[ecrea] Conference: Inverting Globalisation

CALL FOR PAPERS


INVERTING GLOBALISATION

Conference, October 9-10, 2014, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Abstract submission deadline: 1 April 2014

Organised by the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies (ACGS)

Whereas David Harvey has famously interpreted globalisation as a process 
of time/space compression, multiple trends proliferating globally 
suggest that its functional effects include the rooted, the local and 
the slow. The Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies (ACGS) has 
developed four research clusters around the themes of mobility, 
sustainability, aesthetics and connectivity. This conference probes the 
flip side of these themes, engaging with those aspects of globalisation 
that too often remain in the shadows or are seen as antithetical to it. 
We want to analyse the tensions and interactions between mobility and 
immobility, between sustainability and precarity, between glossy and 
dirty aesthetics, and between connection and disconnection – not to 
arrive at yet another set of binaries, but to show how these inverse 
processes are also intrinsic to globalisation. Taking them into account 
will make possible a fuller understanding of the uneven, often 
unexpected and not al
ways obvious ways in which globalisation impacts the contemporary world.

Keynote speakers:
· Fatma Müge Göcek (Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies, 
University of Michigan, US)
· Oliver Marchart (Professor of Sociology, Düsseldorf Art Academy, Germany)
· Ellen Rutten (Professor of Slavonic Literature and Culture, University 
of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
· Ulises Mejias (Associate Professor of Communication Studies, State 
University of New York College at Oswego, US)

The conference will comprise four sessions:

Session I: Immobility and the Rearticulation of Identities
Besides globalisation’s well-covered tendency towards a general 
condition of mobility, pervasive instances of immobility can be found. 
Factory workers whose cheap labour is indispensable for global trade, 
but who remain confined to their immediate surroundings constitute one 
tangible example. In addition, there are more intangible instances of 
immobility, such as the worldwide (re-)assertion of national and 
religious identities claimed to be timeless and sacrosanct. Are these 
rearticulated and reasserted identities merely instances of false 
consciousness? Is there a relation between ever more fluid processes of 
cultural production and exchange, and the attempts to block this 
mobility in the name of invented or imagined culture or tradition? Or 
are newly aggressive forms of identity politics part and parcel of 
contemporary globalised governmentality?

Session II: Unsustainability, Precarity, Ecology
The inverse of the sustainable is the unsustainable, evoking a sense of 
the unbearable or intolerable, a moment of crisis. Unsustainability can 
be attributed to global economic growth, energy needs, food provision, 
or to particular political structures or ways of life. It can be used in 
service of many goals, from the revolutionary to the conservative. This 
session asks how unsustainability can be understood (epistemologically, 
politically, affectively) and explores its relation to precarity, 
another term that inverts the emphasis on survival implicit in 
sustainability, and to ecology, which no longer applies exclusively to 
environmental matters but is increasingly linked to the (geo)political.

Session III: Dirty Aesthetics
Processes of globalisation inspire a dialogue but also tensions between 
different conceptualisations of the aesthetic. One such tension emerges 
in the quest for the authentic and/or local through the rough and the 
dirty. Folk singers aspire to authenticity by refusing technologies of 
amplification, fashion designers use untreated materials, and urban 
fringes are turned into creative districts. These proliferating “dirty 
aesthetics” validate local modes of production that are frequently 
coupled to artisanal craftsmanship. Can an aesthetics of roughness and 
imperfection claim to be resistant to the glossy surfaces of 
globalisation? Or will the margins be consumed as yet another resource 
for the integrating genius of a capitalist world market?

Session IV: Dis- and Misconnection
This session critically examines the claim of unlimited many-to-many 
communication through social media platforms by exploring the role of 
dis- and misconnection. It focuses on three sets of actors that 
facilitate and broker, but also obstruct and complicate, online 
connectivity. First, users of the Web divide into linguistic spheres and 
particular networks. Second, corporations zealously protect online 
platforms by walling off users and their data, blackboxing their 
technological architectures, and algorithmically steering and organising 
user interaction. Finally, states become increasingly sophisticated in 
controlling and “nationalising” online communication through 
surveillance and filtering, as well as through propaganda and cyber-attacks.

Panel Proposals:

Proposals for group panels should include the following information for 
the review process.

1. An 800-word summary of the overall panel proposal which contains the 
following:
· Title of the panel
· Preference for one of the above-mentioned sessions
· Objectives and main questions to be addressed in the panel
· Main perspectives and/or theoretical/conceptual frameworks
· Description of how the session will be structured

2. A 400-word abstract of each individual paper/presentation

3. A list of the panel members including their institutional 
affiliations and contact information

Standalone Papers:
Individuals submitting paper proposals should provide an abstract of 400 
words including a title and a 100-word (max) bio-bibliography, plus 
indication of preference for one of the above-mentioned sessions.

Please send proposals in Word format before April 1 to Amani Maihoub 
(A.Maihoub /at/ uva.nl)

See also the conference webpage: 
http://acgs.uva.nl/news-and-events/upcoming-events/item/inverting-globalisation.html

Organising Committee:
Robin Celikates
Johan F. Hartle
Jeroen de Kloet
Michiel Leezenberg
Esther Peeren
Thomas Poell
Marijke de Valck


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