Tous les articles par Sarah Sepulchre

Appels

Who will organize the “Crossroads in Cultural Studies" in 2016?

The Association for Cultural Studies (ACS) seeks proposals from institutions interested in hosting the biennial “Crossroads in Cultural Studies” conference in 2016 and beyond. Founded in 2002, the Association for Cultural Studies (ACS) aims at forming and promoting an effective worldwide community of cultural studies. It is intended as a tool for building strong interdisciplinary and transnational connections by offering meaningful meeting places for the great diversity of committed scholars in this field. The ACS helps establish, maintain and strengthen contacts between cultural studies scholars and workers across different disciplines and within as well as between the different countries and regions of the world, by spreading information and encouraging collaborative work, facilitating the creation and linking of local, national and regional cultural studies groups.

The most important events that the ACS organizes to achieve these objectives are the “Crossroads in Cultural Studies” conferences, which were started in 1996 in Tampere, Finland. Although cultural studies was becoming increasingly international and multi-centered – or rather centerless because of its virtual nature – cultural studies people had scarce opportunities to see each other, to exchange ideas and to socialize. The “Crossroads in Cultural Studies” conferences were designed to fill this gap in the cultural studies community. The conference is not organized around specific themes, though visible subthemes inform plenary and spotlight sessions as well as individual panels.

The 2014 conference will be held in Tampere, Finland. Previous locations include:

  • Tampere, Finland
  • Birmingham, England
  • Urbana, Illinois, USA
  • Istanbul, Turkey
  • Kingston, Jamaica
  • Lingnan, Hong Kong
  • Paris, France

Conference proposals should address the following details:

  • Concept / vision for the conference (including its contribution to regional and global development of cultural studies)
  • Likely institutional support (financial, facilities, labor)
  • Description of the main conference venue(s)
  • Conference activities / format (including ancillary activities, such as tours, receptions, etc.)
  • Anticipated members of planning and program committees
  • Schedule of important dates (for the overall planning of the conference, publicity, CFPs, and the actual conference dates)
  • Description of local facilities for travel / lodging / meals (airports, shuttle buses, hotels, dorms, restaurants, catering, etc.)
  • Anticipated budget
  • The year(s) for which your proposal is intended (e.g., 2016, 2018, 2020)

The overall proposal should demonstrate sufficient facilities and support for at least 500 attendees for a span of 4-5 days.

We are open to proposals from anywhere in the world but, for 2016, we are especially interested in proposals from institutions located in the global South.

Please direct any inquiries to:

ACS Administrative Secretary

info@cultstud.org

Proposals should be submitted to info@cultstud.org by 15 January 2014

Parutions

Publication : Understanding Fandom (Mark Duffett)

Understanding Fandom
An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture
By: Mark Duffett

About Understanding Fandom

Fans used to be seen as an overly obsessed fraction of the audience. In the last few decades, shifts in media technology and production have instead made fandom a central mode of consumption. A range of ideas has emerged to explore different facets of this growing phenomenon. With a foreword by Matt Hills, Understanding Fandom introduces the whole field of fan research by looking at the history of debate, key paradigms and methodological issues. The book discusses insights from scholars working with fans of different texts, genres and media forms, including television and popular music. Mark Duffett shows that fan research is an emergent interdisciplinary field with its own key thinkers: a tradition that is distinct from both textual analysis and reception studies. Drawing on a range of debates from media studies, cultural studies and psychology, Duffett argues that fandom is a particular kind of engagement with the power relations of media culture.

Table Of Contents

Foreword – Matt Hills
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2. Fan Stereotypes and Representations
Chapter 3. Beyond the Text
Chapter 4. The Pathological Tradition
Chapter 5. How do People become Fans?
Chapter 6. Fan Practices
Chapter 7. Fandom, Gender and Sexual Orientation
Chapter 8. Myths, Cults and Places
Chapter 9. The Fan Community: Online and Offline
Chapter 10. Researching Fandom
Conclusion: The Frontiers of Fan Research
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/understanding-fandom-9781441166937/

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Publication : Popular Music Fandom. Identities, Roles and Practices (Mark Duffet ed.)

