[Commlist] CFP: Mass Communication and Transnational Empire: 50 years of (transformations since) Herbert Schiller

*Call For Papers: UDC- Project Censored 2019 *

October 31-November 3, 2019
California State University, East Bay

**

*Mass Communication and Transnational Empire: 50 years of 
(transformations since) Herbert Schiller*

Fifty years ago, the world was at a conjunctural moment. The hegemony of 
liberal Keynesianism had been exhausted, leading to rebellions in cities 
across the United States, Paris, industrial centers in Northern Italy, 
and Mexico City. Repression under Communist governments were met with 
demands for freedom in Prague. The rise of Black Power, the Chicano 
movement, and other national liberation struggles demonstrated 
resistance to the capitalism, racism, and imperialism that was endemic 
to the postwar order.

In the United States disciplinary foundations across the social sciences 
shifted from theories of social stability to critical theories of 
society and political power. In sociology and political science C. 
Wright Mills produced a critical approach to American imperialism 
dissecting the social and historical formation of elite power (1956). 
The radical economics of Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy produced a 
foundation and thread for socially and politically engaged heterodox and 
Marxist economists (1968). And, perhaps, most famously Herbert Marcuse’s 
/One-Dimensional Man/ (1964) raised questions about the continuity and 
efficacy of social struggles in the context of U.S. commodity affluence, 
imperialist internecine conflicts, and the comfortable, smooth, 
reasonable, democratic unfreedom characteristic in the West. In this 
context, it was Herbert I. Schiller that authored one of the defining 
texts in the political economy of communication tradition, /Mass 
Communication and American Empire /(1969). In this tradition of critical 
approaches to U.S. society and culture, Schiller suggested that the 
U.S.’s cultural imperialism emboldened its economic and military might 
around the world. During the next decade, a neoliberal order emerged 
that empowered finance capital while reorienting relationships between 
the state and the economy and shifting our cultural politics around the 
globe.

Now, in 2019, political, economic, and environmental crises 
are restructuring the geopolitical order, and the world as we know it is 
once again at a breaking point of exhaustive struggle. Neoliberal 
ideology has been unmasked, its promises of accomplishing social equity 
through “free markets” and “trickle- down economics” are no longer 
tenable. Migration and displacements challenge conceptualization of the 
nation, community and citizenship. It is in this context that we must 
acknowledge the emergent right-wing populism embodied by Duterte, 
Bolsinaro, Trump, Erdogan, and Brexit—and a global, digitally connected, 
“alt-right” network. It is a response of exclusion, advocating a 
tribalism whose only response to the challenges facing us is further 
extraction of resources, including our humanity.

The fractures in neoliberal hegemony allow for new possibilities as we 
work to forge a new path. We call for a reflection on the role of empire 
and communication, and for reflective discussion about how scholars, 
activists and journalists have considered this relationship through its 
own history. Lest they are left hanging at the whim of corporate elites 
and right-wing nationalists the persistent struggles by the most 
vulnerable—undocumented workers, immigrants, refugees, women, queer 
folx, indigenous peoples, and people of color—must be read as 
constituting a new front and articulation in the global wars of 
position. Stuart Hall referred to these struggles through “a politics 
which understands the nature of a hegemonic politics in which different 
struggles take the leading position on a range of different 
fronts....The mode of prodction does not command every contradiction; it 
does not find them all at the same place or advanced to the same 
degree....” In this same vein, Herbert Marcuse, described vulnerable 
groups as the “outcasts,” “outsiders,” “the exploited,” “the 
persecuted,” “other races,” “other colors,” “the unemployed,” and “the 
unemployable.” It was through the resistance of the most vulnerable that 
Marcuse was able to articulate “The Great Refusal.” It was in their 
struggles that Marcuse recognized the limits to critical theory: “The 
critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the 
gap between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing 
no success, it remains negative. Thus, it wants to remain loyal to those 
who, without hope, have given and give their life to the Great Refusal.” 
Mills, Marcuse, Baran and Sweezy, and, especially, Schiller provide a 
departure point that we must return to if we are to understand the 
futures of a fractured, vicious, and persistent American empire.

