The Long Duree of the Far Right

 

Aesthetics

THE LONG DURÉE OF THE FAR RIGHT

The Longue Durée of the Far Right: Ideology, Organization, State Formation and International Relations

October 2012 (Queen Mary, University of London)

 

Call for Papers

The (re)emergence of far-right parties and social movements in various parts of the world – and particularly in Europe – in recent years has been widely discussed in the press and in academic commentary. In contrast to their ‘revolutionary’ bedfellows on the communist left, since the end of the Cold War far-right parties have come to form a significant and disturbing part of the political geography in a number of countries. Whilst their influence has been uneven – from participating in governing coalitions in Western Europe (the Austrian Freedom Party and the Italian Lega Nord) and in India (the Bharatiya Janata Party) to spawning a violent Islamophobic street movement (the English Defence League in the UK), to forming a major component of anti-imperialist movements across much of the Islamic world – their general appearance across time and space suggests that the current era is comparable to the earlier historical conjunctures of far-right mobilization in the late nineteenth century and inter-war periods. The varied forms of far-right have combined with their contrasting ideological dimensions, which has made the taxonomy of far-right something of an academic industry in itself. In particular, the far-right has come to be divided over its ‘post-fascist’ rhetorical commitment to (liberal) democracy as opposed to an authoritarian and demagogic populism and also between a neo-fascist commitment to a statist and protectionist model of capitalism and an embrace of much of the policy formulas of neo-liberalism by some strands of the contemporary far-right.

These developments raise a number of analytical and political questions. How distinct are these contemporary manifestations of the far-right compared to the previous historical forms of the far-right? How analytically useful is the concept of fascism in describing the generic far-right? What are the social bases of the far-right – past and present? Which methodological framework provides the most useful analytical tool to examine and understand the far-right? What of the relationship between the evolving dynamics of uneven capitalist development and geopolitical order on the determination of far-right movements – historical and contemporary?

The aim of this workshop is to promote an inter-disciplinary engagement with these issues through bringing together scholars from a range of different subject areas (IR, IPE, Geography, History, Sociology, Comparative Politics and Political Theory) to re-think the linkages between the historical, sociological and international dimensions of the far-right – as ideology, movement and state – over the longue durée from its emergence as a distinct and modern form of politics in the late nineteenth century to its more recent re-emergence in their intertwining local, national and international contexts.

Possible themes for consideration, but not limited to:

Comparative historical case studies of far-right movements and states

Analytical issues of comparisons and comparative methodologies

International relations of fascist state formation processes

Far-right movements in colonial and post-colonial contexts

Evolving class and social compositions of the far-right

Political economies of fascist states

Distinctions and relations between ideologies, movements and states

Geopolitical ordering and far-right movements and states – imperial, Cold War and post-Cold War eras

Capitalist development, uneven, combined or  otherwise and conjunctures of crisis on processes of far-right emergence, evolution and transformation

Geographical and spatial variations in the far-right – urban/rural, local/national, north/south

Aesthetic representations in architecture, art and culture

Racialized conceptions of space and territoriality in ideologies and state practices

 

Please send proposals (of no more than 500 words), along with biographical and institutional information to Rick Saull (r.g.saull@qmul.ac.uk) or Alex Anievas

(alexander.anievas@st-annes.ox.ac.uk) by June 4, 2012

 

**END**

 

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

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The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

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Return to the Street

Taking to the Streets

RETURN TO THE STREET

27-28 June 2012
Goldsmiths, University of London

A two day conference exploring the shifting role of the street as discourse and real physical space in the context of contemporary culture and politics

Identity formation and public debate do not simply occur online or through new media technologies. As the recent excessive imprisonment of those involved in the UK riots this summer demonstrated, the control and regulation of real bodies within real spaces is still very much at stake. Within the context of riots, protests and occupations in the UK and worldwide – the street appears to have become once more the space where people gather to be heard and counted. Considering this ‘return’ (although it is questionable whether we every really left the street) how might a line be drawn between the type of discourse which pays lip service to banal, neoliberal fetishised notions of street as site and object of subversive cool – incorporating graffiti, fashion, skateboarding, hiphop – and a more critical and engaged examination of processes of exclusion, confrontation and violence which constitute the everyday reality of life on and in the street. The street is and should not simply be flagged up as a site where power relations are toyed with as part of an ongoing Damien Hirst-meets-Banksyesque flirtation between public and private space. Such fetishisation ignores or glosses over notions of territory, surveillance and fear.

