Mobilities at the Amsterdam School for Social-science Research

There is a mobilities conference to be held at the Amsterdam School for Social-science Research (ASSR) to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

"In celebration of its 20th anniversary and in honour of its first Dean Abram de Swaan, the Amsterdam School for Social-science Research (ASSR) will hold a multi-disciplinary conference on the mobility of people, goods, technologies and money, and ideas on 24th (opening session at 4 p.m.), 25th and 26th of January 2007. This conference aims to attract scholars from across the globe who are specialists in the disciplines included pursued at the ASSR; namely history, anthropology, sociology and political science.

Throughout the past two decades, globalization has been one of the most prominent, or perhaps /notorious, concepts to be used in not only academic circles, but also in political and social life. So much so that the concept has been simultaneously employed to draw attention to both ‘ the causes’ and ‘the consequences’ of almost all contemporary social processes. There have been countless and contradictory attempts to clarify this elusive concept. It would, therefore, be a formidable task to achieve a common understanding of the concept of globalization. However, ‘the notion of increasing the mobility of almost everything’ can be easily agreed upon as one of the ‘causes’ and/or ‘consequences’ of globalization, regardless of how it is conceptualized by different disciplines or academics. It is for this reason that the ASSR has chosen to organize this conference on mobilities."