CALL FOR PAPERS
XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology
11-17 July 2010
Gothenburg, Sweden
See: http://www.isa-sociology.org/congress2010/rc/rc17.htm
The Research Committee on Sociology of Organization (RC17) is calling for
papers for Session 3: Celebrity society and organizational life.
Anyone interested in presenting a paper in RC17's programme should contact
the session organizers as listed below, and submit an abstract for
consideration, before December 11, 2009.
Session 3: Celebrity society and organizational life
Organizers: Robert Van Krieken, University of Sydney, Australia,
(robert.van.krieken /at/ usyd.edu.au) and Jessica Evans, The Open University, UK,
(J.R.Evans /at/ open.ac.uk)
It is now clear that celebrity is not simply a superficial aspect of
consumer culture, that it in fact plays a central role in the structure and
dynamics of contemporary social, political, economic and organizational
life. Various forms of violence are generally organized around highly
visible, charismatic individuals, and political as well as organizational
order is increasingly structured in relation to the construction of the
celebrity of celebrated leaders.
This session aims to add to the theorization of celebrity within the
sociology of culture and consumption, and to take it more seriously as
central to the sociology of state formation, organizations, power and
recognition. It will look beyond celebrities as unique individuals to
examine the circuits of power which produce celebrity as a social,
political, economic and organizational phenomenon, as well as the logic
underpinning its production, a certain kind of 'celebrity function' or role,
independently from the specific individuals who become celebrities at any
particular time and place. It will examine the social positions that
celebrities occupy how they are constituted as a group, and what underpins
celebrity as a central aspect of everyday life. The analysis drawn upon in
the session will be coupled to concepts such as visibility, attention,
status, recognition, but also power, symbolic capital, the constitution of
the self, social networks, and it will approach celebrity as a central
aspect of a range of features of modern social life, such as democracy,
individualism, state-formation, long-distance intimacy, imagined community,
the public sphere, and of course the changing technologies of the mass
media. The session will be open, but not restricted to current research on
the following topics:
* the logic of celebrity across differing celebrity sectors --
entertainment, sport, music, science, politics, commerce, non-government
organisations
* comparative and historical sociology -- celebrity in differing
social, cultural and historical contexts, and the roots of celebrity society
in court society, celebrities as democratic aristocrats
* the economics of attention -- celebrity as 'interest' on
original accumulation
* celebrity and sociological theories of 'recognition': celebrity
as 'excess' recognition
* imagined community and long-distance intimacy, the sociology of
para-social interaction
* celebrity and status, celebrities and elite theory
* power in the 'viewer society', celebrity as self-surveillance
* political celebrity -- competing logics of attracting attention
in democracies, the use of celebrity in social movements and non-government
organisations
* theorizing celebrity: the ways in which celebrity can be
understood from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including Simmel,
Elias, Adorno and Horkheimer, Mills, Foucault, and Bourdieu.
Any individual may participate on up two sessions. Once your presentation is
approved by the session chair, you must then submit an abstract of your
paper on-line (instructions will be made available in due course). Abstracts
are only accepted by the system from those who are already registered for
the Congress. The deadline for submission of approved abstracts is
May 4, 2010.
