CFP: On Mobilities (grad) (2/28/07; 5/11/07-5/13/07)
For more information please visit the conference homepage @:
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/SGSA/Linked%20Files/onmobilities/<http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/SGSA/Linked%2520Files/onmobilities/>
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The graduate students of the Department of Sociology at the University of
Alberta invite submissions for On Mobilities, an interdisciplinary graduate
student conference to be held 11th =96 13th May, 2007 (*deadline for
proposals:* 28th February, 2007).
On Mobilities endeavors to generate dialogue around the multiple
theoretical, applied, and policy issues that stem from diverse mobilities o=
f
people, information, resources, and concepts.
Mobilities of people, information, resources, and concepts both form
substantive areas of study and bring challenges to conceptualizations of
identity, community, culture, state, and society. The continuing impact of
mobile populations, which vary from forced migrants to voluntary leisure
travellers, affect social formations and processes in many countries,
including cultural practices, identity negotiations, and state construction=
s
of community and nation. The mobilities of information and resources
continue to transform the global marketplace, in such a way that some have
argued that speed and the collapse of geographic distances have become new
societal compulsions. Mobilities are not only actual, but also virtual and
imagined. In the experience of return migrants, places of home and communit=
y
can no longer be defined by their spaces of residence, and these places can
thus accompany individuals on their travels as virtual mobilities.
Mobilities can also have a substantial theoretical impact. Where identity
and community have long been understood as geographically grounded,
mobilities bring challenges to epistemology and methodology, opening space
for the study of mobile populations and spaces, as well as understandings o=
f
hybridity and transnationalism.
Though mobilities can be enabling, they can also be disabling, and thus
studies of mobilities examine both the access and positive gains afforded b=
y
mobilities, as well as structural constraints and the mental, social, and
corporeal costs of mobilities. Mobilities are accessed and controlled
unequally, and thus cannot be separated from structures of power. While
mobilities can involve movement and change that lead to empowering
political, social, and personal mobilizations, when mobility becomes a
prerequisite for power it can also be radically alienating.
In addition to examinations of various mobilities, we also seek to engage
questions of the difficulties of mobilities, and the role of mobilities in
globalization and embodied experiences. On Mobilities seeks to engage with
the role movement, displacement, and mobilities may have on social
phenomena, especially in light of traditions that have been grounded in
ideas of static local communities and defined nation states. We welcome
papers that engage with any of these issues individually, or which engage
the boundaries between mobilities.
*Keynote speakers* for the conference include Mike Haan, Kevin Haggerty, an=
d
Sara Dorow, who will consider the impact of mobilities within social policy=
,
criminology, and theory/culture.
Students in all related fields are invited to submit *short (150-200 word)
abstracts* that address mobilities and mobilization. Full panels of 4
presentations will also be considered, and should be submitted together.
Proposals will be reviewed by the conference committee and all applicants
will be notified of final decisions by email within 4 weeks of the deadline=
.
Please submit *abstracts*, along with a *conference registration
form*, to onmobilities
[at] gmail.com <onmobilities_at_gmail.com>.
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Received on Sun Jan 28 2007 - 15:01:15 EST