Call for Papers! "Popular Culture and World Politics V12: Popular Culture Matters!" Conference 16-18 January, 2020 - University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

Popular Culture and World Politics V12: Popular Culture Matters!

16-18 January, 2020

University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

Deadline for submission of paper, panel, and roundtable abstracts: 6 December, 2019

The study of popular culture is at an important cross-roads. Whilst growing rapidly within the field of world politics, it is still often seen as fun, merely an adjunct to the serious work which do. Yet in an age of rising populism, in which the boundaries between the political, the popular, the cultural and world politics are increasingly blurred it is perhaps time to take stock and ask: where are we now and where should we go?

Increasingly our experiences of the ‘political’ are shaped and framed by understandings which we gain through and from popular culture. Few of us ever directly experience war yet we repeatedly engage with popular culture experiences of war and conflict. Our sense of other cultures, times and places is often shaped by popular culture in ways which we may not fully appreciate. Concerns are rising that nostalgia, popular culture and populism may be interceding in society in ways that are perhaps unknown and unknowable.

PCWP10 asked us to explore beyond disciplinary boundaries; whilst PCWP11 asked us to explore new agendas for PCWP. This conference has perhaps less lofty aims, instead seeking to simply celebrate the importance of popular culture and world politics in all its forms and build on the work which those conferences began. There remain important and urgent needs to increase the diversity of scholarly work on popular culture and world politics by increasing inter-disciplinary work, enhancing connections with practitioners, sharpening up our methods, and challenging the dominant focus which the global north has on our popular imaginary.

Our conference will bring together leading and emerging scholars who are currently exploring the state of the art in their respective disciplines with regards to the mutual constitution of popular culture and world politics.
 
A central concern of the conference is to empower researchers across disciplines and to foster dialogues across disciplinary and methodological boundaries. Thus, we aim to offer a supportive and developmental environment for researchers from all career stages, institutional homes, theoretical backgrounds, and methodological orientations. We are also very minded that many people may prefer to reduce their carbon footprint and participate remotely – please contact us direct if that would be appealing. 

Submission Instructions:

Abstract submissions may include individual papers, panels, or roundtables. Each panel/roundtable submission should include 5 papers/presenters.

For individual papers please include your contact details. For panel and roundtable submissions please include the contact details for all participants as well as the convener.

Submissions should be sent to pcwpv12@gmail.com by the 6th December 2019.

Please include paper/panel/roundtable information in the body of the email and/or as an attachment in PDF format.

We aim to inform proposers on the status of their submissions by 18th December 2019.

We look forward to welcoming you to Leeds!

Boredom, (in)actions, wars and warriors Workshop Call for Papers

Boredom, (In)action, War and Warriors

27 & 28 August 2020, Amsterdam

Confirmed Keynote speaker: Professor Mark Kingwell, University of Toronto 

Boredom has often been defined as idleness, slowness, doing nothing, doing something over and over again, and waiting (Smith 1981, Daren 1999, Mæland & Brunstad 2009, Bergstein 2009, Prozak 2017). These definitions suggest that boredom is an experience that does not generate meanings and ideas by itself about itself. Boredom remains constantly relevant to sociocultural and political spheres only through its opposite. It is portrayed as the empty bubble, or the vacuum of functionality that gains relevance only through what it is not. Nietzsche (1974, 108) explains, “Boredom is that disagreeable ‘windless calm’ of the soul that precedes a happy voyage and cheerful winds.” He highlights boredom only through what it comes after it. However, we would like to suggest boredom encourages and stimulates thoughts, meanings, and ideas, snapping almost ‘magically’ out of itself. In another words, boredom is the way in and out of boredom. These approaches to boredom overlook the affective quality of boredom and its political capacities, because they only locate boredom through lack, absence and nothingness. This lack, absence and nothingness largely refers to inaction and disappearance of action. We identify this implicit dichotomy of ‘action versus inaction,and addressing inaction as the absence of action as a major theoretical and analytical glitch in understanding boredom. The action/inaction dichotomy overlooks how boredom becomes political and affective through the bodies and collectives that choose to do nothing, remain inactive and slip into the split between agency and subjectivity (Protevi 2011).

By acknowledging the action/inaction dichotomy and problematizing its link with boredom, we would like to ask how militarized bodies and weaponized subjectivities actually experience inaction and boredom? How do military personnel or non state-armed actors experience, explain and utter inaction? What is the other side of inaction and boredom for them? Does inaction and boredom influence their worldviews, their combat performances, and the perceptions of violence? Finally, how do boredom and inaction produce a vision of future and post-deployment?

We invite papers that address:

• • Boredom, inaction and violence

• • Boredom, inaction and creative aggression

• • Boredom, inaction and transgressive play

• • Boredom and inaction as political affect

• • Boredom and inaction in policing

• • Boredom and inaction in peace and peacekeeping

• • Boredom and inaction in combat/battlefield

• • Post-deployment boredom and inactivity

• • Moralities of inaction and combat

• • Temporalities of boredom and inaction

• • Bored bodies in/actions

• • Religious experience of boredom and inaction

We are especially interested in papers that are empirically oriented and based in ethnographic study of military, policing, militancy, and militarized bodies. We look forward to those from anthropology, sociology, human geography, cultural studies, history, political science, and related disciplines.

The two-days workshop will open up an interdisciplinary platform to think about boredom and inaction while meeting other like-minded academics. We expect the invited participants to submit their papers (max 5000 words) in advance and the papers will be distributed to others and the discussants in order to foster further debates. 

The organizers intend to publish the accepted papers either as special issue or an edited volume. The accepted papers will be treated as drafts, which participants should revise after feedbacks from others. The revised papers will be peer reviewed. The editors will decide to accept or reject them. Those interested to present and participate should send us an abstract  of maximum 400 words along with 100 words bio note to Dr. Eva van Roekel (eva.van.roekel@vu.nl) and before March 30, 2020.

 Organizers:

Dr. Younes Saramifar, Social & Cultural Anthropology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Humboldt University of Berlin

Dr. Eva van Roekel, Social & Cultural Anthropology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Contact Info: 

Dr. Eva van Roekel eva.van.roekel@vu.nl; Dr. Younes Saramifar y.saramifar@vu.nl

Contact Email: 

eva.van.roekel@vu.nl