2nd Global Conference
Diasporas - Exploring Critical Issues

Monday 6th July - Thursday 9th July 2009
Mansfield College, Oxford

Call for Papers
This inter- and multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the
contemporary experience of Diasporas â€" communities who conceive of
themselves as a national, ethnic, linguistic or other form of cultural and
political construction of collective membership living outside of their
‘home lands.’ In particular, key issues to be addressed include: what are
the defining characteristics of Diasporas and what distinguishes one from
the other? What role does ‘home’ and ‘host’ cultures play in developing
relationships between communities in a global environment? How new is the
concept of Diasporas; does it capture new global realities or designate old
phenomena in a new way?

The project will also assess the larger context of major world
transformations, for example, new forms of migration and the massive
movements of people across the globe, as well as the impact and
contribution of globalisation on tensions, conflicts and the sense of
acceptance, rootedness and membership. Looking to encourage innovative
trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all
disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand what it
means for people today to have diasporic experiences and a multiplicity of
social, political and cultural memberships.

In particular papers, workshops, presentations and pre-formed panels are
invited on any of the following themes:

1. Defining and Grasping the Concept of Diasporas
* What are the criteria, processes and key elements that define a Diaspora?
* Identifying the role of - culture and politics; home and host; space and
time; centre and periphery; numbers and collective imagination; class,
opportunities, money and new communication technologies
* Are all migratory communities Diasporas? What are the significant
differences between being a migrant and a member of a diasporic community?
* Has the concept of ‘Diaspora’ evolved and developed? What have been the
latest developments?
* What is shared among Diasporas? What is not shared among the Diasporas?
Who has access to diasporic membership in home and host contexts?

2. Migration, Settlement and Identity
* What does it mean, today, to belong to a nation, to an ethnic, religious
or linguistic group, to a culture and to settle in a place that one does
not call home?
* New migratory flows and massive movements from peripheral to central
countries and their impact on the formation of Diasporas and the emergence
of multiple senses of identity
* Communities on the move, uprootedness and identity. How do identities get
preserved?
* Are Diasporas an indication of the possibility of post-national realities
or a different way of affirming the place of the nation in our sense of
identity?
* How do Diasporas connect to social movements, new rebellion and
alternative global politics

3. Culture, Belonging and Collective Imaginations
* Recent changes in geographical movements, space, home-host conceptions
* The impact and implication of communication technologies on identity
formations and the sense of belonging
* Globalisation and the claims of Diasporas. What are the implications for
traditions, language, literature, arts, cinema, television and other forms
of representation and cultural production?
* New forms of global exclusion. Who can claim belonging to a Diaspora?
* Sustaining belonging: home, homeland, roots and rootedness, feelings of
connectedness or alienation, nostalgia and the need for returning home
* Identity and belonging as destiny and as choice

4. Instructions and Design
* Institutions that allow, maintain and reproduce Diasporas. Structures and
forces which work against their formation?
* Economic disparities, institutional injustices and the making of
diasporic realities. Tensions, contradictions and conflicts - political,
economic and cultural forms of citizenship and their place in the Diasporas
imagination and organization
* The cultural and political context of host countries: acceptance vs
xenophobia, fear and ignorance vs openness and knowledge
* Diasporas in the making of social and public policy in host and home
countries: remittances and economic dependencies, professions and commodity
exchanges, social and cultural interlacing, policies of mutual recognition
* role of the State and divided loyalties

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should
be submitted by Friday 6th February 2009. If your paper is accepted for
presentation at the conference, an 8 page draft paper should be submitted
by Friday 5th June 2009.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to both Organising Chairs; abstracts
may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstract

We acknowledge receipt and answer to 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.

Joint Organising Chairs

Dr. S. Ram Vemuri
School of Law and Business
Faculty of Law, Business and Arts
Charles Darwin University
Darwin, NT 0909, Australia
Email: ram.vemuri_at_cdu.edu.au

Dr Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR
United Kingdom
Email: dias2_at_inter-disciplinary.net

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
papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be published in an
ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development
into 20-25 page chapters for publication in a themed dialogic ISBN hard
copy volume.

For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/transformations/diasporas/diasporas.html

For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/transformations/diasporas/d2/cfp.html

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Received on Tue Dec 09 2008 - 06:04:19 EST