[ecrea] Call for Papers for ICA Preconference on Sharing

Call for Papers

ICA Pre-Conference: Sharing

Thursday, May 22, 2014

University of Washington, Seattle



Sharing is a rich and emotive concept that refers to a range of distinct 
yet associated practices, all of which are powerfully salient in 
contemporary society. At the very least, sharing is the constitutive 
activity of Web 2.0, an alternative mode of production, distribution and 
consumption, and a type of speech. This pre-conference invites scholars 
from a range of fields to contribute to the research and theorization of 
sharing.



Thematic background

The notion of sharing is widely deployed nowadays, and in a number of 
different ways. First, sharing is a keyword for the digital age: In Web 
2.0 we share statuses, tweets, files, photos, videos, book reviews and 
more. Second, sharing is the proposed bedrock of alternative forms of 
production and consumption. Some of these forms are known collectively 
as the Sharing Economy, an emergent movement that identifies with and 
rests upon the technologies of social networks; others might fall under 
headings such as FLOSS, peer production, or the P2P economy. Third, 
sharing is a category of speech, or a type of communication, that is 
fundamental to our therapeutic culture, referring mainly—but certainly 
not only—to the conveyance of intimate information about the self to a 
significant other. These are just some of the ways in which sharing, in 
its different senses, is constitutive of important aspects of our 
social, economic and intimate lives.

A feature of sharing that is common to these different practices is that 
they all touch on the nebulous and porous boundary between the ‘public’ 
and the ‘private’: for instance, SNS users are criticized for polluting 
the public sphere, or ‘oversharing’; a popular model in the Sharing 
Economy involves offering private spaces (spare bedrooms, space in one’s 
car) for public consumption; and the rise of the therapeutic discourse 
has entailed increased levels of self-exposure between intimates, 
friends, and even colleagues.

Relatedly, each of the types of sharing draws on a similar pool of 
values, which includes honesty, openness, trust, and commonality. To the 
extent that these are desirable values, sharing would thus seem to be 
integral to any vision of the good life. Indeed, sharing is almost by 
definition good. But this is precisely the point at which a critique of 
sharing is required. For instance, we might wish to note that by sharing 
on social network sites we are contributing to privately-owned (and 
government-accessed) assemblages of surveillance; we might want to ask 
in what sense renting out a spare room is sharing it, and we might want 
to explore the role of venture capital and big business in the Sharing 
Economy; and we might wonder what structures of power are enacted and 
reproduced by privileging certain types of culturally-situated speech. 
More generally, if inclusion in a social framework is predicated on the 
ability to share, where does this leave people who have nothing?



Topics

Empirical and theoretical papers are invited on any topic for which 
sharing is a central concept. Possible topics include, but are not 
limited to, the following:

? Sharing online: What is the political economy of online sharing? How 
does the metaphor of sharing as the constitutive activity of Web 2.0 
operate?

? Technologies of sharing: Reports have claimed that online sharing 
(e.g. of statuses) increases people’s propensity to share stuff offline 
(e.g. power drills). How is sharing today technologically mediated, 
encouraged, or forced? And: how do different technologies encourage 
sharing or punish non-sharing? Skype users, for instance, must share 
bandwidth to use the service; peer-to-peer file sharers share what they 
are uploading for as long as they are downloading.

? The word, ‘sharing’: Etymologies; ‘sharing’ in different languages; 
evolving meanings. And: what is stake by calling a practice one of 
sharing? What is gained?

? The Sharing Economy: The Sharing Economy and collaborative consumption 
as a critique of capitalism; the differences between sharing and gifting 
– for instance, does sharing create the same obligations described by 
Mauss and Derrida in relation to gifts?

? Sharing as a category of speech: What characterizes it? What rules of 
reciprocity and mutuality govern it? How do the values of sharing as a 
category of speech inform sharing in other social fields?

? Sharing and gender: Is sharing gendered? What would it mean to say 
that it is?

? Sharing, giving, exchanging: conceptual boundaries

? What’s new? Sharing is a practice as old as human society, so what is 
new about sharing in the 21st century, if anything?

? Sharing as a norm: How is sharing normatively promoted? What are the 
sanctions for non-sharing in the different spheres of sharing?

? Sharing as a form of subjectivation and desubjectivation

? Sharing between having and being: towards existentialist 
understandings of sharing

? Sharing and the concept of intimacy

? The anthropological narrative of sharing



We are particularly interested in submissions that actively interrogate 
the concept of sharing. If sharing is an important notion in your 
research, we therefore invite you to think about the work done by the 
word in your field and how it might relate to other senses or uses.



Submissions

Submissions are welcomed from scholars at all stages of their careers, 
and across multiple disciplines engaged in research that relates to 
sharing. Submissions should be extended abstracts of around 750 words 
and be in Word doc/docx or PDF format. Please submit your abstract as an 
email attachment to (sharingpreconference /at/ gmail.com). The deadline for 
submissions is November 30, 2013. Papers will be judged on criteria of 
relevance and originality of topic, clarity of presentation, as well as 
proximity to—and contribution to—the preconference theme. Notifications 
on acceptance will be emailed in mid-January.

In an effort to facilitate informed discussion of papers, the organizers 
hope to have the papers for this pre-conference posted online. For this 
reason, we will ask for full papers to be submitted no later than April 
15, 2014.



Venue

The sharing pre-conference will be held at the University of Washington. 
Transportation to the venue from the conference hotel will be provided 
at the beginning and end of each day's events.



The preconference is sponsored by the divisions of Popular Communication 
and Philosophy, Theory and Critique, as well as by the Department of 
Communication, University of Washington. It is being organized by 
Nicholas John (Department of Communication, The Hebrew University of 
Jerusalem) and Wolfgang Sützl (School of Media Arts & Studies, Ohio 
University).

Queries may be directed to (n.john /at/ huji.ac.il).

This call for papers may be downloaded in PDF format here.
____________
Nicholas John
Department of Communication,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tel: +972-54-7906073
@nicholasajohn


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