[ecrea] CALL FOR PAPERS: Culture in Disarray: Destruction/ Reconstruction

????????CALL FOR PAPERS:

Culture in Disarray: Destruction/ Reconstruction

King's College London CMCI Postgraduate Conference , 11-12 JUNE 2015



Keynote Speakers
Prof. Nick Couldry, Department of Media and Communications, London 
School of Economics and Political Science

Prof. Peter Dahlgren, Department of Communication and Media, Lund University

Cultures are in disarray as never before assaulted and undermined by a 
complex mix of alienating ideology and transformational technologies. Is 
culture craving for a paradigm shift? Or is this state of disarray just 
another moment of re-construction within culture? Looking at culture not 
just as a concept, we can understand it as being permanently 
reconfigured, in a constant process of adaptation and symbiosis with 
social and economic developments, reflecting the Zeitgeist. The tide of 
neo-liberalism has long since left the narrow realm of economics and 
infiltrated not just the social realms of education, media, and arts, 
but even the complex structures of everyday interaction – degrading the 
construction of the self and the purpose of life. Digital technologies 
are creating a disintermediation across all spheres of society 
empowering and enriching the top 1% while the middle collapses as a 
power law distribution polarise the mass from the political economic and 
cultural elite. Moreover these technologies reinforce the neo-liberal 
project affording it with the social techniques of pervasive 
surveillance, endless assessment, targeting, grading, and the corrosive 
obsession with competition and instrumentalism, consumption and 
individualisation. Meanings are being co-opted, with ‘culture’ arguably 
being replaced by ‘creativity’ in policy agendas, leading to disarray in 
the definitions, discourses, and policy implications. Globalisation is 
having a transformative impact on local cultures. The algorithmic 
affordances of digitalisation reduce the human experience to one 
dimensional formulaic constructions devoid of complexity or even culture 
itself.

This analysis is imprecise, limited and does not pretend to do justice 
the nuance and perspective required to fully appreciate this vast but 
pressingly important subject. However, it highlights some aspects of the 
multi-faceted dynamics that academics, policy-makers and activists are 
struggling with across all cultural spheres. Our question then is what 
are the reconstructions that oppose and go beyond this destruction? What 
and where are the cultures of resistance and transcendence, the creative 
policies and strategies, the structural bases of renewal and 
re-empowerment, the micro-techniques and individual transgressive 
statements of dissent? How can the vast cultural and economic resources 
of our civilisation be socialised and humanised? How can the anarchistic 
emergences we see on the periphery of established networks of control 
and privilege be made effective and credible? How can this horizontalist 
emphasis on participation and direct democracy create viable cultural 
and political alternatives? And more profoundly but vitally, how can our 
primal urge for creativity, authenticity, spontaneity, and co-operation 
(not to mention joy and humour!) be harnessed to reconstruct a 
rehumanised culture? Should we accept this condition of disarray as 
automatically defining contemporary culture or as the point of departure 
for a complex process of social reconstruction? Is creativity the magic 
word to cure what culture cannot? Can it shake off the scent of elite 
culture so that policy can be implemented? Will we keep changing the 
buzzwords or do we need to return to the quintessential debate on culture?

The conference is unashamedly multidisciplinary, or even 
anti-disciplinary. It calls for innovative statements which break down 
the academic silos, which separate the culturalist, stucturalist and 
rationalistic, the analytic from the normative, and the deconstructive 
from the constructive. We are driven by a commitment to truly critical 
thinking and innovative perspectives – to make a real ’impact’. To this 
end we are calling for papers which address the above themes in ways 
that challenge established categories and conventions. We encourage 
unorthodox and provocative approaches. We are interested in ideas that 
break out of assumed rationalities, which may outrage and appear 
monstrous – that certainly won’t get in the top journals which make up 
the ’dead heart’ of academia. After all isn’t this what creative 
destruction always was and therefore must still be all about? In these 
’end times’ times then uncensor yourself and make real that paper you 
always wanted to write. The moment is now and remember, as Keynes said, 
’in the long run we are all dead’!

We invite abstracts on the following themes but welcome papers that may 
not fall directly within them, and feedback about how me may alter or 
add to them.

? The Problems: analyses of cultures in disarray, common explanations, 
causes, dynamics and configurations.
? Conceptual Frameworks: changes and developments in the basic notions 
and questions about the idea of culture, ontology and technology.
? Specific Sites of Contention:
? The Arts / Creative Industries
? Education / Knowledge Production
? Media / Public Sphere
? Management / Entrepreneurship
? Politics / Ideology
? Economy / Culture of Money
? Urban Culture / Community Development
? Reconstructions: ideas, strategies, designs, and case studies of 
emergent cultures that provide instruction and hope.

We welcome contributions until 15th of March 2015 (paper title, a 
250-word abstract and author information - full name, institutional 
affiliation and email address). Please send to: 
(cmci-conference /at/ kcl.ac.uk) Notifications regarding acceptance will be 
sent by 15th of April 2015.
Full paper (Max. 8,000 words) submission before 20th of May 2015

In case of queries please contact:
Agnieszka Widuto: (agnieszka.widuto /at/ kcl.ac.uk) Mengying Li: 
(mengying.li /at/ kcl.ac.uk) Leandro Augusto Borges Lima: 
leandro_augusto.borges (_lima /at/ kcl.ac.uk) Ya-Chiao Tu: 
(ya-chiao.tu /at/ kcl.ac.uk) To keep yourself updated, please visit our 
conference website:
https://thecmcisocialfactory.wordpress.com/cultures-in-disarray/



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