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[ecrea] CFP: One Planet -- One Humanity

Wed Jan 01 14:05:05 GMT 2014




“One Planet – One Humanity: Communications For and Against”

An International, Interdisciplinary, Research-Planning Conference

Benedictine University, May 29-31, 2014



CALL FOR PAPERS



Deadline: January 20, 2014





We are seeking proposals by academicians from the sciences, social sciences, media studies, and the humanities who are interested in participating in the conference and in developing papers on the conference theme.



Please send resume and 600-word abstract to Luigi Manca and Jean-Marie Kauth, conference coordinators ((lmanca /at/ ben.edu); (jkauth /at/ ben.edu)). Each proposal will be reviewed by a panel composed of members of the conference organizing committee. The committee includes members from a variety of disciplines.



The purpose of this research-planning conference is to bring together scholars from different disciplines who are interested in discussing the emergence of an interconnected humanity in an interconnected world and the role of the mass media of communication in this process.



Today’s media are failing humanity. The interconnected spiritual reality of humans has been contaminated by a pervasive, irresponsible, and dysfunctional use at the global level of the mass media of communication. Rather than providing pictures of reality on which the world’s citizens can act, the corporate-controlled media are widely used as instruments of commercial and political propaganda, creating an immense web of images and narratives that their creators know to be not true – fabrications designed to sell, to manipulate, and in a sense, to enslave worldwide audiences. Under these conditions, it is not possible for the human race to achieve any true awareness of itself and of its habitat, and to develop an adequate orientation about the issues confronting the world today.



And the systematic destruction of our future goes on.



This conference is about the media and about liberation from the dominant images and narratives of consumer society.



At the core of this discussion is a rather simple utopian vision of one planet for a unified humanity – billions of people whose destinies and dreams are interconnected and interdependent, and who share the same planet. One planet – one humanity. It is a vision of a world not divided into separate countries or separate ethnic or religious communities all competing or even going to war against one another over the exploitation of the available resources. It is a vision of a world in which we all share responsibly for the common human habitat. From this point of view, issues such as global warming, world-wide pollution, and the systematic destruction of the environment are immediately connected to human rights issues because these issues impact our ability to fulfill our needs and dreams in the one living planet we all share, and because our own survival as a species may very well be at stake here.



If we look at the media from the point of view of this utopian vision we must first realize that the media industry is not controlled by the people but by the corporations. Corporate interests exercise a monopoly control over the media and, through them, over the images and narratives that reach worldwide audiences. We must also realize that the interests of the corporate structure that controls the available resources and that pollutes the human physical and cultural habitat are on a collision course with the interests of this one, interconnected humanity. These corporate interests are not necessarily unified by a single agenda. In fact, multi-national corporations compete against one another in a continued struggle for control of markets, resources, political influence, and profits. What does unify these corporate interests is the need to continue to support and expand a consumer economy that is based on the exploitation of people and resources, the eventual destruction of the environment, and the contamination of public discourse.



Still, we don’t see the media necessarily as the enemy. Instead, we see the multinational corporations who control the media and compete to advance their profits and influence as the enemy. In fact, if freed from the corporate control, the media can help us change the world. For the first time in human history, we now have the kinds of media of communication that could potentially connect all the people in the planet with one another and with the huge body of accumulated knowledge, art, and culture. As the extensions of humans, the media can be instruments of salvation instead of destruction, liberation instead of oppression.



The conference will run for three days and will consist of one on-going plenary session in which each participant presents his or her ideas, after which we all engage in general discussion. While we don’t want to have separate simultaneous sessions, we can have some breaks long enough for people to get together in smaller groups to discuss whatever they want.



We intend to limit the total number of people attending the conference to 25.



One intended outcome of the conference is the compilation of a book provisionally entitled One Planet – One Humanity: Communications For and Against. The book will consist of a peer-reviewed selection of some of the essays developed through the conference.



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