__________________________________________________
Call for Papers
Theme: Space and Place
Type: 6th Global Meeting
Institution: Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Mansfield College, University of Oxford
Location: Oxford (United Kingdom)
Date: 3.–5.9.2015
Deadline: 1.5.2015
__________________________________________________
Space and place affect the very way in which we experience,
understand, navigate and recreate the world. Wars are fought over
both real and imagined spaces; boundaries are erected against
marginalised individuals, groups and populations, constructing a
lived landscape of division and disenfranchisement, inclusion and
exclusion — whether it be in terms of ideology, nationality, culture,
economic status, religious orientation, gender or sexuality. Space
and place, are also the focus of the creation and contestation of
uncontainable mobilities — the continual movement and shifting of
people, identities, cultures, meanings, information, finances and
objects — that are disrupting the nature and constitution of the
spaces and places that we have lived in; our homes, our
neighbourhoods, our cities, countries and continents. Moreover, the
existence of space and place are irrevocably intertwined with, and
created by, technologies, communication and culture, politics,
economics, power, knowledge and lived experience. Understanding
spatial relationships and the tensions and dynamics that both exist
within and inform space and place, enables us to gain important
insights into the processes that configure the spaces and places that
we move through, inhabit and live within, as well as the nature of
our existence as it is informed by such a crucial dimension of human
life.
Now in its sixth year, Space and Place: Exploring Critical Issues is
an established annual interdisciplinary conference project that
encourages critical and collegial dialogue about questions of space
and place. Recognising that different disciplines and practices
express themselves through different modes, media and formats we
welcome the submission of proposals from creative practitioners —
artists, architects, writers, photographers, painters, film-makers,
performers, urban planners and people from related professions,
industries and activities and alternative forms of performance, who
wish to discuss and showcase their work. Critical accounts and
descriptions of problem-solving activities from ongoing projects that
function to alter the landscape of space and place — urban renewal,
housing development, the development of new forms of mobility, to
name just three — as well as from projects that are in development,
are also most welcome. We also welcome traditional papers, panels and
workshop proposals.
We seek to create a dialogue amongst individuals and groups who are
concerned about the nature of space and place, the complexities found
in both space and place and the relationship of space to place, along
with their meaning. Performances, presentations, reports,
works-in-progress, papers and workshops are invited on issues related
to any of the following themes:
1. The Situation and Location of Identities in Space and Place:
How is our sense of self and our relationship to others constituted
through our existence in space and place? How do human endeavours
affect the constitution of space and place and in so doing affect the
nature of our sense of self?
2. The Space and Place of the Networked Home:
The concept and structure of the home has, and continues, to occupy a
privileged position in human existence. How do the Internet, new
media and the build out of connected devices, appliances and other
technologies increasingly found in the home change the nature of the
home as a space and our place within it.
3. The Creation and Contestation of Existing Spaces and Places:
How have existing spaces and places been created in the past, and how
are they lived in at present. Can we say that our existence in a
given space or place is ever and always without some form of
contestation? If not, then how is our living in an existing space or
place contested in the present? What does this mean for our existence
as individuals, groups and communities in terms of the spaces and
places that we inhabit?
4. The Repurposing of Existing Spaces and Places:
Tobacco curing facilities in Durham, North Carolina, have become chic
niche stores for the wealthy and educated; warehouses in downtown
Vancouver, British Columbia, have become live-work spaces for
artists, entrepreneurs and small start-ups; a church in New York City
has become one of its landmark performance spaces. What are the
processes — local, national, global — that lead to the repurposing of
existing spaces and places? How do these processes, and the
restructuring that they lead to, affect the existence of individuals
and groups who have made use of these spaces and places prior to
their repurposing? What do they foretell for future acts of
repurposing?
5. Theorising Space and Place:
How do space and place exist? What aspects of human, and non-human
behaviour act upon and constitute space and place? From Deleuze to
Latour to Hayles; from theories of becoming to Actor-Network Theory
to New Materialisms, space and place have become increasingly
important dimensions to social and political thought. We welcome any
and all forms of presentations that seek to participate and intervene
in this critically important dialogue.
6. Representations of Space and Place in the Media, Film, Literature,
TV, Theatre, the Fine Arts and Performance: From the haunted house in
horror movies to the foreboding, dark and desolate street in film
noir, to the streetscapes of the French new wave and the “painterly”
spaces in the films of Michael Mann, to the recreation of historical
New York in the literature of Carr and that of Berlin by Kerr, to the
implosion of space in the paintings of Alex Colville, space and place
have long been privileged, if unspoken subjects for the fine arts,
literature and film. We seek presentations by artists, authors,
photographers and filmmakers who wish to share their completed or
on-going visions of space and place. We also welcome critical
readings of these modes of expression and depiction of both space and
place.
