Conference Dates: 28-30 November 2011

Keynote Speakers

Joseph Pugliese
Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies,
Macquarie University

Tracey McIntosh
Department of Sociology, University of Auckland

Greg Noble
Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney

We are today witnessing the biopolitical re-ordering of the world and various aspects of life in and through the notion of citizenship. This reordering is evident in such processes and instances as the ‘war on terror,’ the protests and violence in the Middle East, the outsourcing of labour, the movement of refugees and migrants, the construction of camps within nation-states, the increased policing of borders, and the imposition of techniques of governmentality. At the same time, we are also witnessing various challenges, predicated on specific notions of citizenship, which seek to rethink established, dominant conceptions of belonging: the struggles of indigenous communities, protest communities, and other marginalized and exploited peoples testify to the project of reconstituting how we might think of citizenship in the era of unprecedented crisis — financial, food, water, political, social, cultural, territorial, environmental and so on. Citizenship further invokes concerns about the forms of violence enacted through, because of, and by the idea of citizenship, and the protests, as well as resistances and struggles that have emerged out of discontent with articulations of citizenship, impelled by a desire to redefine what we mean by citizenship. ‘Citizenship in the Era of Global Crisis’ is, in other words, a call to explore the ways in which citizenship is used and abused variously from disciplining quotidian cultural practices to fostering the grounds for social protests and legitimating killing. In short, the role, conception, articulation and dissemination of citizenship has fundamental consequences in the globalised world today. In order to explore the multiple social, cultural, political and economic contexts within which these concerns are articulated, the conference is open to a range of disciplinary perspectives and approaches. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• National(ist) Culture
• Multiculturalism/ Biculturalism
• The International Division of Labour
• Borders
• Law
• Indigenous Struggles
• The State
• Activism
• Environment
• Resources
• Gender
• Open Media

The conference conveners invite abstracts of no more than 250 words and a short bio to be sent to Brett Nicholls at brett.nicholls@otago.ac.nz & copied to Vijay Devadas at vijay.devadas@otago.ac.nz with ‘CONFERENCE’ in the subject-line by 16 September 2011. Further information on the Postcolonial Studies Research Network is available at
http://www.otago.ac.nz/humanities/research/networks/postcolonial/