Monthly Archives: February 2017

Call for Papers: Refugees Welcome? The politics of hospitality and care in Turkey and Europe

Refugees Welcome? The politics of hospitality and care in Turkey and Europe
Convenors: Dr. Hilal Alkan (EUME Fellow, Forum Transregionale Studien/ZMO, Berlin) and Dr. H. Pınar Şenoğuz (Philipp Schwartz Fellow, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen)
This panel aims to critically explore the welcoming responses refugees, fleeing from violent conflicts in their own countries, receive from the members of the host societies upon immigration to Europe, including Turkey. These responses are not solely determined by government policies regarding migration, border control and inclusion; yet they are always in dialogue with them. However, it is still possible to identify grassroots efforts to smoothen the transition of refugees and provide them with vital assistance and aid; as well as tensions in local communities while receiving the refugees.
Drawing on Derrida’s notion of hospitality as an inherently conflictual relation, we argue against an understanding of hospitality as an ethical comparative tool (i.e. more welcoming vs. less welcoming), and rather want to emphasize a conflicted politics of gift and exchange, solidarity and hostility, beyond the binary nature of guest-host relationship. This approach provides tools that allow us to situate the refugees and the locals at the same level, and reveal the workings of power, inequality, indebtedness and patronage as well as care and discipline in every encounter. All these intricate and intimate aspects of welcoming refugees have unforeseeably drastic effects on the questions of inclusion and exclusion, both in the present and in the future of the host countries.
We particularly welcome submissions of papers based on ethnographic research and deal with the questions of hospitality/hostility, care and compassion in the context of the refugee influx with a critical eye. Please send abstracts to hilal.alkan.zeybek@zmo.de and/or hsenogu@uni-goettingen.de or alternatively use the link: https://www.pacsa-web.eu/pasca-meeting-2017-amsterdam/
Deadline is 2 April 2017

Call for Papers: Migration and the (Inter-)National Order of Things- Law, State Practices and Resistance

‘Migration and the (Inter-)National Order of Things. Law, state practices and resistance’, Bergen Summer Research School from June 12-22 2017.

This interdisciplinary PhD course aims to deepen the understanding of the politics of protection and control of contemporary migration. It asks: How are migrants given different bureaucratic and legal identities (e.g. refugees, stateless persons, irregular migrants) and what are the consequences of such distinctions and labels? What protection does international law and humanitarian institutions offer to different categories of people? What are the spatial, temporal and gendered implications of the protection and control practices aimed at migrants? And, how are the legal and bureaucratic identities, and institutions of migration control, challenged by migrants themselves?

The course include a number of lectures by distinguished researchers, including Alison Mountz, Professor of Geography and Canada Research Chair in Global Migration, Sine Plambech, Danish Institute for International Studies and Christine Jacobsen, Director of Centre for Women’s and Gender Research at the University of Bergen. For more detail see:
https://www.uib.no/en/rs/bsrs/104290/migration-and-inter-national-order-things

This course is one of six parallel courses in 2017, spanning disciplines within health, humanities, and social sciences. In addition to the courses, there will be a series of joint sessions about research tools for PhD candidates, but also plenary sessions with keynotes, debates, and an excursion.

This annual multidisciplinary research school has been running for ten years, emphasizing the need for multidisciplinary approaches to tackle Global Challenges. It attracts PhD candidates and junior researchers from all over the world, working on some of the greatest challenges of our time.

We would appreciate if you could share this invitation with PhD candidates in your network.

Please visit our website (www.uib.no/en/rs/bsrs) to check our course and to submit your online application.

Application deadline: March 1, 2017

The call for papers: Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological

The call for papers for the Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological society.

The conference will take place in the University of Jyväskylä between the 22th and the 23rd of May.

I invite you to submit a paper to the panel Neoliberal employment policies and the production of difference.

If you are interested send your name, affiliation, contact information, the title of your paper, the abstract (max. 200 words), and the name of the panel to the two following emails:

Mobilityconference2017@gmail.com
Francisco.arqueros@nuim.ie
Neoliberal employment policies and the production of difference
Organizer: Francisco Arqueros-Fernandez, National University of Ireland

The Welfare State, contrary to common belief in most anthropological literature, has not been dismantled nor has significantly shrunk in the EU; rather, it has changed its character. Some of the aspects of this change have been a process of privatisation by a progressive handing of management to the third sector of State welfare programs and the adoption of the ideology of Neoliberalism.

This shift has affected state employment policies. The state has delegated to the private sector and the “free market” the creation of employment, and has progressively reduced employment polices to the implementation of Active Employment Policies (AEPs). These processes have contributed to the “production of boundaries”, and therefore the “production and reproduction of difference” between different groups of workers, rather than to the closing of them.

