CONF: Pluralism, Inclusion and Citizenship

This broad conference sounds very interesting, especially themes 1, 2, 4, and 7...

4th Global Conference
Pluralism, Inclusion and Citizenship
Friday 31st October - Sunday 2nd November 2008
Salzburg, Austria

Call for Papers

With this inter- and multi-disciplinary project we seek to explore the new developments and changes of the idea of pluralism and their implications for social and political processes of inclusion and citizenship in contemporary societies. The project will also assess the larger context of major world transformations, such as new forms of migration and the massive movements of people across the globe, as well as the impact of the multiple dynamics of globalisation on rootedness and membership (including their tensions and conflicts) and on a general sense of social acceptance and recognition. 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 be citizens in rapidly changing national, social and political landscapes.

In particular papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the following themes:

1. Challenging Old Concepts of Citizen and Alien * Who is a citizen and who is an alien, a foreigner? * The new value of political pluralism and cultural multiplicity; breaking with homogeneity and sameness * What is the place of difference
and alterity in defining membership and citizenship? * How to account for political membership and identity? * Making sense of transformations and their effects over citizenship identity and membership * Othering, marginalising, excluding,
stygmatising
2. Nations, Fluid Boundaries and Citizenship * 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 economic and cultural claims in today’s forms of political membership? * Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of placing the responsibility of change on migrants
3. Institutions, Organizations and Social Movements * Evaluating the promises and institutions of post-national governing * What happened to the rights of migrants and displaced peoples? * Political battles over globalization and the forging of global citizenship * Social movements, new rebellion and alternative global politics * Trans-national connections that escape institutional and political control * New forms of global exclusion
4. Persons, Personhood and the Inter-Personal * De-nationalising citizenship and the making of a global citizen * Tensions, contradictions and conflicts of citizenship formations and political membership * New sources and forms of political participation; new localism, parochialism and communitarianism * Bonds of care across boundaries of inequality and exclusion, ideologies and religions, politics and power, nations and geography * Thinking and acting with foreigners and migrants in mind * Citizens acknowledging the fundamental role of migrants; making migration personal and interpersonal
5. Media and Artistic Representations * The role of new and old media in the construction of political membership, of nations and citizens * Production and reproduction of political and citizen typing and stereotyping * The contested space of representing politics, national identity and membership * Art, media and how to challenge the rigid and impenetrable constructions of political culture * Living, being and exercising membership through art * Political life imitating art and fiction
6. Transnational Political Interlacing of Contemporary Life * What is shared from political cultures? How are political cultures shared? Who has access to the sharing of political cultures? * Human rights, migration and massive displacements of people * Living in a context with the political markers of a different context: Is that political trans-culturalism? * Languages, idioms and new emerging forms of wanting to bridge the ‘invisible’ divide between political cultures * Symbols and significations that connect people to places other than ‘their own’ * Politics, identity and
belonging by choice
7. New Concepts, New Forms of Inclusion * Recognition and respect without marginality * An ethics for social and political 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? * Embracing the alien within the citizen; building fluid boundaries of membership and political participation

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 13th June 2008. If your paper is accepted for presentation at the conference, an 8 page draft paper should be submitted by Friday 10th October 2008. 300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both 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. 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, Director of Research, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain, E-Mail: acc@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher, Network Founder and Network Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HRE, mail: pic4@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 ID.Net. We aim to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore innovative and challenging routes of intellectual and academic exploration. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers will be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume.

For further details about the project please visit:

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/diversity/pluralism/pluralism.htm

For further details about the conference please visit:

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/diversity/pluralism/pl4/cfp.html