Conference November 10, 2013 : Cities, risks and disasters : new experiences in China and in France.

Risks and disasters are social phenomenas rather than natural events striking societies from the outside and are caused by social and economic vulnerabilities. 
In these contexts of more or less uncertainty and of high social and physical liability, collective action and social mobilizations emerge and reveal new forms of citizenship in a new local and global public space. In this respect, we would like to analyze how new forms of citizenships are productive of new social exchanges, new solidarities, new moral economies, related to social inequalities in contemporary societies in turmoil. How are States and institutions, how are individuals and social groups involved in the fabrication of new moral economies when they are confronted to risks of health, food, flood, environment ? How are new forms of citizenships emerging in the assemblages of institutional actors, individuals, social groups ? Individuals and social groups compete for material and social goods, emergent moral economies produce new social and economic frontiers, new social and moral orders where individuals and groups have to occupy new positions and statuses. 
In the case of disasters we will consider continuities and discontinuities by introducing a before and an after ; disaster is to be understood as a specific moment within social and societal processes and is to be reinscribed as a specific moment within social temporality vulnerability will be viewed as a socio-historical process of production and distribution of social fragility. Does ecological violence produce economic, social and moral violence or not ? In certain places, times and situations it could be so, but the theoretical challenge is to understand how after disaster forms of social and moral destruction, recreation, conflict and conciliation coexist together, and the social dynamics co-emergent with these interactions. Victims suffer from physical and emotional trauma. Therefore, social restoration and re-creation after natural disasters involve physical dimension as well as moral dimensions, including spirituality. Beliefs and religious organizations play an important part in the processes of restoration and re-creation of society. 

In this respect, this conference is a program which seeks to understand, in uncertain contexts, the complexity of the process of recreation of Society, in European and Asian contexts, by articulating an approach of new social life, collective mobilizations and public space in CitiesPresentations are about the following topics :

• Session 1 : Risks, disasters and crisis ;
• Session 2 : Risks , disasters and mobilizations ;
• Session 3 : Risks, spatial and social differentiation ;
• Session 4 : Life exposed and new inequalities