THEMATIC GROUPS

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Global South & East

Published: 17 April 2023

An online lecture on "International Planning Education" by Paulo Silva, AESOP representative to GPEAN, GPEAN Vice Chair, organised by the thematic group on Global South and East on 14th April, 2023

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Global South & East

Published: 13 March 2023

There will be an online lecture on 'International Planning Education' by Paulo Silva on 14th April at 2:00pm GMT. This is the second one of the many upcoming lectures/interactions.

Here is the meeting invite:

Topic: AESOP TG GLOBAL S/E

Time: Apr 14, 2023 14:00 London

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85910560824?pwd=SHR3eitleDNjTTBiOXIrd290VVFZdz09

Meeting ID: 859 1056 0824

Passcode: AESOP1

Dial by your location

Meeting ID: 859 1056 0824

Passcode: 874059

Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kAGWkUnuS

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Planning and Complexity

Published: 06 March 2023

On behalf of the Manchester team who will host our next group meeting in April 2023, we are excited to announce the 1st Pre-Meeting Theory Keynote for the AESOP Planning & Complexity 21 Meeting. 

Please join us for an online event (details below) to welcome Professor Sakano from Tokyo, Japan

Talk Title: Generalized Trust and the Governance of Complex Systems
Time: Friday the 17th of March 2023 at 0900GMT/1000CET
Registration*: You can register for this event by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Members of the thematic group have received the invitation and login data already via email and do not need to register individually.

Speaker: Professor Sakano – Professor Emeritus Tokyo Institute of Technology

Professor Sakano received his Doctor of Engineering from the Department of Systems Science at Tokyo Institute of Technology (1987). In 1991-92, he was a Fulbright Research Fellow at Graduate School of Public Affairs, New York University. From 1996, he was Associate Professor at School of Decision Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology followed by his appointment as full Professor in 2014. Between 2018 and 2020, he was President of the Japan Association for Planning and Public Management and Co-founder of Japan Minipublics Research Forum. He has worked with local governments in Japan as a policy adviser and since 2022 been Professor Emeritus at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

*Note: You can follow activities of the AESOP Thematic Group on Planning and Complexity on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12735445), or ask Christian Lamker (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or Ward Rauws (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) to be added to the mailing list.

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Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS

Category: Ethics, Values and Planning

Published: 05 March 2023

Annual conference of TG on Ethics, Values & Planning

Breaking through ‘conformorality’ in urban and regional studies (14 & 15 September 2023, Dortmund)

The conference takes its inspiration from The Grievance Studies Affair (2017/2018), a controversial experiment in which three researchers, using pseudonyms, published bizarre articles without scientific evidence but conforming to conventional, broadly accepted moral views. The team demonstrated that it is easier to get published in peer-reviewed scientific journals if one’s articles adhere to (and reinforce) certain mainstream viewpoints. The project’s findings exemplify what, in the literature, is referred to as conformorality (Lisciandra et al., 2013). This concept expresses the tendency of groups and communities to acritically rely on consensus viewpoints, judgements and values. Even in academic debates, it is increasingly common to be accused of being 'naive', 'insensitive' or 'part of the problem' if one demonstrates scepticism towards certain ideas or issues.

Conformorality raises particular concerns in science as it can severely compromise and hinder the development of constructive perspectives. While one can interpret conformorality as useful, even if only for purely functional reasons (such as not reinventing the wheel), it is crucial to recognise that an excess of conformorality can reduce fair confrontation and obstruct innovative ideas and solutions. Planning theory, urban studies and human geography are not exempt from this risk, and debates on circular economy, commons, commodification, densification, touristification, segregation, gentrification, digitalisation, informality, inequality, participation, neoliberalism, post-colonialism, peripheries-peripherality, post-growth, privatisation, sustainability, social justice and the just city—to name only a few—are all susceptible to conformorality.

In this context, the conference welcomes contributions that critically discuss conformorality in urban studies and invites scholars to investigate this issue from their own perspectives and experiences.
• To what extent does conformorality affect your research?
• Why does the community align on certain values?
• To what extent is conformorality a problem (or an opportunity)?
• What other ideas/views does conformorality hinder? How can we overcome it?

Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdAm9PCFkVZJsdWT5StVYD4U1FUyVsP2Q4IwYzEcSS-L-JxAg/viewform

Deadline for abstract submissions

Authors are invited to submit an abstract of a maximum of 250 words by 4 June 2023 using a Google Form. Authors will be notified of decisions on their abstracts by the end of June 2023.

Themed special issue 

Authors of certain selected abstracts will be offered the chance to contribute to a themed special issue of a peer-reviewed journal. The organisers will provide further information at that time.

Venue 

ILS – Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development (Dortmund)

Contacts 

Stefano Cozzolino and Anita De Franco

Inspirational references

Alshaalan, H., & Gummerum, M. (2022). Conformity on moral, social conventional and decency issues in the United Kingdom and Kuwait. International Journal of Psychology, 57(2), 261–270.
Chituc, V., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2020). Moral conformity and its philosophical lessons. Philosophical Psychology, 33(2), 262–282.
Cialdini, R. B., & Goldstein, N. J. (2004). Social influence: Compliance and conformity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 591–621.
Farrow, K., Grolleau, G., & Ibanez, L. (2017). Social norms and pro-environmental behavior: A review of the evidence. Ecological Economics, 140, 1–13.
Kelly, D. (2011). Yuck! The nature and moral significance of disgust. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.
Kelly, M., Ngo, L., Chituc, V., Huettel, S., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2017). Moral conformity in online interactions: Rational justifications increase influence of peer opinions on moral judgments. Social Influence, 12(2–3), 57–68.
Kirchherr, J. (2022). Bullshit in the sustainability and transitions literature: A provocation. Circular Economy and Sustainability, 1–6.
Lisciandra, C., Postma-Nilsenová, M., & Colombo, M. (2013). Conformorality. A study on group conditioning of normative judgment. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 4, 751–764.
Pluckrose, H., & Lindsay, J.A. (2020). Cynical theories. Pitchstone Publishing.
Roberts, S. O., Ho, A. K., & Gelman, S. A. (2019). The role of group norms in evaluating uncommon and negative behaviors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(2), 374–387.
Roughley, N. (2018). From shared intentionality to moral obligation? Some worries. Philosophical Psychology, 31(5), 736–754.
Roughley, N., & Bayertz, K. (Eds.) (2019). The normative animal? On the anthropological significance of social, moral, and linguistic norms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schmidt, T. (2016). Accounting for moral conflicts. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 19, 9–19.
Szigeti, A. (2015). Sentimentalism and moral dilemmas. Dialectica, 69(1), 1–22.
Turiel, E. (2002). The culture of morality: Social development, context, and conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.