Embodied social phenomena such as ethnicity, gender and class constitute grounds for the social production of difference among workers, and the construction of a segmented labour market.

This panel intends to explore how Active Employment Policies contribute to the reproduction of social stereotypes between groups of immigrant and local workers, particularly at the lower end of the labour market; how different groups of workers are categorized as fit for certain types of jobs while excluded from others; how these policies determine their incomes and social status; how despite their intentions these policies do not produce equal individuals before the market; what has been the role of the voluntary and the private sectors in the implementation of AEPs; who are the beneficiaries of these policies; etc. This panel calls for papers dealing with the topics described above, mainly located in EU countries.

Call for Papers: New Perspectives on Science and Religion in Society

Call for Papers: New Perspectives on Science and Religion in Society
Please note: bursary supported places available.
Thursday 29th June – Saturday 1st July 2017
Chancellors Hotel and Conference Centre, Manchester, UK.
Organised in partnership between by Newman University, UK, University of Kent, UK, York University, Canada, and Kent State University, USA.
In the last decade there has been significant growth in social scientific scholarship on science and religion, complementing the more established historical research into the subject. Greater attention is being paid to the varied ways in which perceptions of science are influenced by religious and non-religious belief, identity, community and conflict in different geographical, cultural and historical contexts. The purpose of this international conference is to bring together researchers with backgrounds in history, anthropology, sociology, STS, psychology, political science and related humanities and social science disciplines to discuss perspectives on the overarching topic of science and religion in society.
Abstracts are invited for the conference relating to the following themes:
  • The social scientific and historical study of the relationship between science and religious and/or non-religious belief and identity;
  • Public perceptions of the relationship between science, religion and non-religion and their respective roles in society;
  • National and international comparative perspectives on the study of science, religion and belief in society;
  • Past and present media or popular representations of science and religion;
  • The past or present roles of science, rationalism, religion and belief in national, social or cultural identity and related geopolitical narratives;
  • Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of science, religion and non-religion in society;
  • Methodological approaches to, and issues in, the study of science and religion in society;
  • Avenues for future research and developments within the social scientific and historical study of science and religion.
We are interested in papers that relate to any aspect of STEMM in society (science, technology, engineering, medicine, and mathematics) and that discuss any religious tradition or non-religious belief system, including unbelief.
Individual Paper submissions:
To submit a paper proposal, please send an abstract of no more than 300 words, alongside a biographical note of no more than 100 words including name, institutional affiliation and email address.
Panel session proposals:
We will also be accepting a limited number of panel proposals with a maximum of four speakers. To submit a panel proposal, please send a session summary of no more than 250 words alongside abstracts of no more than 300 words for each paper and biographical note of no more than 100 words for each contributor.
Individual or panel session submissions may cross over several of the themes listed above and those intending to submit papers are encouraged to consider the relevance of their work to other academic disciplines.
Please send all individual paper and session proposals to events.sres@newman.ac.uk for the attention of the conference organizers, Dr Stephen Jones, Dr Emma Preece and Dr James Thompson.
All abstracts must be submitted by 3rd March 2017.
Conference Bursaries:
A limited number of bursaries are available to support postgraduate, early career, retired, low income or unwaged presenters. These will cover conference transport costs (to a maximum of £150 for UK participants and £800 for international participants), registration, catering and accommodation for up to 3 nights. Please complete the bursary form, including your contact details, a short biography (including a clear statement regarding your career stage), your abstract and a statement of interest to be considered for one of the bursaries. The deadline for submission of bursary applications is 3rdMarch 2017.
The bursary application form can be found at the following address:
Key Dates:
Abstract submission: Open now
Deadline for abstracts and conference bursary applications: 3rd March 2017
Decision notification: 17th March 2017
Registration opens: 20th March 2017
Registration deadline for presenters: 14th April 2017
Registration closes: 30th April 2017
Should you have other questions about the conference please contact the conference organisers at events.sres@newman.ac.uk.
For further details, visit the conference webpage at:
The conference is being held as part of the project ‘Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum’ based at Newman University, UK, University of Kent, UK, York University, Canada, and Kent State University, USA. For more information visit:

https://sciencereligionspectrum.org/about-2/

Call for Papers: Religion in Social Movements, Rebellions and Revolutions

Call for Papers: Religion in Social Movements, Rebellions and Revolutions

Panel proposal to the Association for Sociology of Religion Annual Meeting Montreal, Canada August 13-14, 2017

Karl Marx’s quotation that religion is the “opium is the people” is frequently taken out of context and misunderstood. In the same passage, he also wrote religion is “an expression of real suffering and a protest against” it. Historically, religion has not only been a source of domination but also an instrument of social change.

