Interculturalism, Meaning and Identity

5th Global Conference
Interculturalism, Meaning and Identity
Friday 9th March - Sunday 11th March 2012
Prague, Czech Republic

This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the new and prominent  place that the idea of culture has for the construction of meaning and identity, as well as the implications for social political 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, presentations and pre-formed panels are invited on any of the following themes:

1. Contemporary Rediscoveries and Redefinitions of Culture
   • Multiple, polyvalent and contradictory conceptions of culture
   • Infinite source of meaning and identity, of membership and exclusion,  of privileging and stygmatising, of worth and misery, of place and history, of violence and destruction
   • Cultural remaking of self and other; recasting of links, bonds and relations
     The contradictory forces of culture: diversity versus homogeneity,  multiplicity versus sameness, alterity versus normality, recognition versus misrecognition
   • Textures of cultures: fixed, fluid, porous, hermetic, rigid and flexible
2. Cultural Boundaries, Peoples and Nations
   • Dislocation and decoupling of culture and nation, of culture and place, of culture and history
   • Resurgence of the local, the diminishing importance of the national and the forces of the global
   • What does it mean, today, to be part of a culture, to be part of multiple cultures?
   • Massive and new forms of global migration and the new hybridity of cultures
   • Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of ‘forcing’ cultures on migrants
3. Individuals, Identity and the Inter-Subjective
   • De-centering individuals and the making of persons; thinking and acting with others in ind and interpersonality
   • 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
4. Cultural Formations
   • What are the dynamics and processes that define the central tenets of a culture?
   • How are cultures defined and redefined? Who participates in the social and political task of defining and redefining culture?
   • What is shared from cultures? How are cultures shared? Who has access to the sharing of cultures?
   • Symbols and significations that connect people to cultures other than ‘their own’
   • Culture and the construction of identities: destiny, happenstance,choice and politics
5. Politicising Culture
   • Political battles over the principles and core values of a culture, of many cultures
   • The dynamics of cultural recognition and misrecognition
   • What is the place of cultural claims in today’s forms of social and political membership?
   • Trans-cultural connections that escape institutional and political control
   • Cultural claims and human rights
6. Art and Cultural Representations
   • Media and the construction of cultures and identities
   • Production and reproduction of cultural recognition and misrecognition
   • The contested space of representing meaning and identity, culture 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
7. Crossing Cultural Boundaries
   • Interpenetration, overlapping, crossovers, interlacing, hybridisation and interdependence
   • Languages, idioms and new emerging forms of bridging the ‘invisible’ divide of cultures
   • Conceptualisations that foster the breaking down of rigid cultural boundaries
   • Equalising cultures; recognition and respect across cultures
   • How to revamp historically old concepts like tolerance, acceptance and hospitality?
   • An ethics for cultural relations

Papers will also be considered which deal with related themes. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 30th September 2011. All submissions are minimally double blind peer reviewed where appropriate. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 13th February 2012.

Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract

E-mails should be titled: Interculturalism Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and 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.

Joint Organising Chairs: Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Hub Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net,

Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain

Email: acc@inter-disciplinary.net

Rob Fisher Network Leader Inter-Disciplinary.Net,

Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Email: ic5@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 the conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in themed hard copy volume(s).

For further details of the project, please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/interculturalism/

For further details of the conference, please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/interculturalism/call-for-papers/

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.

Priory House 149B

Wroslyn Road Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR

United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1993 882087

Fax: +44 (0)870 4601132

Email: ic5@inter-disciplinary.net

Visit the website at http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/interculturalism/call-for-papers/

Language and the city

Conference
Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
22.08.12-24.08.12
Free University, Berlin

In 2012, the 19th Sociolinguistics Symposium will be hosted by the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany. The general theme of the 2012 conference will be "Language and the city".

Conference date
August 22 - 24, 2012

Plenary speakers (confirmed)

• Peter Auer (FRIAS, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies)
• Penelope Eckert (Linguistics, Stanford University)
• Maria Eugênia Lamoglia Duarte (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)
• Xu Daming (China Center for Linguistic and Strategic Studies, Nanjing University)

Attractive and terrifying, modern cities and megacities structure our lives and communication more than ever. More than 50% of the world's population live in big cities. If urban conglomerations are places where people from other places gather, they form the communicative conditions in many ways: Migration leads to multilingualism, social diversity leads to complex indexical fields.