7. The Spaces and Places of Social Media:
How do social media exist as social space and places of congregation?
Are these spaces and places disrupting the fabric of our offline
existence, or do they merely supplement it? How do these new places
and spaces of sociability affect our sense of self and our
relationship to others?
8. The Nature and Production of Virtual Space:
William Gibson coined the term cyberspace in 1984, and described it
as a “consensual hallucination.” Can we not, however, think of
cyberspace literally, as a space or place? If so, then how, and how
does this new spatial construct affect the lives of those who have
come to inhabit cyberspace? Do digital natives/Millennials, inhabit a
world of spaces and places that is different from Generation X and
its predecessors? If so, how, and what does this mean for the spaces
and the places —both virtual and real — of the future?
9. Mobile Communication Technologies and New Urban Spaces and Places:
How have mobile phones and tablets changed our sense of space and
place and our relationships to those whom we communicate with? Can we
be said to be living in a space of greater immediacy as a result of
the deployment of mobile communications technologies? Have the mobile
phone and the tablet compressed space, or have they extended our
presence amongst others across space? Do the mobile phone and the
tablet enable us to inhabit new places? If so, then how are these
places constituted, and how are they inhabited?
10. Knowledge Clusters, New Industries and the Globally Networked
City:
Urban geography and industrial location theory and research have long
pointed out that knowledge clusters, information-based industries and
the policies regarding their location have lead to the rearticulation
of spatial relationships that are detrimental to the existing
inhabitants of the places that these industries come to occupy. This
occurs as a result of political and economic spatial segregation
along with the construction of the transit networks that link these
clusters and industries directly to other such places via networks of
regional, national and global mobility. What are the processes
through which this is occurring in the early 21st century? How are
space and place rearticulated through these processes? What are the
strategies and tactics that are being deployed to resist the
dislocation that accompanies the build out of these industrial
networks?
11. Networks of Mobility and their Relationship to Movement, Space
and Place:
The twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have often been
characterised by the increasing movement and mobility of people,
objects, information, cultural meanings and financial instruments
through increasingly complex and extensive networks of mobility —
both physical and digital. How do these networks change the nature of
space and place in the early 21st century? What types of spaces and
places exist within these networks? Are we fated to solely inhabit
spaces within these networks? Do localised places exist as
counterpoints to these networks, or will networks of mobility
eventually envelope all forms of the local? How does our sense of
self and our relationship to others change as a result of our
increased mobility and movement through these networks and across
space?
12. The Spaces and Places of Global Tourism:
The global tourism industry is currently valued at over $8 trillion,
with annual revenues in excess of $900 billion and 240 million
individuals directly employed in the industry. Tourism not only
participates as a key industry in the networks of mobility, but in so
doing radically reconfigures the existing spaces and places of the
destinations that people go to — politically, economically and
industrially to name but three dimensions of these effects. How does
global tourism recreate the spaces and places of the destinations
that it profits from? What are the effects of this recreation of
space and place upon the populations who inhabit these destinations?
13. Practice based Proposals, Research and Reports on Space and Place:
As noted, above, critical accounts and descriptions of
problem-solving activities from ongoing projects that function to
alter the landscape of space and place — urban renewal, housing
development, the development of new forms of mobility, to name just
three — as well as from projects that are in development, are also
most welcome.
Please note: These criteria are by no means definitive. Presentations
on any other topic related to the general theme are welcome and will
most certainly be considered.
The Steering Group welcomes the submission of proposals for short
workshops, practitioner-based activities, performances, and
pre-formed panels. We particularly welcome short film screenings;
photographic essays; installations; interactive talks and alternative
presentation styles that encourage engagement.
What to Send:
300 word proposals should be submitted by Friday 1st May 2015. If an
abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 10th July 2015. 300 word abstracts should be
submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF
formats, following 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: SP6
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 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:
Matt Melia and Harris Breslow: [email protected]
Rob Fisher: [email protected]
The conference is part of the ‘Ethos’ series of research projects,
which in turn belong to the Critical Issues programmes of ID.Net. It
aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to
share ideas and explore various 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.
Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and
professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should
attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to
make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for
presentation.
Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in
a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.
For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/space-and-place/call-for-papers/
__________________________________________________
InterPhil List Administration:
http://interphil.polylog.org
Intercultural Philosophy Calendar:
http://cal.polylog.org
__________________________________________________
