Friday 25th September - Monday 28th September 2009
Mansfield College, Oxford

Call for Papers
This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the new and prominent place that the idea of culture has for the construction of identity and the implications of this for social membership in contemporary societies. In particular the project will 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 rootedness and belonging. 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, the world over, to forge identities in rapidly changing national, social and cultural contexts.

Papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the following themes:

1. Challenging Old Concepts of Self and Other
~ Who is self and who is other?
~ The new value of social diversity and cultural multiplicity; breaking with homogeneity and sameness
~ What is the place of difference and alterity, of normality and normalisation in defining identity and membership
~ Othering, excluding, stygmatising

2. Nations, Nationhood and Nationalisms
~ What does it mean, today, to belong to a nation?
~ Resurgence of the local and the diminishing importance of the national
~ What is the place of cultural claims in today’s forms of social membership?
~ Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of placing the responsibility of change on the Other

3. Institutions, Organizations and Social Movements
~ Evaluating the promises and institutions of post-national governing
~ Institutions and organisations that do more for money than for people
~ Social movements, new rebellion and alternative globalizations
~ New forms of global exclusion

4. Persons, Personhood and the Inter-Personal
~ De-centering individuals and the making of persons; thinking and acting with others in mind and interpersonally
~ New sources and forms of belonging; new tribalism, localism, parochialism and communitarianism
~ Bonds of care across boundaries of inequality and exclusion, ideologies and religions, politics and power, nations and geography
~ Non-recognition as cultural violence

5. Media and Artistic Representations
~ The role of new and old media in the construction of cultures and identities, of nations and place
~ The contested space of representing culture, identity and belonging
~ Art, media and how to challenge the rigid and impenetrable constructions of culture
~ Living, being and belonging through art

6. Transnational Cultural Interlacing of Contemporary Life
~ What is shared from cultures? How are cultures shared? Who has access to the sharing of cultures?
~ Cultural claims and human rights
~ Languages, idioms and new emerging forms of wanting to bridge the ‘invisible’ divide of cultures
~ Symbols and significations that connect people to places other than ‘their own’

7. New Concepts, New Forms of Inclusion
~ Recognition and respect without exclusion
~ An ethics for social relations in a new millennium
~ Should not we all be strangers? Should not we all be foreigners?
~ Loving the other within the self; building fluid boundaries of belonging and being

The 2009 meeting of Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging will run alongside the launch of our new project on Fashion - Exploring Critical Issues and we anticipate holding sessions in common between the two projects. We welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues of Fashion, Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging.

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 24th April 2009. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 7th August 2009.

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

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract
E-mails should be entitled: Multiculturalism Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). 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.

Organising Chairs
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
Research Director,
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
E-Mail: acc@inter-disciplinary.net

Rob Fisher
Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
E-Mail: mcb3@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the Diversity and Recognition research projects, which in turn belong to the At the Interface programmes of Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore discussions which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

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.

For further details about the conference please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/multiculturalism-conflict-and-belonging/call-for-papers/