The main theme of the 19th Sociolinguistic Symposium brings together sociolinguistic work that sheds light on the relations between the socio-geographical phenomenon urbanity and linguistic variation and change. Thus, we particularly welcome contributions on urban indexical fields, social networks in the city, urban communities of practice, urban styles, languages of urban tribes, urban space, multilingualism, language contact, dialect levelling and koineization, new dialect formation, code-switching, linguistic landscapes and all related topics. We also encourage presentations of new methodologies and tools for data collection, transcription, and analysis.

Since the Sociolinguistics Symposium has always been a place for sociolinguistic discussion in the broad sense, space will also be given to contributions on any other subfield of sociolinguistic research.
Submissions

We invite scholars to submit abstracts for contributions of the following types:

Thematic sessions

• A Thematic Session is a cluster of related talks about a common topic. You can propose such a topic and will - if accepted - act as organiser of the thematic session. This means that you will be one of the reviewers for the papers/posters submitted to the session and that you will be responsible for the organisation of the session in August 2012.
• We will try to have at least 50 % of the thematic sessions related to the main theme of the conference (Language and the city).
• The length of your abstract/description should not exceed 600 words (excluding references).

Papers
Papers describe original work, either completed research which has given rise to substantial results, or the development of significant new methodologies, or rigorous theoretical, speculative or critical discussions. Individual papers will be allocated 25 minutes (20 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for questions). The length of your abstract should not exceed 300 words (excluding references).

Posters
Posters may be a more suitable way of presenting results, work-in-progress, fieldwork, or when large amounts of data need to be displayed. Poster presenters have the opportunity to exchange ideas one-to-one with attendees and to discuss their work in detail. They may also provide handouts with examples or more detailed information. The length of your abstract should not exceed 300 words (excluding references).

Papers and posters can be submitted for a specific thematic session, but also without reference to a specific session.

Submission of thematic sessions
Deadline: September 15, 2011

After reviews and selection of thematic sessions for the conference, the submission of individual papers/posters will be opened (in early October).

Submission of individual papers and posters

• for the general theme of the conference (Language and the city)
• for a specific thematic session
• for any subject within the field of sociolinguistics.

Deadline: January 15, 2012

Local Organizers
Matthias Hüning, Uli Reich and Norbert Dittmar

Control's Other Side

Control's Other Side.
4th Interdisciplinary Annual Seminar of the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology
09.02.12-11.02.12
Bielefeld

We welcome all contributions that deal with emergences, changes, disputes, failures and con-sequences of control regimes. Examples for possible research-fields are specified in the confer-ence-description below. We explicitly welcome contributions that deal with other empirical areas or tackle the overall conference topic on a theoretical or conceptiual level.

The conference language is English.
Abstracts should be not longer than 500 words.
We accept abstracts until the 31st of October 2011.

Costs:
There are no fees for participation in the conference.
Travelling expenses and accommodation will be covered within the frame of our budget for the acсepted speakers.

Overview
We encounter forms of control in all realms of social life: internalized moral attitudes on the individual level; national or pre-national rules of law; governmental and non-governmental regulatory agencies attempting to contain potentially harmful developments. An observation of the process of how control is set up and maintained allows us to get a better understanding of the institutionalisation of social order. At the same time, the analysis of control may help to learn something about the sociocultural justifications, which enable such an order. Important changes in the mechanisms of control in modernity can be traced back to these discursive developments.

