- Apologies for Cross Posting -

CALL FOR PAPERS


7th Graduate Conference in Erlangen
November 3rd - 5th 2006
Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg
Kochstr. 4, 91054 Erlangen
Germany



Circular-Flows
--
Capillaries of World Culture


The 7th graduate conference "circular flows" takes up the theme of the
6th conference which was held under the title "border//crossings". Two
years ago, in 2004, borders and border crossing was discussed, while
this year's conference will focus on the topics of mobility and motility
as constituents of new trans-cultural spaces. The crossing of
traditional borders is considered as a necessary prerequisite of the
emergence of "Circular Flows", but the main attention is drawn towards
the genesis, modification and stabilisation of knowledge and culture in
the course of border transgression - from "roots" to "routes" as Paul
Gilroy put it. The conference deals both with questions of "blurring
boundaries" on the level of international organisations, with discourses
of new "transnational spaces", of new "ethno-, ideo- or mediascapes" and
with discussions about "glocalization", "hybridisation" and "melange".
Processuality is the common ground of all these aspects. Their stability
- as suggested by the title of the conference - stems from their
circularity or recursivity in time.
The conference addresses the debate about world culture und world
society beyond global finance markets and geopolitics. Artefacts,
bodies, people, social relations, institutions, figures, media, facts
and cultures "on the move" are to be questioned about their bottom-up
consequences for and in line with world culture.

This main issue can be specified in three dimensions:

1) Flows, transfer, blending and recursivity (de-constructions of global
space)

Circuits of movement, perpetual streams of communication, flows of
symbols, the mechanisms of transfer and diffusion are elements and
expressions of "circular flows". Physical movement, the "movement" of
meaning and media and the alteration of perspectives and world views do
not necessarily coincide. They rather overlap substitute or interchange
amongst each other and into the direction of their social and cultural
environments. We can therefore ask for the terms of their recursivity as
well as for their (de-)constructive effects in relationship to other
both mobile and immobile life-forms.

2) Reflexivity, emergence of culture and of spaces (cos-mobility)

The second direction focuses space in a geographical and in a figurative
sense: Space as an issue of discourse as well as the construction of its
symbolic structure by actors. Being on the move involves the crossing of
"traditional-modern" social spaces and may lead to the reflexive
formation of symbolic structures of aesthetics, styles and self
representations. These representations have a spatial dimension and
touch questions of "home" and "identity". One could think of post-modern
constellations of symbols, the intermingling of cultural codes etc. and
of questions of cosmobility.

3) Regulation, inclusion und exclusion (new borderlines)

From a perspective of circularity the meaning of borders/frontiers
becomes multidimensional: in terms of borders and the crossing of
frontiers as a prerequisite for the constitution of new spaces and
flows, in terms of insecure existence next or "on" borders and in terms
of transcultural or global demarcations in the line of recursive
stabilization of new spaces (exclusion/inclusion). We want to lay
emphasis on the analysis of mechanisms of regulation, regimes and
stabilization. One could think of studies which deal with the
suppression of circular flows or with questions of unequal distribution
of opportunity structures and the variance of abilities to capitalize on
new spaces and their symbolic representation. Eventually, this topic
touches questions of the conditioning of communication and movement by
global regimes of money and power.

We would like to invite an international and interdisciplinary audience
to the three-day conference. Graduates and postgraduates from
philosophy, history, languages and literatures, media studies, social
sciences etc. should post proposals to the issue of "circular flows",
both theoretical work or concepts and empirical or literature studies.

Conference languages will be English and German. The publication of an
anthology is planned. Please submit your proposal using the online
registration form on this webpage (www.gradnet.de) until August, 31st .
The conference fee will presumably be ¤ 20,- (to be paid on arrival).
Please contact us if you have any questions.

Office:
Department of Sociology
FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg
D-91054 Erlangen
Germany
0049-9131-8522092 (or: 0049-9131-8522792)


graconinfo@...
--
Markus Wiemker
markus@...
www.wiemker.org