Yet at every moment attempts to challenge existing power structures from within the space of the street are at risk of being recuperated in the service of bourgeois, neoliberal modes of consumption. The return to pedestrianised zones in major European cities is frequently part of gentrification processes and occurs within privately owned spaces with the aim of encouraging consumerism rather than increased social interaction precluded by motorised city spaces. The festival atmosphere at protests and occupations might also be considered not simply as a means of creating greater solidarity amongst participants but as embodying a Bakhtinian form of carnival in which the political impetus of the event or movement exhausts itself in a media circus of spectacle and rhetoric staged between protestors and law-enforcement. Similarly, how does the crowd or the collective end up reproducing existing forms of exclusion in claiming to speak for the masses as a homogeneous whole? Those whose access to the street is already restricted due to race, gender or disability must frequently concede their voices to those for whom the street is taken for granted as usable, occupiable and negotiable space. At the same time, a more critical stance is needed towards both the romanticisation and demonization of the crowd in public space. It is, for example, naive to think that issues such as the systemic street harassment of women in Cairo disappeared completely during the occupation of Tahrir Square yet this was the rhetoric widely presented. Conversely, how might the pervasive politics of fear which posits the crowd as unruly mob or herd, keeping people off the streets, through the imposition of curfews and devices like the mosquito be redressed? What needs to be done to encourage greater mobilisation on the street from different groups and individuals?

The aim of this conference is to rethink the street both in terms of its radical potential as site where dissent, critique and change can all be achieved whilst remaining critical as to the limits of such radicality. Where does the street lead us and what happens off the street? How might we avoid the dead ends and turf wars involved both in conceptualising and using the street? How might we set about building a new politics of the street? We welcome proposals for papers, discussions, short films, mini-workshops and other interventions engaging with the above issues and questions.

Topics might include but are not limited to:
- street as fetish object
- societies of discipline and control
- inclusion/exclusion/exchange
- street as site of resistance/containment
- subversive potential/impotential of street art and fashion
- hiphop struggles and activism
- surveillance – cctv and self-mapping apps
- politics of the crowd
- negotiating the street – strategies and tactics
- territory/circulation
- politics of fear
- living and working on the street
- off the street

Abstracts/proposals of 300-500 words should be sent to: S.Fuggle@gold.ac.uk by 3 February 2012.

Programme will be confirmed in early March 2012.

Organised by the Centre for Cultural Studies with the generous support of the Department of Media and Communications, PACE and theGraduateSchool, Goldsmiths.

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Power and Struggle

Battle in Seattle

POWER AND STRUGGLE

This is the second call for papers for the 2012 Midwest Labor and Working-Class History (MLWCH) Graduate Student Colloquium, to be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on February 17 and 18, 2012.

Paper proposals are due by December 1, 2011; completed papers are due by January 9, 2012.

Many thanks
Dawson Barrett
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

***Call for Papers***

* *

*Power & Struggle:  An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Colloquium*

* *

*2012 Midwest Labor and Working-Class History (MLWCH) Graduate Student
Colloquium*

*University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee*

*February 17 & 18, 2012*

(Paper Proposals by December 1, 2011, and Completed Papers by January 9, 2012)

From the occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol in February and March to Occupy Wall Street and a general strike in Oakland, California, 2011 has been a break-through year for American protest movements.  These events demand a new look at “histories from below,” particularly struggles against neo-liberalism and global capitalism in its various forms.

Organizers of the 2012 Midwest Labor and Working-Class History Graduate Student Colloquium (MLWCH) are soliciting papers of approximately twenty-five pages broadly related to the following themes: the study of work and working people, labor history, rank-and-file workers, direct action, nonviolence, grassroots organizing, alternative and industrial unionism, labor law, movements for social justice, radicalism, anti-racism, liberation theology and the prison industrial complex.  We also welcome papers that explore innovative approaches to the practice of working-class history.