Despite general compliance with controlling structures, there appears to be a frame of action for 'critical reflection' towards the established institutions of control. Control can never be seized as a totality and no attempt at control is without contradictions and ambivalences. Even if dominant claims over control are not entirely balanced by resistance, oppositional and everyday practices disturb the se-quences of control regimes by deliberately or unintentionally introducing functional mistakes, inconse-quentiality, open or concealed critique. An analysis of control therefore forces us to study its limits: Where are measures of control thought to be unsuccessful? Where do attempts to obtain control fail because no internalisation of norms or legitimization of existing norms has taken place? How are new forms of control possible despite the danger that they themselves will be doubted or rejected? Where does the seemingly constant need for control come from? Which conflicts and tensions constitute different forms of relationships between controlling structures and the objects of the control? And finally: Where and how is control modified by its resisting powers?

The interdisciplinary Annual Seminar of the BGHS this year focuses on the forces that limit, irritate, or modify control. The empirical or conceptual contributions should tackle the paradoxes, contradictions and ambivalences regarding control and discuss the social significance of control and its other side. We invite researchers (PhD level or advanced) to a productive exchange among the disciplines of history, sociology, economics, culture and literature studies as well as all others who can contribute to the topic. We welcome all contributions that deal with emergences, changes, disputes, failures and consequences of control regimes, stemming, for example, from the following research fields:

1. Control and political power
This field sets out an approach to political power and the state in terms of their controlling functions. We are interested in presentations that view state control and the legitimacy of political power as inter-dependently connected with social activities and individual conduct. Since order institutionalized through government authority can fail to achieve sufficient acceptance, we also invite contributions which elucidate political power and state regulation as a field of different conflicts and tensions through examples from different social levels. The institutionalized and informal implementations of norms and sanctions are practices with which societies define what should be seen as right or wrong. As a consequence, deviance and crime do not exist as givens that can be diminished by implementing a tighter regime of control. Rather, the regimes themselves participate in creating individuals such as the delinquent or the criminal. We encourage contributions about this organization of norms via state institutions of jurisdiction as mechanisms of normalization and as sources for the genesis and definition of insecurity, crime, deviance and thus the creation of the "Other".

2. Control and economy
Economic survival depends on the need to make certain decisions about an uncertain future, and under those conditions, actors want to achieve as much control as possible. We are interested in presentations that analyse control in the economy from a number of perspectives, including (but not limited to) the following: Discussions on -political economy' or -varieties of capitalism', in particular on the way that corporations influence and the state regulates the market. (Relatedly, the effects of developments in economic theory could be given specific consideration.) While often viewed as simply -controlled' by state and business organizations, the role of consumers as a third group of actors is pivotal in shaping the market through initiatives such as -fair trade', by boycotts, initiatives to raise consumers' awareness, calls for transparency and information equality, etc. We would like to stress that activity within the economic field controls, to an extent, its broader social, cultural and physical environments as well as being constrained by them. On that basis, we welcome papers that deal with this interplay, for example: the emergence of a -new spirit of capitalism' (e.g. new forms of employee control in the -projective city'); changes in the perception of risk and responsibility (e.g. risk management, CSR, or other voluntary forms of control such as the ISO standards); or the role of economic actors and policy in concerns over climate change and -sustainability'.

3. Control and religion
Since ancient times, religion has played a significant role in establishing and maintaining social order. The influence of religion can be traced on different levels from macro-institutional structures (i.e. in church-state relationships, comparative secularisms, etc.) down to individual agency (i.e. to norms and values, worldviews and aspirations). But religious control has also been questioned from within and without. Prophetic traditions have been influential correctives to religious power in most religious traditions, and religion has been used to formulate strong critiques of control - while the Enlightenment questioned religious control at large. The secularization thesis predicted a disenchanted world, with an individual freed of -superficial' and -traditional' control. But not only is (public) religion still very vivid in late modernity; religion also plays a role for innovation and change of social order, whilst at the same time also offering rationales for resisting such change. Phenomena such as Pentecostals in South America, Islamic fundamentalism, New Age counterculture, or holistic spirituality - to mention a few - may shed some light on control and its other side. How are religious forms - conformist and nonconformist, world renouncing and world affirming, individualized and organized - used to both establish and resist social control? We therefore especially invite proposals dealing with transformations of religions in their - at times ambiguous - relation to social order and control at various levels.

