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Call for Papers "Communicating Civilisation and Global Order" 5th International Forum on World Civilisations History Department, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London Centre for Comparative Studies of World Civilisations, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) Institute of Cultural Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University London (UK) 5-7 September 2011 __________________________________________________ The History Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, in collaboration with the Centre for Comparative Studies of World Civilisations of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the Institute of Cultural Studies of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), and the School of Foreign Languages and Cultures of Nanjing Normal University are pleased to announce the 5th International Forum on World Civilisations to be held in London, September 5-7, 2011. The historical ebb and flow of global capital, political control, and social and environmental change has opened up vast new spaces within which people have sought participation in an increasingly overcrowded world. Modern media technologies, the homogenisation of global time, and more efficient transportation have brought some areas of the globe closer together whilst others remain excluded from true participation. This conference seeks to understand how and why visions and narratives of global order remain a crucial part of international communication, and whether a harmony among peoples can ever be detached from the power that defines those relationships. By recognising the continued assertion of notions of civilisation to define and propagate the idea of a global hierarchy, the conference will look at how a shared ground on attitudes toward morality, nature, technological advancement, spirituality, to name but a few, continue to determine a discourse about how interaction on the global stage is restricted to certain conceptual spaces. The aim of the conference is to further the understanding of these issues through a historical exploration of the four themes outlined below in the form of presentations and discussions by scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Keynote speakers: Professor Harry Harootunian Professor Prasenjit Duara Panel 1. The Environment: Climate, pollution, resources, migration, conflict Changes in the environment shape historical formations of culture and society. How do the debates on the increasing pressure on limited natural resources and climate change influence global order? Does conflict over how to deal with the ecological crisis represent a shift in how societies communicate with each other? How is climate change, as a conceptual global phenomenon as well as a psychical experience of the environment explained and understood? Papers on this panel will ponder how environmental issues are played out on the global and local level, how they are used to promote particular interests, and to what degree cooperation or non-cooperation has been central. Does history provide any clues to how environmental issues might have been used/exploited/dealt with globally? Has the environment always played a part in communicating civilization? Panel 2. Beliefs: Shared ground or source of conflict? Belief has long been understood as crucial to the construction of Imperial relationships, proving a superb psychological tool in the construction of the ‘civilised’. Whilst such civilities were often attached to the national economies that drove Imperial expansion, they also provided a crucial space within which a supra-national elite community could be forged through person to person contact. This panel will look at that space, and how notions of universality were seen as a process through which ‘otherness’ might be explored and how conversion (religious or otherwise) was seen as a way through which outsiders might prove themselves partners in the colonial project. Papers are also invited that look at how, in the aftermath of World War II, the concept of universality, and the belief systems that supported it, where opened up, moving away from notions of religious salvation into the secular, humanitarian struggle for rights, welfare, justice and democracy. Panel 3. Spectacle: Media, national ceremonies, and displays Spectacles have, throughout history, been used to create temporal moments that appear to unify a populace, both domestically and on the world stage. Events such as opening ceremonies of the Olympics and the World Cup, Beauty Pageants, and World Fairs, as well as more localised Spectacles created for tourist industries, have long been utilized by nation states to create points of reference through which they might be seen in relation to the global order of the day. Now through 24 hour connectives via media, e.g. CNN, BBC, Facebook and Twitter, global time itself seems to have become a means of Spectacle. This panel seeks to look at the meanings created through spectacle and how they propagate social, political and economic order in the context of globalized space and time. Panel 4. Globalizing the local: Visualizing new hierarchies In 2002 an International Bank launched a new advertising campaign under the slogan ‘the world’s local bank’ (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK_NinOmFWw). This panel will look at the projection of a newly egalitarian global order as represented through visual culture. It will look at how the old colonial markers of hierarchy, be it through an exploration of cultural or racial character, localized tastes and fashions or the conception of cleanliness, to name but a few, continue to relate to new visions of global order. In particular, papers are invited that explore how representations of a harmonious vision of the local and global interact with the less comfortable political, social and economic realities that lie beneath the rhetoric. Paper proposals are invited for participation in one of the four panels outlined above. A publication of revised versions of the conference papers is planned following the event. The deadline for proposals is: November 30th, 2010. Please submit a 250 word abstract and a brief CV to: [email protected] Contact: Bianca Son Department of History School for Oriental and African Studies University of London London WC1H 0XG UK Phone: +44 7981 365506 Email: [email protected] __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
