Institution: Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Mansfield College, University of Oxford
Location: Oxford (United Kingdom)
21.–23.9.2012
Deadline: 16.3.2012
This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the crucial place
that strangers, aliens and foreigners have for the constitution of
self, communities and societies. In particular the project will
assess world transformations, like phenomena we associate with the
term ‘globalisation’, new forms of migration and the massive
movements of people across the globe, as well as the impact they have
on the conceptions we hold of self and other. 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 a sense
of self in rapidly changing contexts where it is no longer possible
to ignore the importance of strangers, aliens and foreigners for our
contemporary nations, societies and cultures.
Papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the
following themes:
1. Transformations of Self
~ How is Self interweaved with Other? And the many ways in which Self
depends on Other
~ Acknowledging the importance of strangers for our lives, for our
sense of well-being
~ Recognising our dependence on aliens and foreigners for our
communities, cities and towns, for our countries and nations
~ The decline of the value of sameness and homogeneity, the rise of
diversity and plurality
~ Opposing the construction of self by othering, excluding and
stigmatising
2. Boundaries, Communities and Nations
~ Who is a stranger? Aliens and foreigners to whom?
~ New migrants, new migratory flows and massive movements from
peripheral to central countries
~ Trans-national networks and the blurring of boundaries; are we
living trans-national and post-national realities?
~ Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of placing
the responsibility of change on foreigners
~ What has happened to ideas like acceptance, hospitality and
cosmopolitanism
3. Economies, Institutions and Migrants
~ Labour migration as key for economic growth and prosperity
~ The politics of making aliens, foreigners and migratory labour
‘invisible’
~ Global politics of money over people; new forms of global exclusion
~ Social movements, new rebellion and alternative globalisations
~ Trans-cultural connections that escape institutional and political
control
4. Art and Representations
~ Production and reproduction of cultural typing and stereotyping
~ The contested space of representing self and other, native and
foreigner
~ Art, media and how to challenge the rigid constructions of art and
culture
~ Fictions of strangers, stories of aliens, fables of foreigners
~ The artistic constructions of otherness
5. Self (inevitably) linked to Other
~ De-centering selves; who am I if not the relation with others?
~ Thinking and acting with others in mind; orienting life
inter-subjectively
~ Tensions, contradictions and conflicts of living recognising aliens
and foreigners
~ Bonds of care across boundaries of inequality and exclusion,
ideologies and religions, politics and power, nations and geography
~ Non-recognition as social and cultural violence
The 2012 meeting of Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners will run
alongside a second of our projects on Beauty and we anticipate
holding sessions in common between the two projects. We welcome any
papers or panels considering the problems or addressing issues that
cross both projects. 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:
Strangers 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: saf4@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/strangers-aliens-and-foreigners/
For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/strangers-aliens-and-foreigners/call-for-papers/