Popular Music Fandom. Identities, Roles and Practices.
Edited by Mark Duffet

Routledge 2014

Series : Routledge Studies in Popular Music

This book explores popular music fandom from a cultural studies perspective that incorporates popular music studies, audience research, and media fandom. The essays draw together recent work on fandom in popular music studies and begin a dialogue with the wider field of media fan research, raising questions about how popular music fandom can be understood as a cultural phenomenon and how much it has changed in light of recent developments. Exploring the topic in this way broaches questions on how to define, theorize, and empirically research popular music fan culture, and how music fandom relates to other roles, practices, and forms of social identity. Fandom itself has been brought center stage by the rise of the internet and an industrial structure aiming to incorporate, systematize, and legitimate dimensions of it as an emotionally-engaged form of consumerism. Once perceived as the pariah practice of an overly attached audience, media fandom has become a standardized industrial subject-position called upon to sell box sets, concert tickets, new television series, and special editions. Meanwhile, recent scholarship has escaped the legacy of interpretations that framed fans as passive, pathological, or defiantly empowered, taking its object seriously as a complex formation of identities, roles, and practices. While popular music studies has examined some forms of identity and audience practice, such as the way that people use music in daily life and listener participation in subcultures, scenes and, tribes, this volume is the first to examine music fans as a specific object of study.

Table of contents

1. Introduction Mark Duffett

2. Back in the Mix: Exploring Intermediary Fandom and Popular Music Production Matt Hills

3. Beyond Capital, Towards Myth: EDM Fandom and Dance Practice Beate Peter

4. Hidden Fans? Fandom and Domestic Musical Activity Nedim Hassan

5. Researching Your Favorite Artist: Methodological Observations of a Brazilian Popular Music Scholar Alexei Michailowsky

6. Fantastic Voyeur: Lurking on the Dark Side of Biography Fred Vermorel

7. Song of Praise: Musicians, Myths and the “Cult” of John Coltrane Tony Whyton

8. “I ♥ IBIZA”: Music, Place and Belonging Cornel Sandvoss

9. Fan Words Mark Duffett

10. Record Collecting and Fandom Roy Shuker

11. After Jerry’s Death: Achieving Continuity in Deadhead Identity and Community Rebecca G. Adams, Amy M. Ernstes, and Kelly M. Lucey

12. Afterword: Fans and Scholars – A Reassessment Joli Jensen

Parutions

Cultural Politics (online journal)

Cultural Politics

Academic Editor(s): John Armitage ,Ryan Bishop , Douglas Kellner

Current Volume: 10

Frequency: Three issues annually

ISSN: 1743-2197

e-ISSN: 1751-7435

Description

“Cultural Politics is a welcome and innovative addition. In an academic universe already well populated with journals, it is carving out its own unique place—broad and a bit quirky. It likes to leap between the theoretical and the concrete, so that it is never boring and often filled with illuminating glimpses into the intellectual and cultural worlds.” Lawrence Grossberg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Moving beyond the boundaries of race, gender, and class, Cultural Politics examines the political ramifications of global cultural productions across artistic and academic disciplines. The journal explores precisely what is cultural about politics and what is political about culture by bringing together text and visual art that offer diverse modes of engagement with theory, cultural production, and politics.

Abstractors and Indexers:
Indexed/abstracted in the following: Abstracts in Anthropology, Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts, British Humanities Index, International Bibliography of Book Reviews of Scholarly Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, International Bibliography of Periodical Literature on the Humanities and Social Sciences, MLA International Bibliography, Scopus, Sociological Abstracts, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts.

