6th Global Conference: Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging, Oxford, 16-19 September 2012‏

6th Global Conference: Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging

(September 2012: Oxford, United Kingdom)



Deadline: March 16, 2012











6th Global Conference



Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging



Sunday 16th September 2012 – Wednesday 19th September 2012



Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom







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 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 of

globalisation on tensions, conflicts and on 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?



~ Models of multiculturalism and the contemporary experience of

multiculturalism(s)



~ 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



~ Exploring multiculturalism as a plural experience: Shouldn’t we be

talking about multiculturalisms?



~ 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







The 2012 meeting of Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging will run

alongside the forth meeting of our 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 16th March 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the

conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012.







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, f) up to 10 keywords. 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).

Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year.

All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. 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



Dr S. Ram Vemuri



School of Law and Business, Faculty of Law, Business and Arts



Charles Darwin University



Darwin NT0909, Australia



Email: Ram.Vemuri@cdu.edu.au



Rob Fisher



Network Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net,



Freeland, Oxfordshire,



United Kingdom



E-Mail: mcb6@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.



For further details of the project, please visit:

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/multiculturalism-conflict-and-belonging/







For further details of the conference, please visit:

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/multiculturalism-conflict-and-belonging/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: mcb5@inter-disciplinary.net