* *

Of particular interest are papers that critique, and suggest new directions for, various sub-disciplines related to working-class history, labor scholarship, or historiographies of peoples’ struggles; papers that draw upon historical or contemporary movements that have challenged neoliberal labor policies and practices; those that examine transnational workers’ or peoples’ struggles against global capitalism in its various forms; those that draw upon culturally specific or coded understandings (gender, race, ethnicity, etc.) of interactions with capital; and those that analyze working-class artistic expressions (visual art, music, etc.).

All events, including a keynote panel on political struggles in Wisconsin and beyond, will be open to the public, and we encourage attendance from a wide array of scholars, activists, teachers, citizens, and students.

Please direct paper proposals, CVs, and questions regarding the conference, travel, and lodging accommodations to: gradconferenceMKE@gmail.com.

 

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The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Volumizer: http://glennrikiowski.blogspot.com

Fordism and Post-Fordism Conference

Model T Ford

FORDISM AND POST-FORDISM CONFERENCE

International Conference

Fordism and Post-Fordism: Cycles and transformations in contemporary society

New University of Lisbon, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences

10th and 11th February 2012

 

The development of capitalism throughout the 20th century has accelerated the pace of transformations in the field of production, with a far-reaching impact upon several domains of social activity: from school to work, from family ties to state institutions. The existence of economical cycles tied to the development of technical, political and social paradigms has therefore captured the attention of many researchers, who have categorized historical periods according to a series of axes: the predominant forms of relation between labour and capital, the industrial sectors that push economic growth and the technological innovations with the greatest impact on the productive process.

In this context, the term “Fordism” has been put forward to frame the historical period emerging in the first half of the 20th century and characterized by the massification of both production and consumption, highly developed processes of mechanization, rationalization and standardisation embodied in assembly lines, the central role of the automobile and petrochemical industries, sophisticated techniques of regulation of work conditions and growing state intervention in economic activities.

The term “Post-Fordism”, in turn, has been used to define the ensemble of transformations occurring, since the 1970’s, in spheres such as the organization of labour, the nature of state intervention and the 

technological paradigms applied to production. Different notions have emerged, aiming to characterize such transformations. “Neofordism”, “lean production”, “Toyotism”, “Late capitalism”, “Biopolitics” or, 

more recently, “Informationalism” and “finance-dominated accumulation regime” are some of them. The term “Post-Fordism”, however, has been widely accepted in specialized literature because it leaves room for the plasticity of a multidimensional process in permanent evolution.

This conference aims at questioning the logics and dynamics of both paradigms, the historical contexts of their emergence, the shifts they represented and the conflicts they shaped. It is open to researchers looking to present papers dealing with at least one of the following subjects:

-          Technology, Science and organization of labour;

-          State, regulation and economic planning;

-          Labour struggles, social conflict and resistance;

-          Culture, leisure and consumption.

 

These papers (Max. 10 pages/20 minutes) may address specific subjects (such as the introduction of Taylorism in a factory or industrial branch, the settings of a collective bargain, a plan to stabilize wages and prices or a strike, for example) or wider problems (like the characterization and interpretation of the paradigms themselves). Papers that address more than one of these subjects or the transition between both paradigms will be particularly welcomed.

Paper proposals must be sent to coloquio.fordismo@gmail.com and should include: title, abstract (Max. 300 words), study field, institutional affiliation and e-mail address.

The deadline for proposals is October 31^st 2011.

The authors of the selected proposals shall not be notified until November 15th 2011, and invited to send the texts of their papers until December 31st 2011. The final program of the conference shall be made public in January 2012.

The conference’s official languages will be Portuguese and English.