Table of Contents of the lastest issue

Cultural Politics an International Journal

Rewriting Lyotard: Figuration, Presentation, Resistance

Volume 9, Number 2, July 2013

Introduction

Exceeding the Given: Rewriting Lyotard’s Aesthetics

Peter W. Milne

Cultural Politics (2013) 9(2): 107-116; doi:10.1215/17432197-2146057

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/9/2/107.extract.html

Argumentation and Presentation

Argumentation and Presentation: The Foundation Crisis

Jean-François Lyotard

Cultural Politics (2013) 9(2): 117-143; doi:10.1215/17432197-2146066

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/9/2/117.abstract.html

Rewritings

Figural Aesthetics: Lyotard, Valéry, Deleuze

Vlad Ionescu

Cultural Politics (2013) 9(2): 144-157; doi:10.1215/17432197-2146075

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/9/2/144.abstract.html

Art before the Sublime: The Libidinal Economy up against the Pacific Wall

Joseph J. Tanke

Cultural Politics (2013) 9(2): 158-169; doi:10.1215/17432197-2146084

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/9/2/158.abstract.html

“… A Power of Sonorous Paradoxes …”: Passivity, Singularity, and Indifference in Jean-François Lyotard’s Readings of John Cage

Matthew Mendez

Cultural Politics (2013) 9(2): 170-187; doi:10.1215/17432197-2146093

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/9/2/170.abstract.html

“Say Rawr!”: Lyotard, Deleuze/Guattari, and the Refrains of Wesley Willis

Mickey Vallee

Cultural Politics (2013) 9(2): 188-202; doi:10.1215/17432197-2146102

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/9/2/188.abstract.html

(Further) Commentary

Opening Up

Geoffrey Bennington

Cultural Politics (2013) 9(2): 203-211; doi:10.1215/17432197-2146111

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/9/2/203.abstract.html

What to Paint?

What to Paint?

Jean-François Lyotard

Cultural Politics (2013) 9(2): 212-218; doi:10.1215/17432197-2146120

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/9/2/212.abstract.html

Lyotard’s Dance of Paint

Leon Phillips

Cultural Politics (2013) 9(2): 219-226; doi:10.1215/17432197-2146129

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/9/2/219.extract.html

Book Reviews

Being Affected

Keith Crome

Cultural Politics (2013) 9(2): 227-232; doi:10.1215/17432197-2146185

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/9/2/227.extract.html

Figuring Performance

Julie Gaillard

Cultural Politics (2013) 9(2): 233-237; doi:10.1215/17432197-2146194

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/9/2/233.extract.html

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Copyright 2013 by Duke University Press
Print ISSN: 1743-2197
Online ISSN: 1751-7435
Billets

Summer School : Amsterdam Creative City

Summer School : Amsterdam Creative City

AMSTERDAM CREATIVE CITY: MEDIA, ART & CULTURE is a new international summer school being launched at the University of Amsterdam this coming summer (June-July 2014).

This intensive course uses Amsterdam as a living laboratory to explore the relationship between creativity, cities, and globalisation. It combines theoretical readings and discussion-based seminars with extensive fieldwork in key locations across the city, ranging from the canal and museum districts in the historic city centre to more experimental or marginal sites like NDSM Wharf, Schiphol Airport, and the ring road.

In particular, the course will study the ways in which global practices in art, media, and urban development are taking shape in a European city that has long functioned as a centre of cultural exchange.

Combining discussion-based seminars with extensive fieldwork in locations across the city, the summer school is specifically designed for international BA students with backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences and can be taken for transferable university credit (6 ECTS). All teaching, material, and coursework will be in English. Housing in central Amsterdam is available for all students who need it. More details, including a full description and dates, can be found here: http://www.uva.nl/en/education/other-programmes/summer-winter/programmes/uva-summer-school-programmes/uva-summer-school-programmes/content/folder/amsterdam-creative-city/amsterdam-creative-city.html For questions or more information, please contact Christoph Lindner (c.p.lindner@uva.nl) or Letje Lips (A.R.Lips@uva.nl) Christoph Lindner www.christophlindner.nl

Application deadline: 1 May 2014.

