17-19 September 2006 the International Conference "Translation of Global Governance Designs - the role of civil society in transition countries" will be held in St. Petersburg at the Centre for Independent Social Research.

The conference will be co-sponsored by the CISR, IUFRO Working Group 6.12 Forest Policy and Governance, SUNY Buffalo Law School and the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, University of Joensuu and the Finnish Academy of Sciences, Faculty of Forest and Environmental Science at Freiburg University, ENGREF in France, others to be added.

Global governance increasingly involves the development of governance 'designs' by global actors who then find means for implementing those designs in specific localities. Civil society is central to this local deployment process, especially through environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), poverty alleviation programs, efforts to stem illegal activities, models of good governance, and social responsibility programs for business. These civil society entities participate directly in the global design networks and form the networks of translation to localized contexts.
The purpose of this conference is to explore how centers of global design are organized, who participates, how the work is done, and what discourses are used or created.

For more infromation see infoletter and conference programme.

Within the framework of the conference the lecture by John Urry will take place. More...