Fwd: 6th Global Conference Pluralism: Inclusion and Citizenship

6th Global Conference Pluralism, Inclusion and
Citizenship

Friday 11th March ? Sunday 13th March 2011
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. Persons, 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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 1st October 2010. 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 protected]

Rob Fisher
Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
[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 about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/pluralism-inclusion-and-citizenship/

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