//

At this conference, we will ask: In what ways do we still exist in 
“American empire”? What are its prospects for the future, what 
alternatives are emerging and in what way? What role do media and 
communication networks play in solidifying or disrupting these 
possibilities? What continuities or disjunctures exist in the relations 
between the state, capital, labor, technology, and ideology? In what 
ways are the structures and ideologies of colonialism and imperialism 
(re)produced and experienced within national contexts?

The Union for Democratic Communications-Project Censored 2019 conference 
invites contributions that reflect on the relationships between media, 
communication, and empire from a variety of perspectives. Contributions 
may examine these concepts through historical materialist, feminist, 
critical race, queer, and other critical approaches, and might be 
situated in interdisciplinary areas such as Latinx Studies, Black 
Studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and environmental studies. In 
particular, we invite contributions that highlight the means and methods 
for active resistance, democratic communication, and the promotion of 
social justice. New and established scholars, graduate students, 
activists, and media creators are encouraged to submit proposals.

Topics included but not limited to:

  * Race, class, gender and/or indigeneity
  * De-colonization
  * borderlands
  * Subaltern publics/communities, counterpublics, intersectional &
    post-colonial critiques
  * Subversive political knowledge & oppositional gazes
  * Debt, precarity and austerity
  * transnational capitalist class
  * Refugees and migrants
  * Intersectionality,hybridity, articulation
  * Nomadism, dislocation, ephemerality, ontological hybridity
  * slavery, colonialism/post-colonialism and/or the primitive
    accumulation of capital
  * progressive movements, social movements, mass mobilizations and 
protests
  * alt-global visions
  * left-state alternatives
  * state violence
  * media reform and communication policy
  * neo-fascism
  * media literacy and critical media theory
  * the neoliberal assault on higher education, radical scholars and
    academic freedom
  * radical scholars and academic freedom
  * critical communication pedagogy
  * fake news and propaganda
  * CNN Effects
  * intersections of politics, morality, and communication in the
    current political climate
  * eco media studies

*Individual Submissions*

Abstracts for papers should be 300-500 words and include name and 
affiliation of submitter.*

  * Enhancing Chance of Acceptance for Individual Submission:
  * Don’t reveal your identity in the title or the abstract.
  * Make sure your abstract relates to either the conference theme or
    the organization’s mission (and ideally, to both).
  * Describe clearly and concisely (300-500 words) what your submission
    does.
  * Make sure it is well-edited.
*Panels, Workshops, Working Groups, and Roundtable Submissions:*

Abstracts for panel proposals, workshops, and roundtables should be 
300-500 words and include title, abstract, and participants invited.* 
Enhancing the Chance of Acceptance for a Panel/Workshop:

  * Have one member of the panel or workshop submit an overarching panel
    title and abstract.
  * Each member should submit an individual abstract for their
    contribution and, if appropriate, a title for their contribution.
    Also, include just the panel title so they can be reviewed together.
  * Don’t reveal your identity or the identity of anyone on the panel in
    any of the submissions.
  * Make sure all abstracts relate to either the conference theme or the
    organization’s mission (and ideally, to both)
  * In all abstracts, describe clearly and concisely (300-500 words)
    what your submission does. Make sure it is well-edited.
Graduate students should submit full papers and abstracts to be 
considered for the Brian Murphy Student Paper Award. 
(http://www.democraticcommunications.org/conference/brian-murphy-student-paper-award/ 
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.democraticcommunications.org_conference_brian-2Dmurphy-2Dstudent-2Dpaper-2Daward_&d=DwMFaQ&c=ODFT-G5SujMiGrKuoJJjVg&r=TKYt1AvbVQNhqtX1F9MwVg&m=1MBx3Uvy46KTIiuYjXOw85vCnsbl0pETilWXHH1ofZU&s=FYd3pS53aZ9XBkb8yIrss0eio_ZbrsXMamFyktDYp1A&e=>) 
*All submissions undergo a double-blind review.

Please send abstracts and proposals to: 
*https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=udcpc2019*

*Deadline for Submissions*: *15 June 2019*

*Notice of Acceptance*: Applicants will be notified of their acceptance 
no later than 1 August 2019.

For more information, please visit our Conference Index. For any 
questions, please contact: (udc.steering /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(udc.steering /at/ gmail.com)>


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