3rd Global Conference
Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging
Friday 25th September - Monday 28th September 2009
Mansfield College, Oxford
Call for Papers
This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the new and prominent
place that the idea of culture has for the construction of identity and
the implications of this for social membership in contemporary
societies. In particular the project will assess the larger context of
major world transformations, for example, new forms of migration and the
massive movements of people across the globe, as well as the impact and
contribution of globalisation on tensions, conflicts and the sense of
rootedness and belonging. Looking to encourage innovative
trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all
disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand what
it means for people, the world over, to forge identities in rapidly
changing national, social and cultural contexts.
Papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the following
themes:
1. Challenging Old Concepts of Self and Other
~ Who is self and who is other?
~ The new value of social diversity and cultural multiplicity; breaking
with homogeneity and sameness
~ What is the place of difference and alterity, of normality and
normalisation in defining identity and membership
~ How to account for social membership and cultural identity?
~ Making sense of transformations and their effects over culture,
identity and membership
~ Othering, excluding, stygmatising
2. Nations, Nationhood and Nationalisms
~ What does it mean, today, to belong to a nation?
~ New migrants, new migratory flows and massive movements from
peripheral to central countries
~ Resurgence of the local and the diminishing importance of the national
~ Are we living post-national realities?
~ What is the place of cultural claims in today’s forms of social
membership?
~ Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of placing the
responsibility of change on the Other
3. Institutions, Organizations and Social Movements
~ Evaluating the promises and institutions of post-national governing
~ Institutions and organisations that do more for money than for people
~ Political battles over globalization
~ Social movements, new rebellion and alternative globalizations
~ Trans-cultural connections that escape institutional and political
intentions or control
~ New forms of global exclusion
4. Persons, Personhood and the Inter-Personal
~ De-centering individuals and the making of persons; thinking and
acting with others in mind and interpersonally
~ Tensions, contradictions and conflicts of identity formation and
social membership
~ New sources and forms of belonging; new tribalism, localism,
parochialism and communitarianism
~ Bonds of care across boundaries of inequality and exclusion,
ideologies and religions, politics and power, nations and geography
~ Who am I if not the relation with others?
~ Non-recognition as cultural violence
5. Media and Artistic Representations
~ The role of new and old media in the construction of cultures and
identities, of nations and place
~ Production and reproduction of cultural typing and stereotyping
~ The contested space of representing culture, identity and belonging
~ Art, media and how to challenge the rigid and impenetrable
constructions of culture
~ Living, being and belonging through art
~ Life imitating art and fiction
6. Transnational Cultural Interlacing of Contemporary Life
~ What is shared from cultures? How are cultures shared? Who has access
to the sharing of cultures?
~ Cultural claims and human rights
~ Living in a context with the cultural markers of a different context:
Is that transculturalism?
~ Languages, idioms and new emerging forms of wanting to bridge the
‘invisible’ divide of cultures
~ Symbols and significations that connect people to places other than
‘their own’
~ Culture, identity and belonging by choice
7. New Concepts, New Forms of Inclusion
~ Recognition and respect without exclusion
~ An ethics for social relations in a new millennium
~ What to do with historically old concepts like tolerance, acceptance
and hospitality?
~ Should not we all be strangers? Should not we all be foreigners?
~ Is there any use for cosmopolitanism these days?
~ Loving the other within the self; building fluid boundaries of
belonging and being
Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.
The 2009 meeting of Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging will run
alongside the launch of our new project on Fashion - Exploring Critical
Issues and we anticipate holding sessions in common between the two
projects. We welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing
issues of Fashion, Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging.
Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts
should be submitted by Friday 24th April 2009. If an abstract is
accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by
Friday 7th August 2009.
300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs;
abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e)
body of abstract
E-mails should be entitled: Multiculturalism Abstract Submission
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any
special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or
underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals
submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should
assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace!
We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
Research Director,
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
E-Mail: acc@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher
Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
E-Mail: mcb3@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the Diversity and Recognition research
projects, which in turn belong to the At the Interface programmes of
Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together people from different
areas and interests to share ideas and explore discussions which are
innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at
this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected
papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN
hard copy volume.
Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we
are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or
subsistence.
For further details about the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/multiculturalism-conflict-and-belonging/
For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/multiculturalism-conflict-and-belonging/call-for-papers/
