7th Global Conference: Pluralism, Inclusion and Citizenship

7Th  Global Conference Pluralism, Inclusion and Citizenship Monday 12th - Wednesday 14th March 2012 Prague, Czech Republic

Call for Papers:

With this 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, presentations and pre-formed panels 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. Renewal or Re-foundation of Democracy?
~ New forms of civic protest and the de-centering of politics
~ Financial crisis and the political burden taken by Nations and States in the name of citizens
~ Civic indignation and the lack of trust in institutional politics
~ Political legitimation, institutional crisis of representation and sidestepping formal politics
~ Finding new forms, building new routes for forcing political change
~ New citizens and the action of citizens outside institutional politics

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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 also be considered which deal with related themes. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 30 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 4th February 2011. 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: Pluralism 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: [email protected]

Rob Fisher Network Leader Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
Email: [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. 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/pluralism-inclusion-and-citizenship/

For further details of the conference, please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/pluralism-inclusion-and-citizenship/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.