proposal can convey theoretical reflections and/or empirical 
studies. Selection will be made from the intentions of proposals. First, 
we invite you to submit an abstract (between 1000 and 3000 words) in a 
Word format, for April 30, 2019 at the latest. After the selection made 
by the scientific committee, the abstract will be able to be proposed 
for publication in a collective publication in English and as a thematic 
number of a scientific journal.

Calendar forecast:

•Proposals will be evaluated by a scientific comity.

•The authors will be informed of the decisions made by the scientific 
committee.

•The authors that have been chosen will be invited to submit an article 
of 5 000 to 7 000 words, to be published in English in a publication to 
the Routlege editions (Taylor & Francis group) or in French in a 
scientific journal.

The proposals should be submitted on the website: 
https://participation19.sciencesconf.org

Important dates to remember:

April 30, 2019Deadline for the submission of proposals

May 30, 2019Notification of acceptations

September 12 – 13, 2019Conference at University Saint-Louis, in 
Brussels, Belgium

Head of organization

Marie Dufrasne (Université Saint-Louis)

Damien Renard (Université catholique de Louvain)

Sandrine Roginsky (Université catholique de Louvain)

Organizing comittee

Tiffany Andry (Université catholique de Louvain)

Andrea Catellani (Université catholique de Louvain)

Christel Christophe (Université catholique de Louvain)

Anne-Marie Cotton (Arteveldehogeschool)

Agnès D'Arripe (Université catholique de Lille)

Diana Jarnea (Université catholique de Louvain)

Joanne Jojczyk (Université catholique de Louvain)

Inès Kalaï (Université catholique de Louvain)

François Lambotte (Université catholique de Louvain)

Marie Dufrasne (Université Saint-Louis)

Tama Rchika (Université catholique de Louvain)

Sandrine Roginsky (Université catholique de Louvain)

Damien Renard(Université catholique de Louvain)

Christelle Sukadi(Université catholique de Louvain)

Youlia Vaskova (Université catholique de Louvain)

Scientific committee

Tiffany Andry (Université catholique de Louvain)

Dany Baillargeon (Université de Sherbrooke)

Nicolas Bencherki (Université de Montréal)

Julia Bonaccorsi ( Université Lumière Lyon 2)

Andrea Catellani (Université catholique de Louvain)

Anne-Marie Cotton (Arteveldehogeschool)

Christel Christophe (Université catholique de Louvain)

Agnès D'Arripe (Université catholique de Lille)

Marie Dufrasne (Université Saint-Louis)

Olivier Galibert (Université de Dijon)

Sophie Huys(Université catholique de Louvain)

Béatrice Jalenques-Vigouroux (INSA Toulouse)

Joanne Jojczyk (Université catholique de Louvain)

Inès Kalaï (Université catholique de Louvain)

François Lambotte (Université catholique de Louvain)

Annick Monseigne (Université Bordeaux Montaigne)

Magali Nonjon (Science Po Aix)

Françoise Paquienseguy (Science Po Lyon)

Nicolas Peirot (Université de Dijon)

Tama Rchika (Université catholique de Louvain)

Daniel Robichaud (Université de Montréal)

Sandrine Roginsky (Université catholique de Louvain)

Damien Renard(Université catholique de Louvain)

Youlia Vaskova (Université catholique de Louvain)

Stéphanie Wojcik (Université Paris-Est-Créteil)

Bibliography

Bolle de Bal, M. (1996), Voyages au cœur des sciences humaines: de la 
reliance ». L’Harmattan.

Bonaccorsi J. et Nonjon M. (2012), “La participation en kit”: l’horizon 
funèbre de l’idéal participatif », Quaderni, 79, p. 29-44.

Breton P. (1992), L’utopie de la communication-Le mythe du « village 
planétaire », Paris, Éditions La Découverte.

Cefaï D., Carrel M, Talpin J. et al., Ethnographies de la participation, 
Participations, 3 ( 4), p. 7-48.

Guillaume G. (2016),Les pilotes invisibles de la participation publique. 
Le « fichier des11000 » et la démocratie participative en région 
Rhône-Alpes, Gouvernement et action publique, 2, p. 51-78.

Hachour H. (2011), Épistémologies socio-sémiotiques et communication 
organisante : la coproduction de sens comme moteur de l’organisation, 
Communication et organisation, (39), 195-210.

Mattelart A. (1999), Histoire de l'utopie planétaire : de la cité 
prophétique à la société globale, Paris, La Découverte.

Peeters H. et Charlier P. (1999). Contributions à une théorie du 
dispositif, Hermès, 25(3), 15-23.

Monseigne A. (2009), Participation, communication : un bain sémantique 
partagé», Communication et organisation, 35, 30-46.

Quéré, L. (2014), Le modèle esthétique de la communication de John 
Dewey, Colloque “Communication, culture et communauté. L’Ecole de 
Chicago en débat”,Universidade Lusofona do Porto (Portugal), 21 février 2014

Star Susan Leigh (2010). This is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on 
the Origin of a Concept. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 35(5), 
601–617.




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