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[ecrea] CALL FOR EOI: Robert Foster Workshop, University of Queensland, 26 - 27 May 2011

Thu Jan 20 09:01:38 GMT 2011



Call for Expressions of Interest

MARKETS, MATERIALITY AND CONSUMER PRACTICES

An Interdisciplinary Research Workshop with Professor Robert J. Foster (Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies, Department of Anthropology, University of Rochester).

Organised by Professor Gay Hawkins and Dr Anna Pertierra, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, May 26 and 27, 2011.

Background

Market formations and processes are attracting growing interest in the social sciences. For so long represented as autonomous and self-regulating, markets are now being recognized as complex hybrid arrangements demanding close empirical investigation. Innovative research into markets is currently being conducted by anthropologists, economic sociologists and those working in science and technology studies. This work focuses on the multiple ways in which markets can be organized; the social, material and technical devices used to construct them; the variety of interactions between political and economic processes; and the logics of what Callon (1998) calls ?calculative agency?.

While markets have only recently attracted the attention they deserve, consumption, consumers and commodities have a much longer and richer history of analysis. Work on the social life of commodities, on consumer practices, on cultures of circulation and commodity chain analysis, has documented the myriad ways in which products have become central to everyday life and to the generation of complex sociospatial connections between spaces of production and consumption. The interactions between the consumer and the commodity loom large in much of this work sometimes obscuring exactly how markets are implicated in connecting them. Increasingly, however, analyses of the role of branding, advertising and marketing, distribution networks, regulation, and the materiality of the commodity are beginning to fill in this gap. Showing how the organization of markets is central to the constitution of consumers and commodities, and to generating dynamic and always contingent relations between them.

Professor Robert J. Foster?s most recent book, Coca-Globalization: following soft drinks from New York to New Guinea (Palgrave 2008) has been a key text in this emerging area of interest. An historically and ethnographically rich account of how a market in soft drinks was developed in Papua New Guinea, the study expands upon Professor Foster?s research interests in commodity chain analysis, globalization, consumption, branding, nationalism and transnationalism.

Format

The aim of this workshop is to develop an extended investigation of the interactions between markets, consumption and the materiality of commodities. Professor Foster will present a paper in the first session outlining his current research. Following that, participants will talk to their draft, pre-circulated papers and explore discussants? and other?s feedback.

Key issues we invite participants to address include:


· the social, technical and economic processes that constitute markets;


·          how consumers shape and contest markets;


·          markets as hybrid arrangements, new market forms;

* the role of the materiality of products in constituting distinct market arrangements;


·          the values of commodities and the values of markets;


·          transnational and national dimensions of commodity chains.


Application Process

We are interested in generating a lively community of inquiry at this event. To this end we invite expressions of interest from scholars at all stages of their careers and working in any relevant field. The workshop is open to twelve participants. There will be some funding support for early career researchers.

To express interest in this workshop, please email a 300 word abstract of your proposed paper along with a brief curriculum vitae to <mailto:(admin.cccs /at/ uq.edu.au)>(admin.cccs /at/ uq.edu.au) by February 14, 2011. NB Please put ?Foster Workshop? in the subject line of your email.

Workshop participants will be expected to attend the entire workshop, and papers presented will be considered for subsequent publication.

If there are any issues you wish to clarify before you submit an abstract please feel free to contact us.

Gay Hawkins and Anna Pertierra
<mailto:(g.hawkins /at/ uq.edu.au)>(g.hawkins /at/ uq.edu.au) and <mailto:(a.pertierra /at/ uq.edu.au)>(a.pertierra /at/ uq.edu.au)



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