Raquel Varela, Postdoctoral Research Fellow FCT, Instituto de História Contemporânea, Universidade Nova de Lisboa Study Group on Labor and Social Conflicts, Av. de Berna, nº 26 -C, 1069-061 Lisboa, + 351 21 794 09 21, Portugal. Honorary Fellow IISG (Amsterdam): http://www.iisg.nl/staff/rva.php and raquel_cardeira_varela@yahoo.co.uk

 

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Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

International Communication Conference

Info Tech

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION CONFERENCE

10 November 2011, London, UK

http://www.collegeofteachers.ac.uk/events/communication-conference?utm_source=t&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=unicom

Conference Focus:

The year 2011 has been designated by the UK Government as the National Year of Communication, putting the importance of speech, language and communication firmly on the public radar. The College of Teachers is supporting this by holding an International Communication Conference at the Institute of Education.

The conference features

Presentations from 8 speakers
A choice of afternoon of workshops
Panel discussion and audience Q&A
Opportunity to network with other delegates and speakers

Speakers include

Jean Gross

The Communication Champion
Jonathon Douglas

Director of the National Literacy Trust
Dr Elizabeth Vallance

Virginia Beardshaw
CEO of ‘I Can’

To be held on 10 November 2011 in the Jeffery Hall at the prestigious Institute of Education, London, UK

Workshop A

Julie Westrop / Bev Bird: Engaging with families to develop communication and literacy – The Cafe Programme in Norfolk

or

Professor Peter Chatterton: Effective learning, working and communicating in a digital age

Workshop B

Professor Rosemary Sage: Identifying narrative levels for learning success

or

Daryle Abrahams: Using analytical psychology as the basis for differentiation in the classroom to understand preferred learning styles

Workshop C

Professor Bozydar L.J. Kaczmarek: Narrative is key to learning? Research evidence from all ages and
abilities

Our International Communication conference is aimed at:
Teachers
Parents
People working with children
Young people
Commissioners
Providers of services

Prices
Non- Members: 95.00
Current Member of The College of Teachers: 75.00
Early bird rate

We have an early bird discount of 20 per ticket available until Monday 24 October 2011.

Please use discount code COMMSCONF2011 at the checkout

Register Now!

To register your place at our Communication conference visit: http://www.collegeofteachers.ac.uk/events/communication-conference
http://www.collegeofteachers.ac.uk/events/communication-conference?utm_source=b&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=unicom

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

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New Agendas in Social Movement Studies

Social Movements

NEW AGENDAS IN SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES

Conference announcement / call for abstracts for New Agendas in Social Movement Studies
National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Saturday Nov 26th 2011

Keynote address:
“New directions for social movement studies?”
Dr Cristina Flesher Fominaya, University of Aberdeen
(Interface journal, European Social Movements Research Network)

Abstract deadline Oct 1st: conference themes and details at
http://sociology.nuim.ie or from theresa.okeefe@nuim.ie

Centre for Politics, Power and Society, Department of Sociology, NUIM & “Critical Political Thought, Activism and Alternative Futures” research cluster.

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Higher Education in the Liquid Modern Era

Higher Education Crisis

HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE LIQUID MODERN ERA

 BSA Regional Postgraduate Day School Event 2011

Higher Education in the Liquid Modern Era: Swirling Down the Drain?

The Bauman Institute, University of Leeds, Friday 9 September, 2011

Last remaining places! Book now: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/postgrad.htm

The metaphor of liquidity is used in Zygmunt Bauman’s work to represent the loss of security felt as more the ‘solid’ institutions and ‘traditional’ patterns of social relations of modernity break down/dissolve in the contemporary world. A striking example of this can be found to exist in the situation facing contemporary participants – students, teachers and researchers – in higher education (HE), especially those working in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

The ‘traditional’ pursuits of academia are being increasingly undermined by changes which are aimed at subordinating free enquiry to the shifting demands of the marketplace. The proposed changes to HE funding outlined by the current UK coalition government seem likely to further exacerbate the tendency towards instrumentalism in HE, while simultaneously destabilizing employment in both the knowledge and the culture industries in the UK for many years to come.

