Social Sciences

Fwd: 3rd Global Conference: Time, Space and Body

3rd Global Conference: Time, Space and Body

Sunday 7th September - Tuesday 10th September 2014
Mansfield College, Oxford,United Kingdom.

Call for Presentations:
This conference seeks to explore the multifaceted nature of space, time and the body in order to question the ways in which we construct, experience and understand our world. We encourage an examination of time, space and/or the body as either independent or interconnecting areas 'suspended in webs of significance' (Geertz, 1973). Exploring our existence and interaction within these 'webs', it becomes apparent that societies consist of embodied people who constantly participate in specific tasks, at particular times and in constructed spaces. For example, Turner (2004:38) has suggested 'every society is confronted by four tasks: the reproduction of populations in time, the regulation of bodies in space, the restraint of the interior body through disciplines and the representation of the exterior body in social space.' Taking these four tasks as our starting point, this conference project invites proposals from a range of disciplines such as architecture, social geography, the visual and creative arts, sociology, anthropology, literary studies, law and religious studies, archaeology, media and audience studies, the classics and philosophy, social and natural sciences, business studies, information science, popular culture and politics. We also welcome case studies or other approaches from practitioners such as artists, health professionals, psychologists, writers, law makers and policy analysts.

Recognising that different disciplines and practitioners express themselves in different mediums, we welcome traditional papers, panels, workshop proposals and other forms of performance (as can be accommodated in the space provided). Accordingly topics are sought on different aspects and/or relationships between any combination of space, time or the body or on how these categories are understood, mythologised and constructed in order to affect, effect, order and/or control each other.

Invited topics can include any of the following themes and related areas:

1) Understanding Space, Time and the Body
- Academic theories
- Narratives, definitions and perceptions
- Interdisciplinary studies, cross cultural comparisons
- Institutions, organisations, constructions, and deconstructions
- How access to information on space, time and the body is controlled, distorted and facilitated

2) Contexts for Space, Time and the Body
- Architecture: the construction and constraints of space
- Art, sculpture and installation practices
- Work and power as a temporal-spatial event
- Time and the spatiality of movement
- City planning and change over time or terrain
- History and public/social policy changes towards crime and punishment
- Age and the impact of space and time
- Boundaries and controls

3) Representations of Time, Space and the Body
- Language and embodied/disembodied characters in literature, film, theatre, TV, graphic novels, games:
narrative, music and mis-en-scene
- Different genres over time: changes in interpretation, popularity and relevancy
- Novels, plays, poems, short stories and time (eg: short time span, the inter-generational epic â?" how does this work, what are the impacts?)
- The voice, dance and music
- Time as the 'enemy'

4) Relationships within Time, Space and the Body
- The body as a place and space for storytelling (eg: the body as victim/survivor, tattoos)
- Non-human or post-human bodies in space and time
- The 'body politic' or the political body: Who 'owns' the body? - patient or practitioner or...?
- Monetising/economics of production between time, space and body
- Accounting: the consequences of periodic reporting and impact on the valuation of space
- Legislative/legal constructions as related to time, space, body
- Changing attitudes toward: pain, death, suffering, religion, family, gender, sexuality, disability or fashion

5) Experiencing Time, Space and the Body
- Time, 'performativity' and identity
- Religion, spirituality, forms of altered consciousness and ritual
- Indigenous cultures and cosmologies in space and time
- Cyclical, spiral, dreamtime, memory or linear time
- Doing Time: space and punishment
- Body modification and body horror
- Emotions or rationality: reactions to space, particularly public spaces (eg: how do we 'feel' when... can that reaction be replicated, can it impact or trigger other reactions?)
- Monstrosity, technology and futurology

At the end of the conference, the aim will be to further develop the discussions and dialogues presented at this conference into new and continued interdisciplinary research that will help us make sense of the contested categories of time, space and the body.

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between these groups â?" and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Time, Space and Body and Madness.

What to Send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th April 2014. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 11th July 2014. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: TSB3 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.

Organising Chairs
Shona Hill and Shilinka Smith: [email protected]
Rob Fisher: [email protected]

The conference is part of the Making Sense Of: programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All proposals accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected proposals may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation.

For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/making-sense-of/time-space-and-the-body/call-for-presentations/

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.

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Social Sciences