Appels

Call for paper: The Fourth Asian Conference on Cultural Studies (29 May-1 June 2014)


The Fourth Asian Conference on Cultural Studies (29 May-1 June 2014)
Call for paper

The International Academic Forum in conjunction with its global partners, including the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia, is proud to announce the Fourth Asian Conference on Cultural Studies, to be held from May 29-June 1, at the Rihga Royal Hotel and the adjoining Osaka International Conference Center.

Conference Theme: Borderlands of Becoming, Belonging and Sharing

Local, national and global cultures have been transformed by an intensification of human migration, mobility and multi-culture with multiple and complex claims of home, identity and belonging. Gloria Anzaldua’s idea of the borderland has become a critical conceptual rubric used by cultural researchers as a way of understanding, explaining and articulating the in-determined, vague, ambiguous nature of everyday life and the cultural politics of border-knowledge, border crossings, transgression, living in-between and multiple belongings. Borderlands is also about a social space where people of diverse backgrounds and identities meet and share a space in which the politics of co-presence and co-existence are experienced and enacted in mundane ways. This conference, which focuses on the borderlands of becoming, belonging and sharing, is therefore about examining how the culture of everyday life is regulated and contested across diverse political, economic and social contexts, and whether and how it creates spaces of belonging with others.

The aim of this conference theme is to open up discussion, critical reflection and analysis about emerging social, political and cultural identities that are formed at the intersection of multiple and multi-sited belongings and their expression and about the possibility of making them shared across differences.

We welcome papers that focus on (but not limited to):

  • Trans-cultural displacement/belonging
  • Belonging and the intersections of gender, race, religion, sexuality
  • -Seeking refuge, unruly belonging(s) and border politics
  • Trauma and joy of becoming and belonging
  • Communication, new technologies and belonging
  • Cultural narratives of belonging/not belonging
  • Cultural politics of survival/transgression
  • New imaginings/formations of home
  • Citizenship beyond borders
  • Multicultural exhaustion/renewal
  • Belonging in the Anthropocene
  • Multiple and complex belongings
  • Re-locating culture across borders
  • Convivial cultures and the imagined communities
  • Creation of shared space(s) of multiple belongings

Submission Procedure General Information

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by February 1 2014. All abstracts will be blind reviewed by a voluntary team, and authors will usually be notified of the decision of the reviewers within two weeks of submission. Those who submit near the February deadline will receive confirmation of acceptance or rejection by February 15 2014.

All accepted authors may have their full paper published in the online conference proceedings. Full text submission is due by July 1 2014.

The deadline for full conference payment for all presenters is May 1 2014.

For the detail, please visit: http://accs.iafor.org/Submissions.html

We hope that the 2014 conference theme will encourage academic and personal encounters and exchanges across national, religious, cultural and disciplinary divides. We look forward to seeing you (again) in Osaka!

Professor Baden Offord
Professor of Cultural Studies & Human Rights, Southern Cross University, Australia
ACCS/ACAS 2014 Conference Chair

Professor Koichi Iwabuchi
Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, Monash University, Australia
Director of the Monash University Asia Institute
ACCS/ACAS 2014 Conference Co-Chair

Parutions

Parution : Les arts numériques (L. Diouf, A. Vincent, A.-C. Worms)

Les arts numérique, Crisp, Dossier n°81, 2013

Les arts numériques, discipline émergente du 21e siècle, trouvent leurs racines tant dans le mouvement dadaïste des années 1920 que dans les romans de science-fiction. Interactives, génératives et immersives, ces nouvelles pratiques artistiques questionnent les notions traditionnelles d’œuvre, de public et d’artiste. Le médium utilisé favorise le caractère international des œuvres, dont la création est souvent le fruit d’une collaboration complexe, avec des scientifiques notamment.

