Social Sciences

6th Global Conference: Interculturalism, Meaning and Identity

6th Global Conference
Interculturalism, Meaning and Identity

Tuesday 19th March â?? Friday 22nd March 2013
Lisbon, Portugal

Call for Presentation:
This multi- disciplinary project aims to bring together researchers from different disciplines to discuss, explore, understand and develop new aspects of culture and identity. This project will explore the impact of cultures moving from one context to another as well as question identity within the global world. In order to encourage multi-disciplinary dialogues, we welcome papers from all disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand what it means for people, the world over, to forge identities in a rapidly changing national, social and cultural contexts.

Presentations, papers, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on any of the following themes:

1. Contemporary ways of identifying cultures

Multiple, polyvalent and contradictory conceptions of culture
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 the other; recasting of links, bonds and relations
The contradictory forces of culture: diversity versus homogeneity: the 'melting pot' versus multiculturalism, multiplicity versus sameness, 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. The 'Third Culture Kids'

What are the impacts of being uprooted children and grand children?
Mechanism people use to keep roots for their children

4. Religion as a culture

The place religion takes when migrating
Religion as a source of comfort in a changing world

5. Individuals, Identity and the Inter-Subjective

Identifying 'the others' identifying myself: 'Who am I if not in Relation to Others?'
The importance of social membership and the creation of social identity
New sources and forms of belonging; new tribalism, localism, parochialism and communitarianism
Inequality and exclusion, ideologies and religions, politics and power, nations and geography
Cultural violence

6. Cultural Formations

Definition of cultures: how are cultures defined and redefined? Who participates in the social and political task of defining and redefining culture?
What are the dynamics and processes that define the central tenets of a culture?
Sharing of cultures: 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'

7. Politicising Culture

Citizenship versus multiculturalism:
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 todayâ??s forms of social and political membership?
Trans-cultural connections that escape institutional and political control
Cultural claims and human rights
Equalising cultures; recognition and respect across cultures

8. Art and Cultural Representations

Media and the construction of cultures and identities
Social cyber networks like Facebook, Skype, emails and its' impact on social change and redefinition of identity
Production and reproduction of cultural recognition and misrecognition
Representing meaning and identity, culture and belonging through art

9. Crossing Cultural Boundaries

Interpenetration, overlapping, crossovers, interlacing, hybridisation and interdependence
Languages, idioms and new emerging forms of bridging the 'invisible' divide of cultures
The non- verbal language and the impact on cultural separation: clothing, body languages, 'mentality', relation to space and time
Conceptualisations that foster the breaking down of rigid cultural boundaries
How to revamp historically old concepts like tolerance, acceptance and hospitality?
An ethics for cultural relations

Presentations will also be considered which deal with related themes.

What to Send
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 12th October 2012. 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 18th January 2013. 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 6 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:

Efrat Tzadik: [email protected]
Ram Vemuri and Rob Fisher: [email protected]

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.

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

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Social Sciences