Call for Presentations

8th Global Conference

Thursday 11th September – Saturday 13th September 2014
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

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Call for Presentations
This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the new and prominent place that the idea of culture has for the construction of identity and the implications of this for social membership in contemporary societies. In particular, the project will assess the context of major world transformations, for example, new forms of migration and the massive movements of people across the globe, as well as the impact of globalisation on tensions, conflicts and on the sense of rootedness and belonging. 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 identities in rapidly changing national, social and cultural contexts.

Proposals, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the following themes:

1. State borders and mobility
- State’s obligation in admitting migrants
- State security and border control
-  Immigration policy and political ideology of nation-state
- Permeability of state boundaries under globalization
- Redefining borders under globalized world

2. Irregular migration
- Illegal migration or irregular migration?
- Irregular migration: whose account?
- Irregular migration and transnational mobility
- Irregular migration, exploitation and human rights violation
- Rights and protection of irregular migrants

3. Religion and gender
- Gender differences in migration
- Religious practices and gender equality under migration
- Migrants and freedom of religion
- Religious and ethnic minorities under multiculturalism
- Religious extremism and the challenge on pluralism

4. Human rights and citizenship
- Universality of human rights
- Citizenship and rights entitlement
- Caste system in the contemporary world
- Human rights protection for non-citizens
- Conflicting rights

5. Identity formation and belongingness
- Identity formation and transnational migration
- Integration and preservation of minority cultures
- Intergenerational differences on identity formation of migrants
- Value conflict and belongingness
- Recognition or redistribution under contemporary economic development

6. Redefining multiculturalism
- Changing concepts in the study of ethnicity and multiculturalism
- Researching multiculturalism
- Multiculturalism: the East-West discourse
- States commitment towards multicultural practices
- Multiculturalism versus nationalism
- Historical construction of multiculturalism and its application in the contemporary world

Proposals will be considered on any related theme.

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 – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Fear, Horror and Terror and Multiculturalism.

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: Multiculturalism 8 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). 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 ChairsRaees Baig: raees.baig@gmail.com
Rob Fisher and Ram Vemuri: mcb8@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 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.

Call for Presentations

3rd Global Conference

Sunday 7th  September – Tuesday 9th September 2014
Mansfield College, Oxford

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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:

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

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

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 – how does this work, what are the impacts?)
- The voice, dance and music
- Time as the ‘enemy’

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

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 – 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 & Shilinka Smith: shs@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher: tsb3@inter-disciplinary.net

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.