[ecrea] "Being People-Être peuple" International Interdisciplinary Conference (Nancy, November 22-23, 2012)

Call for Papers
« Looking for Popular Publics »
Part II “Being People”
International Interdisciplinary Conference
Centre de recherche sur les Médiations (CREM)
University of Lorraine (Nancy)
November 22-23, 2012
Deadline: June 20, 2012

As voters or media, arts, institutional or technological audiences, popular publics are at the heart of the debates on the contemporary changes in our societies, as testified by the concerns generated at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries about the rise of new forms of populism across Europe, often linked to claims to a regional or nationalistic paradigm in response to economic and cultural globalization. Similarly, recent media genres such as reality TV or celebrity news, on the one hand, and “social” networks on the Internet, on the other hand, help set the popularity as a supreme value: they stage a success measured by the number of SMS sent, "friends" or viewings registered. Moreover, they promise to any citizen, no matter his/her gender, sexual orientation, social class, income or ethnic group, a potential visibility solely based on vox populi. To such an extent that some analysts suggest the traditional political constituencies should take a leaf out of the po
pular style of those participatory entertainment formats and encourage the same forms of "emotional intelligence" in order to promote political commitment and revitalize the public space (Van Zoonen, 2004 2005; Corner, Pels, 2003). Nevertheless, may they be scholarly or commonplace, the outlooks about popular publics fluctuate between celebration – insofar as popularity is understood as a guarantee of authenticity or democracy - and depreciation,  popular publics being, in a critical perspective, mistaken for alienated, sometimes feared, sometimes pitiful, masses.
In line with the new research program about publics started up by the CREM (Centre de recherche sur les médiations), this international conference in two parts aims at denaturalizing the notion of "popular public" by putting it to the test of the various disciplines which embraced it : media and communication studies, political science, history, discourse analysis, argumentation theory, aesthetics, ethnography, sociology, history of literature or art.
What is at stake is also its new range of implications with regard to the recent economic, social and technological changes, now that the collapse of cultural and consumption patterns seems to indicate the end of the "masses" and since the uses of Internet blur the division between content producers and consumers, promote" virtual communities " whose nature must be addressed (Allard, 2008) and suggest a growing unskilled participation in political, artistic or informational proposals.
Whereas the first section of the conference ("Faire peuple” ("People Making"), October 20-21, 2011) has been devoted to the strategies aimed at building popular publics or audiences, popular publics themselves will be examined in the second part, through their composition or from their members’ point of view: what kinds of self-recognition characterize popular publics? And what are the historical, economic, political or social stakes of such a self-recognition?
The proposals may be written in French or English.


Guidelines for authors

Abstracts (400 words maximum) must be submitted in French or English before June 20, 2012. Along with a short resume, they are to be sent to Jamil Dakhlia (jamil[dot]dakhlia[at]univ-lorraine[dot]fr
Each abstract should contain a title. Please put your name in the subject of your mail, and your further references in the mail message (affiliation, university or institution, e-mail, phone number, address). Papers are allotted 20 minutes (+ 10 minutes for discussion)
Reply to authors: before July 15, 2012.
Editorial policy

Working Title: À la recherche des publics populaires “Looking for Popular Publics”, 300 pages, October, 2013, 2 volumes: t.1 "People Making", t.2 "Being People", Presses Universitaires de Nancy (PUN).

The papers will be selected by an editorial board and submitted for review by specialists, within the modality of anonymity.

Research Committee

Eduardo Cintra Torres (Pr, Université Catholique Portugaise de Lisbonne, CECC), Jamil Dakhlia (MCF-HDR, UdL/CREM), Annik Dubied (Pr, Université de Genève), Béatrice Fleury (Pr, UdL/CREM), Vincent Goulet (MCF, UdL/CREM), Céline Ségur (MCF, UdL/CREM), Ernesto Laclau (University of Essex, GB), Cécile Méadel (Maître de recherche, Ecole des Mines/CSI), Céline Ségur (MCF, UdL/CREM), Sylvie Thiéblemont (Pr, UdL/CREM), Bénédicte Toullec (MCF, UdL/CREM), Jacques Walter (Pr, UdL/CREM).

Organising Committee

Jamil Dakhlia (MCF HDR, UdL/CREM), Delphine Le Nozach (MCF, UL/CREM), Nallely Salgado-Ruiz, PhD student UdL/CREM), Bénédicte Toullec (MCF, UdL/CREM).




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