(in)Security: Production, Dissemination and Experiences
A Fears and Anxieties in the 21st Century Project: 1st Global Meeting

Call for Presentations 2016

Monday 5th September – Wednesday 7th September 2016
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

"Security is a derivative concept; it is meaningless in itself. To have any meaning, security necessarily presupposes something to be secured; as a realm of study it cannot be self-referential." (Krauss & Williams, 1997: ix)

Using this quote as a beginning point, this project interrogates how the concept of security is utilized to maintain control, authority and dynamism. Through establishing specific issues as something which needs to be secured, the power structure is consistently in the process of producing and re-producing precise practices that strengthen a specific apparatus as the sole, legitimate source for providing a secure environment. As all aspects of life are modelled in a security domain, images (art, music, literature, etc) ideas, and identity are established and maintained in which all challenges/new "threats" to security are controlled. (in)Security resides in all aspects of life with arts, literature, relationships, health, and economics. In interrogating all uses of security this project will also focus on how fear and danger are implemented in the production of security.

The inaugural conference will examine how concepts of security and insecurity increasingly pervade public discourse and popular culture. No matter where we turn it seems as though we are consistently confronted with being (in)security. We are consistently consuming images of (in)security that structure the ways in which we engage in a variety of issues. Some of the questions we should ask ourselves are: How is that (in)security is manifested, disseminated and experienced?; How do the images produced by (in)security affect the way we experience the world?; What are the underlying power structures that determine what and how images are produced?; How do we communicate, activate, constrain and overcome the effects and consequences of experiencing (in)security?

We invite proposals on any area related to the conference purpose. We encourage creative and challenging presentations. That is, in addition to academic analysis, we welcome practitioners, artists, performers, case studies or other approaches, such as people in religious environments, therapists, and victims/survivors of events that have been provoked by (in)security. We also encourage interdisciplinary research that crosses divides such as law enforcement, medical, teaching, artistic environments and/or fiction writers whose work aims to evoke these reactions.

Presentations, papers, performances, reports, work-in-progress, panels and workshops are invited on issues related to any of the following themes and related areas:

1. Production, Dissemination, Experience in (in)security:
– the thinking body
– the relationship between images and experiences
– mythologies/ideologies that are employed in the production of images
– myth and ritual paradigms (e.g. creation, fertility, deliverance, hero or chaos)
– practice and the transformative role of images

2. About (in)security:
– narratives, definitions, interdisciplinary studies, cross cultural comparisons
– embodiment and comparison with different emotions/experiences
– institutions, constructions, and deconstructions
– academic theories

3. Contexts of (in)security:
– case studies
– professionals and the public dealing with the (in)security, e.g. therapists, clergy, lawyers, law enforcement, policy makers, government policy, accounting , human resources, technology, etc.
– the properties, language, meaning or significance
– crime, and punishment

4. At the Interface of (in)security:
– the role of (in)security in all aspects of society.
– recreational or aesthetic views of security
– silence as a strategic subversion
– (in)security and the visible/invisible

5. Representations of (in)security:
– the imagination, the gothic and science fiction
– images, cinema, television, theatre, the fourth estate and the creative arts
– survival horror video games
– literature (including children's stories, and graphic novels)
– the other and purity
– hope and despair
– trauma, anxiety, disgust, dread, loathing, danger
– hope and the future
– awe, terror and the sublime or uncanny

6. Relationships with Insecurity and Security:
– use of space, place, architecture and tools in outer space or rural/urban settings
– ceremonies, performances in everyday life, fiction, art
– war, militarisation, weapons, engineering and technology

Proposals will be also considered which deal with related areas and themes.

Further details and information can be found at the conference website:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/fears-and-anxie...

Details about our review policy can be found here:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/fears-and-anxie...

Call for Cross-Over Presentations
The (in)Security research stream will be meeting at the same time as a project on The Patient and another project on Fashion. We welcome submissions which cross the divide between both project areas. If you would like to be considered for a cross project session, please mark your submission "Crossover Submission".

What to Send:
300 word abstracts, proposals and other forms of contribution should be submitted by Friday 15th April 2016. All submissions be minimally double reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a global panel drawn from members of the Project Team and the Advisory Board. In practice our procedures usually entail that by the time a proposal is accepted, it will have been triple and quadruple reviewed.

You will be notified of the panel's decision by Friday 29th April 2016.
If your submission is accepted for the conference, a full draft of your contribution should be submitted by Friday 5th August 2016.

Abstracts may be in Word, RTF or Notepad 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: (in)Security Abstract Submission

Organising Chairs:
Joseph Campos II: joecampos2@gmail.com
Rob Fisher: insecurity@inter-disciplinary.net

This event is an inclusive interdisciplinary research and publishing project. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.

A number of eBooks and paperback books have been published or are in press as a result of the work of this project. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers 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.

Ethos
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. Please note: 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.