Ce Dossier définit d’abord les arts numériques, en dresse une typologie, décrit leur évolution et analyse leurs canaux de diffusion. Les arts numériques combinent différentes formes artistiques (danse et arts de la scène, arts visuels, musique, jeux…) auxquelles ils confèrent une dimension immatérielle. Cette spécificité, dans un contexte où les acheteurs s’attachent encore à des formes matérielles, limite le marché et oriente la diffusion des arts numériques vers des festivals, des événements dépendant en grande partie d’un financement public, ou vers des ateliers alternatifs (medialabs, fablabs).

Les auteurs se penchent également sur la reconnaissance progressive des arts numériques ainsi que sur les mécanismes d’aide et sur les lieux de formation mis en place en Communauté française. Cette reconnaissance date du début des années 2000, avec la création d’une Commission consultative des arts numériques et une définition précise du secteur. Une prise de conscience apparaît également au niveau régional et européen, avec des espoirs de synergies entre arts et sciences pour les années à venir.

http://www.crisp.be/librairie/catalogue/1828-les-arts-numeriques.html

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The Sexualization Report

The Sexualization Report

People are worried about sexualization; about children becoming sexual at too young an age; about the ways in which women may be being defined by their sexuality; and about the availability and potential effects of online pornography, to name but a few of the often repeated concerns.

This report has been compiled by Feona Attwood, Clare Bale and Meg Barker based on contributions from over thirty academic experts, drawing on research from a wide range of subject areas, including medicine, health and social care, media and communication studies, cultural studies, psychology, sociology, education, and gender & sexuality studies.

You can access the report here http://thesexualizationreport.wordpress.com

The report addresses the wide range of issues relating to sex, sexuality and sexual health and wellbeing that seem to underpin public anxieties that are now commonly expressed as concerns about ‘sexualization’. These include STIs, pregnancy, addiction, dysfunction, violence, abuse, sex work, sexual practices, different forms of sexuality, medicalization, commerce, media and popular culture. It aims to summarize what is known – and not yet known – on each of the main areas of concern.

The report has been written with a range of professionals in mind; people whose job it is to inform and advise others about sex, sexuality and sexual health and who need to draw on the best possible information. This includes journalists and broadcasters, policy makers, educators, therapists and other health professionals. This is very much a living report, offering an overview of what research tells us at the moment. Our intention is to find ways of developing and expanding this, in order to offer professionals an up to date and reliable source of information about a wide range of issues relating to sex, sexuality and sexual health.

Billets

Ph.D. Summer School: Cultural Im/materialities: Contagion, Affective Rhythms and Mobilization

Ph.D. Summer School: Cultural Im/materialities: Contagion, Affective Rhythms and Mobilization

2nd Ph.D. Summer School of Cultural Transformations: Cultural Im/materialities: Contagion, Affective Rhythms and Mobilization

23-27 June 2014, Aarhus University, Denmark

The summer school is funded by the Ph.D. programmes Art, Literature and Cultural Studies and ICT, Media, Communication and Journalism and by Centre for Sociological Studies Aarhus University (all Aarhus University). The event is part of a cultural studies summer school network with Warwick University, University of Southern Denmark, Södertörn University and Aarhus University as partners. The first event in 2013 was hosted by Warwick University

Organisers: Associate Professor, PhD, Britta Timm Knudsen, Associate Professor, PhD, Mads Krogh, Assistant Professor, PhD, Carsten Stage, Associate Professor, PhD, Anne Marit Waade

Partners: Warwick University, UK, University of Southern Denmark, DK, Södertörn University, SE, CESAU, DK, Copenhagen Business School, DK

Confirmed keynotes: Professor Georgina Born (Music and Anthropology, Oxford University), UK, Reader Tony D. Sampson (Digital Culture and Communications, University of East London), UK, Professor John Protevi (Philosophy and French Studies, Louisiana State  University), US, Senior Lecturer Luciana Parisi (Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths), UK

Lecturers / workshop organizers / discussants: Jenny Sundén, Södertörn University, Nathaniel Tkacz, Warwick University, Christian Borch, Copenhagen Business School, Representative from University of Southern Denmark, Anne Marit Waade, Aarhus University, Carsten Stage, Aarhus University, Mads Krogh, Aarhus University, Britta Timm Knudsen, Aarhus University, Christoffer Kølvraa, Aarhus University, Louise Fabian, Aarhus University, Camilla Møhring Reestorff, Aarhus University

ECTS: 5 ECTS

Time: June 23-27 2014

Room and Place: Aarhus University

Cost/ Policy: No cost fee, each participant covers travel & accommodation.