4. Control and nature
To control nature has been an aim of science and technology since Francis Bacon's traditional formulation. But this was not always the case. Nature for a long time counted as uncontrollable and as the encompassing setting for society. Which relationships did societies have with nature? How did the will to control and the means to control change over time? And in which regards does nature still retain some its uncontrollability and incalculability? Apart from this, the scientific control of nature itself requires control: After the great success of the natural sciences in the 19th and early 20th century, control's other side becomes more and more obvious in the recent environmental and technological catastrophes: dying forests, Chernobyl, climate change - this is only the tip of the iceberg of disturbances and resistances that the control of nature now encounters. Science- and Technology studies, risk-research and research in governance reflect those disturbances and the way that societies deal with them. Looking at Fukushima, the failure of technology and scientific control over nature seem more than just a current topic. But how do attempts to control and failures of control change over time? Are the different types of controls and its other side distinguishable? And what can we learn from that ambivalence of control in general?

5. Control and cultural discourses
In every historical period and social context the production of arts and cultural discourses have always been objects of control and evaluation as main forms of representation of moral and of a cultural specificity of its time and space. How do such discourses nevertheless develop opposing points of view against established norms? What new social tendencies arise due to critique and resistance in mass media and arts? One example of the extreme threatening character of control of mass media and art is the restriction of freedom of opinion and of additional forms of representation in dictatorial societies, in which representatives of unofficial art or oppositional actors of media discourses are prosecuted. At the same time there are also controlling institutions in democratic societies that reveal their paradoxes and problems in attempts to influence the media discourses and the cultural production of their society.

6. Control and the body
Self-control and the correct presentation of the body are important criteria to show the determination and discipline with which actors can claim to adhere to their societies' virtues. At the same time sufferings can be used as positive semantics for the demonstration of compliance. In these examples, the body can be conceptualized as a medium but also as an object of external control or of self-control. Since health and prevention have appeared as new semantics, the distinctions between insanity and society, health and illness, normality and pathology become more important. Health is defined and thus constructed by the medical and the political-economical discourses. In the context of such discourses it could be interesting to discuss the following questions: How can the pathological, the abnormal, be normalized despite a social stigma. And when is it found, how can it be defined as unproblematic? How can control also be internalized as self-control? How does control over all expressions of the own body and soul and the ability to competently handle even unusual situations (expressed for example by the semantic of 'coolness-) become important, despite the increased pressure for the individual to take responsibility?

Institution: BGHS, Bielefeld
Beteiligte Personen:
Olga Galanova Anna Henkel

Julia Breittruck, Clemens Eisenmann, Rory Finch, Andrea Kretschman,
Vera Linke, Rumin Luo, Malte Stöcken

Kontaktperson: Olga Galanova Anna Henkel
Adresse: Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology
Bielefeld University
Universitätsstr. 25
33501 Bielefeld

Informationen
Webseite: http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/%28en%29/bghs/programm/ansem/index.html

Studia Sociologica

Уважаемые коллеги!

Имею честь пригласить Вас к сотрудничеству с научным журналом Studia Sociologica, издаваемым краковским Педагогическим университетом, который уже много лет считается лучшим педагогическим вузом Польши. При Институте философии и социологии нашего университета действует кафедра социологии — молодой, но динамично развивающийся научно- исследовательский и образовательный центр. До сих пор именно ее сотрудники составляли авторский костяк журнала Studia Sociologica. В связи с расширением кафедры мы планируем установить более тесные контакты с иностранными учеными, представляющими различные направления общественных наук. Мы рассчитываем на плодотворный обмен опытом и научными достижениями. В ближайшее время планируется издание двух номеров журнала, темы которых могут заинтересовать международные научные круги. Первый из них будет носить название «Пограничье, диффузия, транскультурация»; мы собираемся посвятить его разнообразным социокультурным явлениям, имеющим место на пограничье Польши и других стран. Во втором выпуске, «Миграции, идентичность, этничность», мы хотели бы затронуть тему широко понимаемой миграции и связанных с ней явлений и процессов, прежде всего, в области идентичности.
Мы будем благодарны за интерес к нашему предложению, а также за участие в планируемых нами издательских начинаниях. Ждем Ваших разработок и материалов, углубляющих взаимное знание о процессах и явлениях в наших странах, в особенности же на их пограничье.