A classic example of this is the English Revolution, which was the first political revolution and otherwise known as the Puritan Revolution. However, successful revolutions, as Charles Tilly has pointed out, have only taken place under monarchies and dictatorships. In modern democratic societies, protest against the dominant power structure has often taken the form of social movements.

For this panel, we invite papers that explore the relationship between religion, social movements, rebellion and revolutions. We are interested in the role that religion has played in: peasant, slave, and plebeian rebellions; modern revolutions including but not limited to the English, French, Russian, Chinese and Iranian; and social movements. This includes but is not limited to prophetic and messianic movements, heretical sects, religious communism, secular religions, and liberation theology.

The intent of this panel is for papers to be turned into manuscripts to ultimately be published in an edited volume or a special issue of a journal.

Deadline for Proposals: March 15, 2017

Please send them in MS Word by e-mail to: Jean-Pierre Reed, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, reedjp@siu.edu and Warren S. Goldstein, Center for Critical Research on Religion, goldstein@criticaltheoryofreligion.org

Book Announcement: The Social Thought of Max Weber (Sage Social Thinkers Series, 2016)

The Social Thought of Max Weber (Sage Social Thinkers Series, 2016)

Stephen Kalberg contends in this volume that a broader reading of this major Founder of modern social science is long overdue. Max Weber’s numerous conceptual contributions are all examined, as well as his “Protestant ethic thesis.” However, Kalberg maintains that Weber’s greatest contribution is to be found in his often-neglected investigations of entire civilizations. His big picture themes move here to the forefront: his charting of the uniqueness of China, India, and the West, his discussion of the multiple causes behind their particular trajectories, and his distinct comparative-historical approach anchored in “interpretive understanding” procedures. By reconstructing Weber’s analysis of the origin and expansion of the American civic sphere, this volume also illustrates how his research strategies can be applied.

The Social Thought of Max Weber (Social Thinkers Series)

Book Announcement: The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility

New book: The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility

Wiley-Blackwell Armando Salvatore https://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118662644.html

The Sociology of Islam provides an accessible introduction to this emerging field of inquiry, teaching and debate. The study is located at the crucial intersection between a variety of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. It discusses the long-term dynamics of Islam as both a religion and as a social, political and cultural force. The volume focuses on ideas of knowledge, power and civility to provide students and readers with analytic and critical thinking frameworks for understanding the complex social facets of Islamic traditions and institutions. The study of the sociology of Islam improves the understanding of Islam as a diverse force that drives a variety of social and political arrangements.

Delving into both conceptual questions and historical interpretations, The Sociology of Islam is a transdisciplinary, comparative resource for students, scholars, and policy makers seeking to understand Islam’s complex changes throughout history and its impact on the modern world.

Sociologists of religion have long been awaiting a successor volume to Brian Turner ‘s pathbreaking but now dated Weber and Islam (1974). Armando Salvatore’s new book provides just this update and much more. Ranging across a host of critical case studies and theoretical issues, Salvatore provides a masterful account of religious ethics, rationalization, and civility across the breadth of the Muslim world, from early times to today. The result is a book of deep intellectual insight, important, not just for the sociology of Islam, but for scholars and students interested in religion, ethics, and modernity in all civilizational traditions. Robert Hefner, Boston University The sociology of Islam has been a late and controversial addition to the sociology of religion. This field of research has been the principal target of the critique of Orientalism and after 9/11 the study of Islam became heavily politicized. Terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut have only compounded the long-standing difficulties of objective interpretation and understanding. In the first volume of what promises to be a major three volume masterpiece, Armando Salvatore steers a careful and judicious course through the various pitfalls that attend the field. The result

is an academic triumph combining a sweeping historical vision of Islam with an analytical framework that is structured by the theme of knowledge-power. One waits with huge excitement for the delivery of the remaining volumes. Bryan Turner, City University of New York A brilliant, pioneering effort to explain the cosmopolitan ethos within Islamicate civilization, The Sociology of Islam encompasses all the terminological boldness of Marshal Hodgson, making the Persianate and Islamicate elements of civic cosmopolitanism, across the vast Afro-Eurasian ecumene, accessible to the widest possible readership in both the humanities and the social sciences. Bruce B. Lawrence, author of Who is Allah? (2015)

Armando Salvatore is Professor of Global Religious Studies at McGill University, Montreal, and Professor at the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies of the Australian National University, Canberra. His work as a social scientist emphasizes transregional comparison and explores the Islamic ecumene’s socio-political trajectories as well as transcultural interconnections. As a complement to The Sociology of Islam he is editing The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam. Among his previous works are Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity (1997), Public Islam and the Common Good (edited with Dale F. Eickelman, 2004), The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism and Islam (2007), and Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates (edited with Muhammad Khalid Masud and Martin van Bruinessen, 2009).