Max. number of participants: 30

Description:

The summer school wants to explore the role of affect, suggestive rhythms and contagion for the somatic mobilization of agents across a range of socio-cultural situations (e.g. protest events, dance halls, online forums, catastrophes), practises and processes (e.g. political mobilization and engagement, school bullying, youth loneliness, xenophobic/nationalist panics). In recent years an increasing interest in materiality, space, technology and embodiment has developed in the humanities and social sciences combined with an ‘affective turn’ (Clough, Massumi, Thrift, Seigworth and Gregg, Ahmed) to immaterial dimensions of these phenomena.

This has re-actualised early sociological theories about affective suggestion, contagion and imitation (e.g. Gustave Le Bon and Gabriel Tarde), which offer valuable insights to the analysis of a contemporary cultural landscape characterised by for instance viral/memetic phenomena, mediated/networked/rhythmically coordinated crowds, affective online communication and political modulation of citizen affects (Blackman, Borch, Gibbs, Sampson, Butler). During the summer school we wish to collectively explore the immaterial dimensions of the material social world and vice versa, discuss the potentialities, implications and risks of such analysis in an open interdisciplinary environment.

The event will attract PhD students from a range of academic fields (anthropology, geography, media, cultural studies, aesthetics, sociology, political science etc.) interested in, and doing research on, the affective turn, processes of imitation/suggestion/contagion, the rhythmically attuning mobilisation of bodies, and the im/material dimensions of culture and the social world.

Possible areas/topics:

  • – The affective dimensions of materiality, space, technology and things
  • – Aesthetics and affectivity, sensual design
  • – Mobilization within public and private spheres of action
  • – Viral communication, virality in the media, memes, social media
  • – The methodological challenges of analysing cultural materialities and immaterial processes
  • – Theoretical legacies to the ‘affective turn’ and new materialist orientations within the humanities and social sciences; early sociologies of contagion, suggestion and imitation
  • – Moral, media and financial panics
  • – Music culture, sound, dance and rhythm
  • – Industries of affect, affective consumption
  • – Tourism, black spot/dark tourism
  • – Artistic agency, idols and fandom
  • – Crowds, protest culture, social movements, (creative/eventful) activism, political events
  • – Depression, loneliness, bullying, affective exclusion
  • – Charity, empathy and sympathy
  • – Affect, emotion and power, war and affective modulation
  • – Xenophobia, nationalism, the strategic production of fear and hate
  • – Atmosphere, aura, prestige
  • – Sexuality, porn, love and care
  • – The affectivity of catastrophes
  • – Blasphemy, fanaticism and provocative politics

The Ph.D.-summer school will be based on keynote presentations, workshops and students’ own project presentations and organized feedback sessions.

Exam:

The examination will consist of three parts: 1. Full paper hand-in (deadline May 15); 2. Attending workshops and doing group assignments; 3. Paper presentation and discussion of papers.

Deadline for submission:

March 1 2014

Send an email to: Marianne Hoffmeister mho@adm.au.dk

Attach a description of your research topic and project (max. 300 words).

March 15: You will get to know if you participate, and you will be asked to confirm your participation.

Preparation for PhD students:

April 1: The organizers will form groups out of the participants (5 in all) and each group has to organize a slot of one hour each with a social and/or academic content (e.g. academic speed-dating, guided tours in Aarhus for strangers by strangers, exercises between the slots).

