ISA Working Group Announcement
This year, the Governing Council approved a proposal for three sections (ALIAS, Environmental Studies, and Human Rights) to create Working Groups during the conference.
The ESS Working Group theme is “Governing the Environment”. Recent environmental studies scholarship has produced much insight into rules governing human behavior and its impact on the environment. We know quite a bit about international negotiations, regimes, and organizations setting boundaries for the behavior of states. Similarly, comparative scholarship has produced a wealth of knowledge on domestic environmental regulations. In addition to such IR and comparative inquiries, a more recent branch of research studies rule-making by non-state entities such as firms and NGOs. Given this proliferation of thinking in analytically distinct dimensions of environmental rule-making it seems necessary to compare notes across these bodies of scholarship and explore what we have learned about rules regarding the environment. How may they differ depending on the rule-maker? How may they interact with (or contradict) each other?
Marcus Schaper, ESS member and webmaster, will be serving as the Group Coordinator for the ESS Working Group. The group will begin with a half-day workshop to be held on Saturday, February 14, the day before the 2009 Annual Convention begins. Two follow-up meetings will be held during the conference itself on Monday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon. Additionally, participants will attend three regular ISA panels of their choice sponsored by the ESS Section. The workshop and subsequent meetings will combine working in small groups (coordinated by scholarly interest) with working as a large group in order to ensure the optimal combination of community and intensity. Discussion will be focused on thinking about the analytically distinct dimensions of environmental rule-making and comparing notes across bodies of scholarship to explore what we have learned about rules regarding the environment.
This proposal comes with funding of $130/participant (for a limited number of slots – 12/section) to help offset the additional hotel costs associated with traveling to the conference early. ISA’s Governing Council seeks to offer everyone a fair chance to participate in the very limited number of slots for the Working Groups, so people will be accepted into the groups on a first come, first served basis starting on October 8 at 1:00 EST. The number of participants eligible to receive funding for this project is limited, but there will be some additional slots for people to participate without receiving funding. If you would consider participating without funding, you should indicate this on the enrollment page. If you do not get into a group initially, there will be a wait list established in case someone is unable to participate. Workshop and Enrollment details are posted on the ISA webpage at: http://www.isanet.org/isa_working_groups_2009/
A limited number of slots are available on a first-come basis. Registration will close once 25 people have registered at http://www.isanet.org/isa_working_groups_2009/participation-form-enviro.html.
