Hi Folks, Here's some pertinent information for those of you who plan to submit panels, posters, and papers for ISA 2012 in San Diego. The big deadline is June 1, details on other deadlines can be found below. I've also pasted in the intro to the call for papers for next year, in case anyone wants to submit for a cross-over panel with the conference theme: Power Principles and Participation in the Global Information Age. Suggestions for other cross-over panels (with other ISA sections) are welcome as well. Below that is a list of possible panel topics that came up at the ESS meeting in Montreal in March. I strongly recommend organizing panel submissions, not just because it will make my job easier but also because panels organized by participants work quite well and because organizing panels can be a great way to network within the community. Lastly, please do remember to include accurate keywords in all your submissions to ensure that your paper/panel comes up when I'm searching for proposals on a particular topic.
Best, D.G. Webster Vice-Chair Environmental Studies Section International Studies Association *The 2012 ISA Conference will be in San Diego from 1-4 April 2012. The deadline for the submission of panels is 1 June 2011.* a. If you are interested in proposing an innovative panel, the deadline is 16 May 2011. b. If you are interested in proposing a working group, the deadline is 15 June 2011. c. For more information, go to www.isanet.org Power, Principles and Participation in the Global Information Age Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message,” and coined the term “global village.” McLuhan died in 1980, but his insights are even more relevant today. The information environment is drastically different from that of even a decade ago, as new forms of information flows come into existence almost annually. Facebook now has over 500 million users, and Twitter, a service barely in existence three years ago, counts over 175 million users. These tools are not only for finding long-lost school friends or sharing pictures of loved ones: they often are used for political purposes. For instance, both text messages and tweets served as vital communication tools during the 2010 post-election protests in Iran. Indeed, Reuters reported that United States government went so far as to ask Twitter to postpone maintenance and maintain service during this time. Humanitarian groups also use these communications technologies to bring attention to events worldwide: in the wake of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, the Red Cross collected $30 million in SMSbased donations from US phone users. And the 2010 elections witnessed US political candidates (and their staffs) tweeting and facebooking like never before. The theme of this year’s conference is inspired by the apparent impact of new information and communication technologies on international and transnational affairs. Information has altered power relations; it has help to globalize norms and principles; it has the potential to bring new participants into political and social processes world-wide. From geographic information systems that bring satellite images to our research to sophisticated form of electronic textual analysis to internet surveys, it is undeniable that a whole range of new technologies is affecting the way we think about and do research in international studies. see http://www.isanet.org/annual_convention/call-for-papers.html for the full call. *List of panel topics proposed at the ESS meeting at ISA 2011 *(in the order they were mentioned) 1. Sustainability 2. GEP text books 3. The peer-review process 4. Climate justice 5. CA practitioners 6. Interaction between INGO leaders/policy makers and academics 7. Changes in the middle east and GEP 8. Rio +20 events 9. Japan tsunami one year later 10. Nuclear energy 11. Big crises 12. Risk analysis and uncertainty (Beck's global risk analysis) 13. Oceans/fish 14. Social ecological systems -- D.G. Webster Assistant Professor Environmental Studies Program Dartmouth College 6182 Steele Hall Hanover, NH 03755 phone: 603-646-0213 http://www.dartmouth.edu/~envs/faculty/webster.html
