[ecrea] M/C Journal 'Coalition' Issue

>M/C Journal 'Coalition' Call for papers - Deadline Oct 15, 2010
>Email: (coalition /at/ journal.media-culture.org.au)
>Web: 
>http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/information/authors
>
>'coalition'
>"Birds of a feather (and colour) will flock (and fly) together."
>-- Old English Proverb, 1545 (approx)
>The notion of the 'coalition' is one normally associated with
>formalised alliances between political parties. Coalitional
>affiliations are not limited to mainstream politics, but share a focus
>on strategy and outcome across the full range of human endeavours.
>Parties with varying priorities will put to one side their differences
>in order to focus on overlapping concerns. Thus coalitions come in all
>shapes and sizes and cross all walks of life: from families, clubs and
>teams to friendships, churches and sects, from companies and
>co-operatives to scientific formula, mathematical groupings and
>multimedia/multi person online gaming environments.
>
>Recent history has revealed cracks in public and political alliances.
>In Australia for example, November 2007 marked a change in politics
>and culture that saw the demise of then Prime Minister John Howard and
>his Coalition government. The coupling of neoliberalism and social
>conservatism was said to be the hallmark of that governments
>commitment to old Australian values, to severe forms of border
>control, the refusal of same-sex marriage, scepticism toward climate
>change, and rapid privatisation policies for public services. The
>Coalition, it appeared, no longer represented the interests of the
>public. Likewise the coalition of the willing as a collective
>American-led force fighting the war-or-terror fell apart in the later
>stages of the Bush administration, and the 2008 shift in American
>politics to Barack Obamas presidency was a singular moment of
>international historical significance.
>
>We ask then, as connections to particular coalitions shift, what new
>affiliations are formed? And which aspects of older coalitions
>continue in the midst of change? What do regions, nations and
>individuals do when the groups they belong to fall apart or lose
>power? Larger coalitional shifts tell us much about culture, history,
>law, media, technology and human behaviour. After Australia and the
>Western world have moved away from supporting the power and policy of
>previously dominant groups, questions emerge as to the nature and
>ethics of collectives (of all kinds) as the expression of political,
>social and personal change.
>
>This issue of M/C Journal seeks to mount a timely critical reflection
>on the multiple contemporary meanings and uses of coalition and
>coalitional thinking. How does the notion of coalition inform
>political practices and powers? How have coalitions changed in recent
>times? What other (non-political party) coalitions exist and how might
>they work? How do coalitions inform understandings and expressions of
>race and whiteness, gender and sexuality, class and poverty, nations
>and borders? What does it mean to be post-coalitional and how might
>we map persistence and change in recent political and non-political
>groupings and collectives? We welcome papers identifying texts and
>behaviours that exemplify coalition, affiliational thinking or
>behaviours, coalitional crisis, or the current local/global
>coalitional and post-coalitional conditions in which people live ­
>from larger contexts of geopolitics through to the micropolitics of
>everyday practices, pleasures and identifications.
>
>Anthony Lambert and Elaine Kelly
>Email: (Anthony.Lambert /at/ mq.edu.au)
>Postal: PO BOX A85, Sydney South, NSW 1235
>
>

----------------
ECREA-Mailing list
----------------
This mailing list is a free service from ECREA.
---
To unsubscribe, please visit http://www.ecrea.eu/mailinglist
---
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Postal address:
ECREA
Université Libre de Bruxelles
c/o Dept. of Information and Communication Sciences
CP123, avenue F.D. Roosevelt 50, b-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
----------------