[ecrea] CFP - citizenship in an era of global crisis

POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES RESEARCH NETWORK CONFERENCE

University of Otago, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND

28-30 Nov 2011

Citizenship in an Era of Global Crisis

Keynote Speakers:

Joseph Pugliese (Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural 
Studies, Macquarie University)

Tracey McIntosh (Department of Sociology, University of Auckland)

Greg Noble (Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney)

We are today witnessing the biopolitical re-ordering of the world and 
various aspects of life in and through the notion of citizenship. This 
reordering is evident in such processes and instances as the ‘war on 
terror,’ the protests and violence in the Middle East, the outsourcing 
of labour, the movement of refugees and migrants, the construction of 
camps within nation-states, the increased policing of borders, and the 
imposition of techniques of governmentality. At the same time, we are 
also witnessing various challenges, predicated on specific notions of 
citizenship, which seek to rethink established, dominant conceptions of 
belonging: the struggles of indigenous communities, protest communities, 
and other marginalized and exploited peoples testify to the project of 
reconstituting how we might think of citizenship in the era of 
unprecedented crisis — financial, food, water, political, social, 
cultural, territorial, environmental and so on. Citizenship further 
invokes concerns about the forms of violence enacted through, because 
of, and by the idea of citizenship, and the protests, as well as 
resistances and struggles that have emerged out of discontent with 
articulations of citizenship, impelled by a desire to redefine what we 
mean by citizenship. ‘Citizenship in the Era of Global Crisis’ is, in 
other words, a call to explore the ways in which citizenship is used and 
abused variously from disciplining quotidian cultural practices to 
fostering the grounds for social protests and legitimating killing. In 
short, the role, conception, articulation and dissemination of 
citizenship has fundamental consequences in the globalised world today. 
In order to explore the multiple social, cultural, political and 
economic contexts within which these concerns are articulated, the 
conference is open to a range of disciplinary perspectives and approaches.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Multiculturalism/ Biculturalism

National(ist) Culture

The International Division of Labour

 Borders

 Law

 Indigenous Struggles

The State

 Activism

 Environment

 Resources

 Gender

 Open Media

The conference conveners invite abstracts of no more than 250 words and 
a short bio to be sent to Brett Nicholls at (brett.nicholls /at/ otago.ac.nz) 
<mailto:(brett.nicholls /at/ otago.ac.nz)> and copied to Vijay Devadas at 
(vijay.devadas /at/ otago.ac.nz) <mailto:(vijay.devadas /at/ otago.ac.nz)> with 
‘CONFERENCE’ in the subject-line by 16 September 2011. Further 
information on the Postcolonial Studies Research Network is available at 
http://www.otago.ac.nz/humanities/research/networks/postcolonial/



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Dr Brett Nicholls
Senior Lecturer
Department of Media, Film, and Communication
University of Otago
Te Whare Wānanga o Otāgo
PO Box 56
Dunedin, 9054
New Zealand

Phone: 64 3 479 8819
Fax: 64 3 479 3932
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