[Commlist] CfP - Sexuality, Security and Surveillance in Digital Spaces

*Sexuality, Security and Surveillance in Digital Spaces* (CfA - session)
5th Geographies of Sexualities Conference
Prague, September 26th – 28th, 2019

Call for abstracts - for this independently organized session
Session organizers: Yossi David, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz; 
Godfried Asante, Drake University. More information here 
<https://2019.egsconference.com/index.php/call-for-sessions/#1552935520522-394f09e7-ba60>

* Session abstract *

Networked platforms have become fully integrated in almost every aspect 
of everyday life in the digital age. In particular, notions of digital 
activism through digital mobilization have become deeply intertwined in 
civil society groups, non-profit and LGBTIQ+ organizations. These 
platforms are used, particularly, by marginalized groups to make visible 
various human rights abuses and also create safe spaces outside of, but 
in relation to the daily varied forms of hetero/homonormativities. 
Conversely, state officials and moral entrepreneurs are continuously 
stretching their communications to networked platforms in order to voice 
their discontent with emerging voices against “traditional” and 
nativist’s discourses. Their tactics involves state funded surveillance 
of marginalized virtual communities and individual social media 
accounts. Nonetheless, the nation-state is a heterogeneous actor and in 
this global neoliberal times, the relationship between the nation-state 
and “sexual dissidents” is increasingly becoming more complex. As such, 
this panel aims to upend and make visible, the various forms of state 
regulation and surveillance ranging from the commodification of sexual 
difference to the forms of queer modes of being, relating and belonging 
that have emerged to resist, transform and subvert such regulatory 
regimes, especially in non-western contexts (middle-east, Africa, Asia, 
south and central America). While the focus of this panel is on 
non-western contexts, we are also aware that the boundaries between the 
west and the non-west is malleable and sometimes blurred as bodies 
migrate or seek refuge in other nations, thereby creating a complex 
system of transnational regulatory regimes and surveillance.

This panel focuses on aspects of social media (Facebook, Twitter, 
Reddit, etc.) by elucidating, analyzing and examining the blurred 
boundaries of safety and security in digital spaces by incorporating 
analysis of opportunities and challenges associated with sexuality, 
security and surveillance in digital spaces. Each essay investigates 
different aspects of security and safety, and how its complexities 
manifest in social media platforms. The essays will also explore the 
construction of social, digital and physical borderlands through candid 
and nuanced narratives that are both distinctively personal and 
contextually diverse. We thereby, focus on non-western contexts in order 
to contribute to the theoretical discussion concerning digital spaces 
and its implications on civil societies in places where the local and 
global tend to have uneasy tensions.

This session will explore the role of sexuality, security and 
surveillance in digital spaces in various scales, contexts, places and 
spaces.
We seek submissions that critically investigate, but are not limited to:

  * Paradoxes in the practice or discourses around sexuality, security
    and surveillance in digital spaces.
  * The politics of sexuality, security and surveillance in digital spaces
  * The boundary work and policing work around sexuality, security and
    surveillance in digital spaces
  * The ways in which sexuality, security and surveillance is framed,
    produced and negotiated within social movements and grassroots
    (digital) activism groups.
  * Bisexual and transgender identities and security and surveillance in
    digital spaces
  * Intersections of race, gender, class, ability, sexuality, body and
    nation, and its relation to security and surveillance in digital 
spaces.
  * Sexuality, security and surveillance in digital spaces and disability.
  * Sexuality, security and surveillance in digital spaces and the 
diaspora.
  * Transnational coalitional possibilities under surveillance and security

Please submit abstracts (250 words maximum) to 
(sexualitysurveillance /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(sexualitysurveillance /at/ gmail.com)> by April 10, 2019. Questions or 
comments about the session are also welcomed.


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