In light of these recent proposals, and the likely assault on non-STEM subjects that will ensue, we feel that it would be productive to consider as postgraduate students the likely landscape which we are about to enter. We aim to do this by drawing on Bauman, who has written and recently lectured on the role of sociologists and higher education in contemporary society (‘Education in Liquid Modernity’, 2005; Sociology – Whence and Whither?: Speech from the Bauman Institute Launch Conference, 2010), as well as others, in order to produce a written statement in defence of social science.

Whilst this will be a collaborative effort, with input predominantly from sociology postgraduates, we envisage inviting a small number of postgraduates and academics from other disciplines to contribute their ideas and efforts. Through this, we suggest that a more comprehensive understanding of the common problems facing those across the social sciences, at different stages in their academic lives, can help us to produce a justification of sociology’s continuing value and importance beyond narrow, mechanistic definitions of ‘impact’.

The aim of the event is to provide a space for postgraduate social scientists to engage in critical reflection on the proposed changes to higher education funding in the UK and their implications for our so-called ‘knowledge’ society, particularly through drawing on the insights provided in the work of Zygmunt Bauman on the insecurities and uncertainties of life in liquid modern times.

The event will consist of a mix of papers from postgraduate students, three keynote speakers, panel discussion, and collaborative workshop sessions. Postgraduate students will receive first preference for places.

Registration fees: BSA Members: Free Non-members: £25

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk  

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com  

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com  

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

38th Annual Association of Art Historians Conference and Bookfair

Books

38th ANNUAL ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS CONFERENCE AND BOOKFAIR

The Open University, Milton Keynes
29 – 31 March 2012

Association of Art Historians (AAH) Conference: Aesthetics and Politics (Again?)

Session Convenors:

Alexander García Düttmann, Goldsmiths College, ADuttmann@aol.com

James Hellings, Teeside University j_hellings@hotmail.com

34 years ago New Left Books published Aesthetics and Politics, collecting together ‘the key texts of the classic debate within German Marxism’ by Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Brecht and Lukács. The collections editors (Rodney Livingstone, Perry Anderson and Francis Mulhern), assembled texts with coherent (if almost entirely antagonistic) inter-relationships – in what they refer to as an incomparable ‘tradition of major aesthetic debate’, held between the 1930s and 1950s in ‘Germany (…); the classical land of aesthetic thought inEurope’. The editors subtitles are fantastically revealing of perceived conflict; ‘Bloch against Lukács / Lukács against Bloch’, ‘Brecht against Lukács’, subtle condemnation; ‘Adorno on Lukács’, ‘Adorno on Brecht’ conviviality; ‘Benjamin with Brecht’, and conciliation; ‘Adorno to Benjamin / Benjamin to Adorno’.

Ideological differences over art (and its histories: Realism, Expressionism, Modernism) were the order of the day. But what’s happened to political aesthetics, Marxist or otherwise, since this golden age? Can we still speak of an ‘aesthetic field’ conditioned by ‘the two recurrent poles of all culture still subject to capital’, being either ‘autistically advanced or collusively popular’.

In recent years, Rancière has done most to ‘widen participation’ by opening up Left aesthetics to encompass the people and places who disrupt this either/ or – but (speaking with Eagleton) ‘how are we to receive and appropriate these polemics today?’ Potential contributors are asked to address the tenor of contemporary inter-relationships of aesthetics and politics by re-interpreting the ideas and authors of this past. The panel-session seeks to stage a dialectic of (dis-)agreement.

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Petrocultures

Culture

PETROCULTURES

Call for Papers, Panels and/or Workshop Proposals

Petrocultures: Oil, Energy, Culture

University of Alberta: September 6, 7th and 8th, 2012

 

The “Petrocultures: Oil, Energy, Culture” conference will take place on September 6, 7th and 8th, 2012, at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada).  Keynote speakers include Allan Stoekl (Penn State University), Warren Cariou (University of Manitoba) and Ursula Biemann (video artist, Switzerland). 