Просим присылать тесты (на английском, русском или польском языке) на адрес janumaj@ists.pl, с копией на адрес редактора выпуска, Марии Рогинской: mariaroginska@gmail.com.

С уважением,
Януш А. Майхерек, профессор ПУ,
заведующий Кафедрой социологии

Редакция принимает к рассмотрению тексты на польском, английском и русском языках. Выпуски имеют монографический характер. Ближайший номер будет носить название «Пограничье, диффузия, транскультурация», материалы к нему принимаются до 15 сентября 2011 года. Статьи в следующий выпуск, «Миграции, идентичность, этничность», можно присылать до 15 декабря 2011 года.

Статьи знакомят научную общественность с новыми научными результатами, имеющими значение в области общественных наук. Принимаются тексты, не публиковавшиеся ранее и не готовящиеся к публикации в других изданиях. После получения статьи, ее направляют двум анонимным рецензентам; решение о публикации статьи принимается на основании положительных рецензий.

Оптимальный объем материалов: около 20 тыс. знаков. Статья предваряется аннотацией на английском и польском языке с переводом названия статьи (150 слов) и 5-6 ключевыми словами. В отдельном файле следует прислать краткую информацию об авторе.

Статьи присылаются в формате Word (DOC или RTF) на адрес выпускающего редактора Марии
Рогинской mariaroginska@gmail.com. Шрифт основного текста и сносок – Times New Roman, кегль 12 пунктов, междустрочный интервал – полуторный, поля страницы: 2,5 см. Стиль цитирования – чикагский (ср.: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).

Оформление титульной страницы:
Имя и фамилия автора
Место работы
Научная степень, титул
Аннотация
Ключевые слова

Структура работы:
Введение и анализ последних исследований
Методологическая часть
Основное содержание
Выводы

В конце статьи просим поместить контактные данные автора

East-European International School for Humanities (MSH EW) is being reformed

Ladies and Gentlemen!

We would like bring to your attention that the East-European International School for Humanities (MSH EW) is being reformed; its new website address is http://www.ial.org.pl/msh2/. The objective of the reform is the creation of active international humanistic research communities by means of supporting joint research projects.

For several years MSH EW has been engaged in teaching in the field of the humanities with the focus on support of and developing close scientific contacts with partners from the countries of Eastern Europe. Since the founding of the school quite a lot has changed in terms of scientific work in the countries of the project: the international situation in general has changed, and this leads to the reform of the nature of the activities of MSH EW. The activities of MSH proposed from 2011 onwards combine didactics and research; emphasis on the first or second element depends on the chosen form of cooperation.

To facilitate research networking and to discuss possible joint research topics, we have created the MSH internet forum (http://www.ial.org.pl/msh2/forum/). At the same time we are preparing a repository of didactic materials from the MSH EW sessions that will be publicly available at http://www.ial.org.pl/msh2/index.php/pl/repozytorium and constantly upgraded. We also encourage you to subscribe to our mailing list at http://www.ial.org.pl/msh2/index.php/en/lista-mailingowa through which all planned events, as well as new research and teaching materials in the repository will be announced.

Teaching
Priority will be given to the real needs and interests of possible school participants, which can be discussed at our internet forum. Topics in which at least twenty people will be interested will be considered as possible MSH EW sessions.

Research
Another direction of the reforms is to place a greater emphasis on joint research, which would lead to verifiable results and help developing the scientific and educational potential of young scientists, as well as being a training field for teamwork. Verifiable results are understood as e.g. teaching materials in various forms (paper or Internet publications, distant learning courses), jointly organized scientific conferences, publication of research results and their popularization. More information can be found at the site http://
www.ial.org.pl/msh2/index.php/pl/lbn/jak-zgosi-wspolny-projekt-badawczy.

Please, accept our warm greetings.

We are looking forward to many interesting meetings with you in the future!

Directors of MSH EW