In November and December 2024, HEPPsters welcome people to discuss the sexual and social contracts at a SKY doctoral course with guest teachers Jenny Gunnarson Payne (Södertörn University) and Annika Teppo (University of Helsinki). The course is structured around Carole Pateman’s book The Sexual Contract and social contract literature as a prompt for collaborative discussions around how social and sexual contract(s) emerge in relation to the participants’ research. Participants are welcome to bring their ideas on various kinds of gendered social contracts from marriage and employment contracts to welfare and environmental contracts in formal and informal settings and reflect their nature as tools to control subjected people. Among other issues, discussions will critically cover power relations, patriarchy, and womanhood in order to deliberate the classical social contract theories from Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, and potential criticisms of Pateman's conception of sexual contract from the perspectives of contemporary gender, sexuality, and queer studies.
The course starts with an open seminar event on 22 November and continues as an overnight retreat from 11 to 12 December. To apply for the course, please fill out this form by 18 November 2024.
The open seminar event explores the seminal book of the late Carole Pateman The Sexual Contract as feminist criticism in the context of social contract theory. We start with the review of social contract theorising in the past and the present, with Nathanael Collin-Jaeger from the American University in Paris. He has been reviewing literature and working on the history of social contract theory in the Continuous Constraction of Resilient Social Contracts (CO3) horizon project. Then we move on to anthropology and explore how social contract as a heuristic can be inspirational and lead to new conceptualisations in research practice especially, when exploring the limits of the social contract. The speech given by Professor Annika Teppo from Uppsala University and the CO3 project is an extension of her professorial lecture. Final discussion will be with political theorists Anna Björk from Demos Helsinki, Szilvia Horváth, Paul-Erik Korvela from University of Helsinki, as well as Jenny Gunnarsson Payne, professor of ethnology at the Södertörn University. The panel is chaired by Emilia Palonen, the leader of the Helsinki Hub on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation (HEPP) and programme director in Datafication at the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences (HSSH), University of Helsinki. The event is a kick-off for the SKY doctoral course on Sexual contract vs. social contract 11-12 December, which also features Jenny Gunnarsson Payne and Annika Teppo. The aim of the course is to explore feminist classics and critics that can be helpful when we explore power structures in contemporary politics and society including the academia.
The event takes place at University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Science Faculty meeting room (1066), Unioninkatu 37, and online (the link will be delivered for the registered participants) at 13-16, 22 November 2024. You can find the schedule below.
For coffees and cake sign up with this form by Monday 18 November. Also online participation requires registration.
Schedule:
13-13.10 Opening words
13.10–13.45 Nathanael Colin-Jaeger (American University in Paris, CO3 project): Social contract theory overview
13.45–14 Break (coffee and snacks)
14–14.45 Annika Teppo (Uppsala University): Chasing the repugnant other: A perspective from anthropology
14.45–15.00 Break
15–16 Roundtable on Carole Pateman's Sexual Contract and Social Contract Theory: Anna Björk (Demos Helsinki), Szilvia Horváth (University of Helsinki), Emilia Palonen (University of Helsinki), Jenny Gunnarson Payne (TBC, Södertörn University)