Petrocultures will bring together scholars, writers, filmmakers and artists from around the world who are engaged in an exploration of the social and cultural dimensions and impacts of oil and energy.  The conference will examine and (re)assess how energy has been and remains an intrinsic part of socio-political life and cultural productivity, with a focus on two areas of research:

1)  How does our understanding of socio-cultural objects, events and phenomena change if we frame an analysis of them explicitly in relation to oil (and energy more generally)? What insights would we gain across the disciplines from such a theoretical/methodological maneuver? For instance, what might happen if we frame cultural and intellectual periods (as we do in the study of literature) not in terms of movements (e.g., modernism), nations (British modernism), or centuries (18th, 19th, 20th…), but in relation to dominant forms of energy at any given moment?

2)  How do energy resources that fuel the exploitation of the environment impact not only everyday life but also the form and content of its representation? What is the potential of these cultural representations produced through multiple technologies of publication and artistic/communicative production (e.g., art, film, literature), to rupture and/or change the ways in which we live with and relate to oil? 

 

We invite papers, panels and workshop proposals that take up the above questions as well as contributions that address any of the wide range of topics related to petrocultures:

 

● labour in petrocultures (influx of temporary foreign workers, transient labour forces, the rights or lack thereof of labour, etc.)

● the composition of communities in historical and contemporary oil economies

● education in energy societies

● health (sex, drugs, addiction)

● the intersection of cultural and environmental issues (resource management, water and oil, etc.)

● Aboriginal cultures and societies (land and mineral rights, community safety, race in petrocultures, etc.)

● gender issues and women’s rights in male dominated labour markets

● politics and social-political life in petro-states

● and the impacts of all of these issues on forms of cultural production (art, literature, film, etc.) that attempt to represent and address the socio-cultural realities of living alongside oil technologies.  

 

Papers will be accepted based on the merit of the proposed study, originality of approach, and fit with the aims and theme of the conference.  Graduate students are especially encouraged to apply. Please indicate when you submit your abstract whether you are interested in also participating (at your own cost) in a three day excursion on (September 9th- 11th) to Northern Alberta to tour the oil/tar sands. A selection of papers and presentations from the 2012 conference will be published in an edited collection on Petrocultures by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Deadline for submission: October 15, 2011.  Decisions will be announced by December 1st, 2011.  

Please send all proposals to: petrocultures@gmail.com (c/o Imre Szeman and Sheena Wilson)

 

Types of submissions:

· 15-20 minute individual presentation: conference paper.

· 45-60 minute panel/roundtable (3-4 presenters).

· 90-minute workshop (hands-on learning, interactive): Interactive sessions that encourage participant involvement. 

 

These workshops can be focused on generating discussion and recording ideas on specific subjects and themes.  These workshops can also encourage creative responses to oil and energy (e.g., through a writing workshop, a visual arts workshop etc.)

Propose an individual paper: Please send a 250 word abstract and a 100 word biography, as well as your contact information

Propose a panel: Please send a 250 word abstract for the panel, with a descriptive title for each presentation, and a 50 word bio and contact information for all members of the panel. When submitting the proposal, please copy it to all panel-participants to facilitate future correspondences. 

Propose a workshop: The Petrocultures conference will be the ideal venue for exploring theoretical and practical approaches to oil and energy in culture.  If you would like to lead a workshop session either independently or with other presenters, please submit a 250 word abstract for the workshop, with a 100 word bio for all workshop leaders.

Petrocultures is supported through funding from the Kule Institute for Advanced Study (UniversityofAlberta), Campus Saint Jean (UniversityofAlberta) and the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies.

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Designing and Transforming Capitalism

Capitalism

DESIGNING AND TRANSFORMING CAPITALISM

Call for Papers

Designing and Transforming Capitalism
Thursday/Friday 9-10 February 2012
Aarhus University, Denmark

Confirmed keynote speakers: Luc Boltanski (France), Katherine Gibson (Australia), Anne Balsamo (USA), Campbell Jones (New Zealand)

When all alternatives to capitalism seem exhausted or abandoned, creative and transformative energies and ideas descend upon capitalism itself. In practice and theory, in daily life choices and organizational changes, in legislative initiatives and academia, in initiatives taken by individuals and groups interesting work is being done to explore and use a transformative approach to capitalist processes trying to realize immaterial values, human resources and utopias within a capitalist framework.

