Workpackage 1 description

Objectives

For a selection of five existential fields, KATARSIS providez a State-of-the Art in the literature on the consequences of inequality and exclusion (minor focus) and creative strategies to handle or overcome these (major focus). These five existential fields are:



Labour market, employment strategies and social economy (WP1.1);
Education and training (WP1.2);
Housing and Environment (WP1.3);
Health and Environment (WP1.4);
Governance and Democracy (WP1.5)

For each field, thematic, theoretical and methodological foci and possible cooperation between fields and between research teams will be identified.

Description of work

Prepare survey papers for each existential field, according to the following model:

(i) Definition of existential field and of main mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion, with a major focus on creative, socially innovative strategies to overcome conditions of severe inequality;
(ii) Identification of: particular foci per country (region, city); truly international approaches;
(iii) overview of theoretical dimensions, taking into account school of thought and communities of science and practice which developed them (contextual theory surveying, with a sociology of knowledge approach);
(iv) overview of main empirical information concerning ‘good’ and ‘best’ practice to overcome conditions of exclusion and deprivation;
(v) identification of relations to literature in other existential fields:
(vi) identification of particular bottom-up creative and socially innovative initiatives (links to WP2 and WP4);
(vii) identification of dimensions of multi-level governance (link to WP3);
(viii) identification of methodological dimensions (links with WP5);
(ix) identification of key-researchers in this and other fields, who could play a key role in the coordination of future research within and among fields;
(ix) executive abstract per existential field.

Deliverables

Survey papers per existential field: D1.1 through D1.5

Focussed workshops: WS1 (on WP1.1 through WP1.2) and WS2 (on WP1.3 and WP1.5; with special session on methodological dimensions of research on socially innovative initiatives in conditions of severe exclusion).

Milestones and expected results

Identification of socially innovative initiatives to overcome severe conditions of exclusion as well as theories contributing to identify and analyse these.

Comparative insights on the use and institutionalization of such strategies in different countries in Europe, Australia and North-America – possibly Latin America through wider research community contacts, P1 and P14.

Identification of key-research institutions and researchers who could become involved in long-term coordination and integration of research on socially creative initiatives