The 2020 IACR Annual Conference #IACR2020 will be virtually (Cisco Webex platform) organised by the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University.
Pre-conference 12-13 October 2020.
Main Conference 14-16 October 2020.
We often hear about difficult times in private conversations. How difficult are they? Are they too difficult for science to try to understand and provide some help – one would like to ask? Does the perspective of critical realism give any advantage to a scholar in these difficult times? Should science, and especially its critically realistic orientation, maintain Olympic peace, or bend over the spontaneous processes that have become our everyday life for good and for bad. Can phenomena such as the coronovirus epidemic or climate or demographic catastrophe be somehow known, understood, predicted or even subjected to rational actions?
We hear that a modern family is in crisis, but nature is also and the economy even more, the state, as an institution, is applying for priority in this respect, along with politics in general and in detail, as well as customs, morality, mental health, education etc. etc. Are we so unlucky that all possible crises have accidentally congregated in our time, or are we dealing with one serious crisis that has many faces, like a Slavic deity from a thousand years ago?
Does the suggestion that we are dealing with a civilization crisis make anything easier for the critical realist? The very concept of civilization is unclear and interpreted differently, and the crisis is even more so. The crisis is from ancient Greek, a turning point, a breakthrough. We don’t know if it will be better or worse, but it will be different. Everything is still changing. But this is a civilization crisis. Will this concept be a bit useful if we understand civilization as a certain state of culture (not necessarily only material), which is the result of long-lasting historical processes, produced by societies, exceeding the lifetime of one generation? And that civilization creates a framework in which, under its influence, people construct social order, create social groups and institutions, culture and their identities. We mean the general social products that arise in response to the civilization crisis. On the other hand, one can speak of a civilization crisis when civilization challenges prevent the existence of a society without significant changes. The factors of such a crisis may be great historical events (wars, revolutions, etc.), natural phenomena (floods, earthquakes, etc.), or breakthrough scientific and technical discoveries or new religions, ideas or great rationalizations, ideas, myths.
I. Strength and weakness of the concept of civilization as a descriptive and explanatory category of the modern world
Main challenges of the times of civilizational breakthrough
Human Being and humanity – vulnerability to change
Culture in the process of civilization changes
Values - between relativism and absolutism
Contemporary basic from social changes
II. Transformational processes of the modern world
Civilization crisis – opportunities and threats
Civilization transformation of Central and Eastern Europe
Africa’s future and present
Asia at the time of civilization change
The Western World in a process of change
III.The concept of instrumental rationality and critical realism towards the dynamics of civilization change
Science towards spontaneous processes
Virtual communication zone as a space of freedom or enslavement?
Economic policy towards spontaneous economic processes
Theory and methodology of social sciences in relation to the spontaneity of social processes
Globalization, transformation of social interests and war of ideology
IV. Pedagogy, upbringing, education and psychotherapy in times of civilization change
Trends and orientations of modern pedagogy and psychology, and civilization challenges
The family and the challenges of today
Mental health, contemporary civilization changes and main doctrines in psychotherapy
Gender, sexuality and procreation in difficult times of civilization change
Education in the face of great change