In Marxist and neo-Marxist as well as liberal theories, capitalism seems to be the economically strong option without alternatives and the accumulative logic of capitalism the only possible way of economic thinking in contemporary societies. Nevertheless we see lots of signs of non-accumulative logics ruling traditional capitalist producers, consumers as well as traditional critics of capitalism. Green capitalism addresses traditional capitalism’s exploitative and instrumentalist approach to nature; Corporate Social Responsibility tries to tackle social issues locally and globally from within corporations; Social entrepreneurs are using the capitalist business model to solve pressing problems such as poverty or lack of clean water; designers are weaving creative solutions into the commodities and practices of our every day life. It seems to grow ever more difficult to distinguish between working within capitalism or working in order to change capitalism as capitalism seems to change from within rather than from without.

This conference addresses the question of capitalism’s transformative potentials and the limits to such transformations, if any such exists? How malleable are the logics and processes of capitalism? How is capitalism ceaselessly practiced and constantly redesigned? We aim to bring together people working within various fields often disconnected from each other but all centering their work on empirical and theoretical studies of how people and societies live with, deal with, negotiate, fight with and transform capitalism.

The conference will have four streams, each with its own set of themes. The listed themes are meant as suggestive and non-exhaustive. 

 
We invite paper proposals within:

Political capitalism (coordinators: Morten Raffnsøe & Mikkel Thorup)

• New forms of labor and their politics
• Everyday life in capitalism
• Work inside and outside the market
• New forms of political action inside and outside capitalism
• Transforming ownership, aims and organization in capitalism
• Political action in the market, civil society and the state
• Politics of leadership and performance management
• Accounting for money, love, ethics or happiness?
• Critical accounting

Civic Capitalism (coordinators: Anne Ellerup Nielsen & Christian Olaf Christiansen)

• Corporate citizenship
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Ethical Capitalism
• Green Capitalism, Sustainability
• Stakeholder theories
• Sustainable investment
• Environmental development
• Social integration

Performative Capitalism (coordinators: Louise Fabian, Jonas Fritsch and Per Blenker)

• Self-organized communities as business opportunities
• Cultural citizenship
• Global Culture Industry
• Hyper, trans, cross, Re-phenomena
• Green bodies and environmental (online/offline) activism
• Posthumanitarian developments in charity work and communication
• Affect and vulnerability as tools of anti-capitalist mobilisation
• The commoditization of dissent
• Urban Interactions, Appropriations and Co-creativity in a design 
perspective

Consumer Capitalism (coordinators: Sophie Esmann Andersen & Carsten Stage)

• Anti-consumerism and consumer resistance
• Consumer movements, activism and cultural ideology
• Co-creation and co-creativity
• Consumer-citizenship or citizen-consumerism
• DIY consumer cultures
• Branded identities and brand hegemony

Please submit your abstract proposals (max 300 words) to Tina Friis (semtina@hum.au.dk ). For registration and further information look at the conference website: http://www.begivenhedskultur.dk/_events/2011/capitalism/.

 
Please indicate which stream your proposal refers to.

Deadline for paper proposal: October 15, 2011 (feedback on paper proposals November 1, 2011).

The conference is organized by the Departments of Aesthetics and Communication (Britta Timm Knudsen) and The Department of Culture and Society (Mikkel Thorup), Faculty of Arts and The Department of Language and Business Communication and Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences. Funded by The Aarhus University Research Foundation (AUFF) and The Velux Foundation.

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Critical Labour Studies – 8th Symposium 2012

Work

CRITICAL LABOUR STUDIES – 8th SYMPOSIUM 2012

Venue: The Universityof Salford, Greater Manchester, UK

Saturday 18th Sunday 19th February 2012

Call for Papers and Sessions

It is clear to researchers and activists, both in the trade union movement and universities, that global capitalism is increasingly shaping the worlds of work and employment. The imposition of this neo-liberal orthodoxy has many profound implications, not least that states seek to both de-legitimise workers’ opposition and marginalise their organisations. However, just as capitalism has embraced neo-liberal strategies, there has emerged a new politics of resistance that is varied and diverse, embracing: trade union and socialist organisations, green and ecological protest movements, anti-war activists, feminists, human rights campaigners and NGOs.  It is against this background that the Critical Labour Studies (CLS) symposium has aimed to bring together researchers and activists to discuss key features of work and employment from a radical and labour-focused perspective. We recognise that while left academic researchers participate in the usual round of mainstream conferences the scope for focused radical debate around these themes is actually quite limited. 

