[ecrea] RGS-IBG Annual Conference: CfP Digital Power, Decolonising Life

*CfP: Digital Power, Decolonising Life*

*RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Royal Geographical Society, London*

Wednesday 30 August – Friday 1 September 2017


*Call for Papers (Deadline Monday 6^th February 2017)*

*Sponsored by the Digital Geographies Working Group
*

*
*

*Convenors:*Clancy Wilmott (University of Manchester),Sam Hind 
(University of Warwick), Michael Duggan (Royal Holloway, University of 
London)


This session invites submissions that *explore the ‘decolonising’*(Ngugi 
1986, Betts 1998, Smith 1999) *possibilities of lived, digital 
experiences*. From migrant workers in the gig economy, to software 
developers in the tech industry, and from the escalators of Hong Kong, 
to the estates of North London, digital lives are being increasingly 
shaped by discriminatory practices, protocols, infrastructures and 
politics (Nakamura 2009, Noble 2013; 2017, Edelman et al. 2016). These 
experiences stretch across, and so doing renegotiate spatial 
distinctions between global North/South, centre/periphery and 
urban/rural (Jacobs, 1996, Bishop et al. 2003). Whilst such 
techno-governmental assemblages may shape everyday decisions, movements 
and bodily practices, they are executed through an often hidden web of 
procedural, algorithmic, cartographic, or calculative means, often 
developed through or by colonial processes of governmentality, 
territorialisation, sovereignty and order. At present, digital life for 
many remains resolutely, undeniably and unceasingly ‘colonised’ – both 
in everyday /and /spectacular variations; despite the fading, and always 
likely improbable, emancipatory gains from new digital platforms, data 
sources, initiatives and organizations.


This session invites proposals providing empirical, methodological and 
conceptual strategies to *‘decolonise the digital’*that are intended to 
echo and reverberate around historical calls to ‘decolonise the mind’ 
(Ngugi 1986), and more contemporary efforts to ‘decolonise the 
curriculum’ (Kamanzi 2015, Shay 2015; 2016). It seeks to give a platform 
to a multitude of decolonising counterpoints to prevailing digital 
beliefs, practices, narratives, pitches and projects that have further 
entrenched privileged, western forms of geographical knowledge-making. 
*We actively seek a range of presentations beyond the academic 
conference paper.*These may include (but are not limited to): activist 
engagements, short films, ‘playtests’, artistic demonstrations, 
interactive contributions, playful presentations, and poetry 
performances, as well as traditional ‘academic’ papers. 
*Interdisciplinary, and multi-author collaborations are also encouraged.
*

*
*

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  * Digital workplace politics
  * Digital labour and the gig economy
  * Digital navigation, risk, and safety
  * Cartographic order, bordering and control
  * Digital infrastructures, institutions and organization(s)
  * Data and metrics
  * Algorithmic power and protocol
  * Security practices of sensing, screening, sorting, vetting
  * Digital discrimination, injustice, law
  * Digital epistemologies and ontologies
  * Activism, protest, ethics and emancipation
  * Digital futures and speculative politics
Please submit abstracts (250 words max) to Sam Hind 
((s.hind /at/ warwick.ac.uk) <mailto:(s.hind /at/ warwick.ac.uk)>), along with a title 
and author details. Deadline is *Monday 6^th February, 2017*.

For conference and registration details, see: 
http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Annual+international+conference.htm



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