May 15: Deadline for submitting a full paper (10 pages)

Preparation for teachers:

March: Organizers must read the abstracts and form participants groups.

Medio May: The group of teachers will be responsible for 3-4 papers, that he/she has read carefully in advance in order to 1) place the paper within the theme of the summer school 2) to be a discussant of the paper and to give an open and constructive feedback at the summer school

About the summer school network (SSCT): The series aims at creating an international environment of constructive academic discussions in the field of cultural studies in order to strengthen this discipline in our respective academic communities and to develop the discipline of cultural studies according to actual developments and new theoretical paradigms. The series aims at improving teaching in cultural studies through a meticulous work on theoretical, methodological and empirical challenges. It is also our intention to build stronger research relations and exchange opportunities between the involved institutions and participants. Network coordinator: Carsten Stage (norcs@hum.au.dk).

Appels

CFP – Conjunctions -Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation

Conjunctions -Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation
Call for papers: Participatory Cultural Citizenship

Deadline: Papers must be submitted by February 28, 2014. Please visit www.conjunctions-tjcp.com to submit articles and for more information.

Conjunctions – Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation seeks to create a transdisciplinary forum for the investigation of user-generated production and user-driven cultural participation across a variety of social fields and participatory platforms. The overall focus is to explore the socially transformative and democratic potential of cultural participation processes, to qualify the academic understanding of what ‘cultural participation’ is and what itinvolves, and to discuss the complex relations created between user-generated material and established institutions. We invite submissions from a variety of disciplinary fields such as cultural studies, media studies, cultural geography, aesthetics, science and technology studies, health care, information science, sociology, anthropology, and gender studies.
In this first issue we seek papers that address questions of participatory cultural citizenship. For more than a decade the internet has been invested with high hopes for democratic empowerment of non-institutional voices (Jenkins2006, Fenton 2008, Bruns 2008, Gauntlett 2011, Lievrouw 2011), but also, over time, with concerns regarding the type of democratic interaction and the possibilities for citizens’ voices to be heard (Hess 2009, Couldry 2010). Simultaneously, everyday practices such as the found city, opportunistic tactics and spontaneous interventions have become celebrated in studies of urban space (Cuff and Sherman 2011, Stickels 2011, Lang Ho 2012, Chase, Crawford and Kaliski 2008). These processes emphasise collaborative practices and are also reflected in the rise of relational (Bourriaud 1998) and participatory art (Bishop 2012) in which the artist is co-producer of situations and dialogical art practices (Kester 2004, 2011). Accordingly, the recent participatory turn of contemporary cultural analysis and theory gives rise to a suggestion of the end of the passive audience/spectator, and the emergent of collaborative working processes and concepts such as participatory culture, DIY-culture, DIY urbanism, co-creation, produsage, creativeplace-appropriation, everyday creativity, participatory planning, social production and social entrepreneurship.
It is from such perspective that we invite papers that address the opportunities, limits and challenges of collective creation and citizen empowerment and evaluate the political potentials or impacts of cultural participation including non-professionalor ‘vernacular’ production.
Thematically papers can deal with a range of issues e.g.: the formation of social movements, creative online/offline activism, mobilization, social inclusion, artivism, urban planning, critical urban interventions, digital democracy and inclusion, participatory and political aesthetics, DIY urbanism and the concept ‘participatory culture’.
We seek papers that: 1) develop frameworks to design/enable as well as evaluate participatory processes; 2) explore participatory cultural processes as critical practices; 3) ask when and how participation is of value in terms of enabling active citizenship; 4) discuss the relation between bottom-up cultural initiatives and e.g. long-termplanning of spaces, cities and institutions; 5) ask to what extent cultural participation is threatened by institutional and/or economic strategies trying to profit from the work of users.
Camilla Møhring Reestorff
Department of Aesthetics and Communication
University of Aarhus
Jens Chr. Skous Vej 7, 1485/536
8000 Århus C – Denmark
Tlf: (+45) 871 63181 / (+45) 22783252