Through CLS we have developed an open working group and discussion forum that engages with many of the challenges facing researchers and trade unionists within the current environment of work and employment. By ’labour’, we anticipate, in the traditions of radical researchers over the ages, a broad understanding of social, economic and political agendas. To date, themes have included: race, identity and organising migrant workers, global unionism and organising internationally, the new ‘politics of production’, privatisation, outsourcing and offshoring, restructuring and alternative/inclusive research methodologies.  The list of themes and questions that concern us continues to develop over time, and the intention will be to reflect this evolving agenda at this year’s symposium. An ancillary objective is to engage in genuinely critical debate, rescuing this term from its co-option by mainstream agendas.

Building on the successes of the past six years, the forthcoming symposium will be structured as a series of plenary sessions. Each will be organised around a particular theme with speakers and discussants, followed by a broad discussion. It has been an important principle of CLS that the conference is not based on the convention of academic conferences with specific papers being presented in separate streams. Rather our intention has been to deepen discussion and debate, and to bring together researchers and labour/ union movement activists (where possible) in joint sessions.  All sessions are genuinely open and inclusive and involve a broad range of participants, from established academics to early-career researchers, and from established trade union officials to shop-floor representatives and grass-roots activists. The distinctive organising principles of CLS are, therefore, to assist unions and workers in dealing with the challenges faced in the neo-liberal world of work and employment. Ultimately, discussion of strategies and tactics are related to the broader aim of creating a socialist society.

Send proposals for presentations/sessions/papers to Dr Phoebe V Moore Carter: p.moore@salford.ac.uk

Deadline 16th September 2011

Join the Critical Labour Studies Email List: If you would like to be added to the CLS email list, please contact Jane Holgate at: j.holgate@londonmet.ac.uk 

Check out our website at: http://criticallabourstudies.org.uk/site/ 

This event is supported by Historical Materialism, Capital and Class, and the BUIRA Marxist Study Group.

 

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Radical Foucault – An International Conference

Michel Foucault

RADICAL FOUCAULT – AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Radical Foucault – An International Conference

September 8 & 9, 2011, 9.30am – 6.30pm
University of East London

The Centre for Cultural Studies Research at the University of East London is pleased to announce that registration is now open for Radical Foucault, a two day conference which will re-assess Foucault’s contribution to radical thought and the application of his ideas to contemporary politics. What does it mean to draw on Foucault as a resource for radical politics, and how are we to understand the politics which implicitly informs his work?

Keynote speakers:
Stuart Elden, Professor in the Department of Geography, Durham University.
Mark Kelly, Lecturer in Philosophy, Middlesex University.
David Macey, Special Professor in Translation, University of Nottingham
Anne Schwan, Lecturer in English Literature, Edinburgh Napier University
Stephen Shapiro, Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick University.
Couze Venn, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Theory at the Theory, Culture & Society Centre, Nottingham Trent University and Managing Editor and Review Editor of Theory, Culture & Society.

Two Days: £120
One Day: £70

To register, please go to http://uel.ac.uk/foucault

Please note that registration includes lunches and other refreshments during the conference, but not accommodation or evening meals.

We will plan a dinner for the Thursday evening nearer the time and will contact all delegates to invite them to take part, but payment for this will be organised separately.

The conference will take place in the East Building, University of East London, Docklands Campus, London, E16 2RD.

If you need information about accommodation near the campus, then the easiest place to find it is at
http://www.excel-london.co.uk/visitors/hotels (the Excel conference centre is very near to the campus), but we would also recommend searching online for accommodation in more central parts of town if that is your preference (the journey from central London to the campus normally takes 40-60
minutes).

Full programme details will be published shortly: http://culturalstudiesresearch.org

 

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