Call for Papers: Religion and Popular Culture Unit

Religion and Popular Culture Unit
deadline for submissions is March 1, 2017
Statement of Purpose:
This Unit is dedicated to the scholarly exploration of religious expression in a variety of cultural settings. We encourage a multidisciplinary display of scholarship in our sessions and are committed to taking popular culture seriously as an arena of religious and theological reflection and practice.
Call for Papers:
This Unit invites both organized sessions and individual paper proposals that explore the intersections of religion and popular culture. We strongly encourage presentation formats that foster interactive environments and provide creative alternatives to the conventional reading of papers. This year, we encourage presentations that address the following topics

 

  • Standing Rock
  • Public Mourning for Dead Celebrities
  • Nostalgia
  • Patriotism and Religion
  • Iconoclasm, Desecration, and Blasphemy
  • Religion and Popular Culture on the Ocean/Coastline
  • The Summer of Love- 50 years later
We also invite submissions for a possible co-sponsored session with the History of Christianity unit:
“Exegetical Uses and Abuses of Christianity in Preaching, Politics, and Popular Culture.”
Public expressions and manifestations of Christianity history present through Christian history in vivid and contested ways. This session seeks to forefront the public performances of Christianity and their historicizing power. For example, how did indigenous African prophets enlist, subvert, or confirm 19th century Christian colonialism? In contemporary North American politics, what is the role of competing factions and coalitions across the Christian historical spectrum? We envision particular studies of one period which can point to earlier analogous moments and invite broad dialogue.
Finally, we offer an open call for any other topics dealing with religion and popular culture, especially proposals that address the relevance of popular culture studies for larger theoretical and methodical issues in the field of religious studies.
Method:
PAPERS
Process:
Proposer names are visible to chairs but anonymous to steering committee members.
Leadership:

Chair

Steering Committee

Call for Papers:Religion and Migration Unit

Religion and Migration Unit
Call for Papers:
The Religion and Migration Unit seeks proposals for the 2017 Annual Meeting to be held in Boston, MA, related to these two themes: Gender, ritual, and religion in the experience of migration; and Loss, Gain, or Innovation? How do religious traditions change through migration?
Method:
PAPERS
Process:
Proposer names are visible to chairs but anonymous to steering committee members
Leadership:

Chair

Steering Committee

Call For Papers: Migration and Communication Flows: Rethinking Borders, Conflict and Identity Through the Digital

CALL FOR PAPERS: ECREA Diaspora, migration and the media section
University of the Basque Country, Bilbao

“MIGRATION AND COMMUNICATION FLOWS: RETHINKING BORDERS, CONFLICT AND IDENTITY THROUGH THE DIGITAL”

“We are faced with a crisis of humanity, and the only exit from this crisis is to recognize our growing interdependence as a species and to find new ways to live together in solidarity and cooperation, amidst strangers who may hold opinions and preferences different from our own.” Zygmunt Bauman, Strangers at our door (Polity, 2016)

ECREA’s ‘Diaspora, Migration and Media’ and ‘Intercultural and International Communication’ sections will organize a joint conference at the University of Basque Country in Bilbao on 2-3 November 2017 that will focus on how research on migration and communication flows can help rethinking key notions like ‘borders’, ‘conflict’, ‘solidarity’, ‘identity’ and ‘culture’.

RATIONALE: 

Migration, cultural diversity and the media are increasingly problematized. Europe appears to be crumbling down in the current moment as a result of the Brexit vote, the election of Donald Trump and the so-called ‘European Refugee Crisis’. This is illustrated by hoaxes and fake news messages on these themes that serve as popular clickbait on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. As media outlets seek to address these ‘post-Truth’ conditions, populist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, racist and neo-nationalist rhetoric and sentiments have grown excessively across social media. Meanwhile, the number of internal and external European borders proliferates, and digital data are used for surveillance and migration management. Therefore, mediated encounters with diversity, the humanitarianism-securitization nexus and the role of communication flows urgently deserve further academic exploration to advance understanding of some of the major societal challenges of our time.

The continuous re-appropriation of Anas Modamani’s selfie with the German chancellor Angela Merkel on Facebook is an illustrative case in point. He took his selfie in September 2015, when Merkel visited the Berlin shelter where he was then living. Modamani is a Syrian refugee who fled from Darayya. After posting the selfie online, he has repeatedly been falsely linked to terrorism. On the basis of physically resemblance, he was for example wrongly accused to be involved in the bombings in Brussel (March 2016) and the recent attack at a Berlin Christmas market (December 2016), see seehttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38599385.

The conference aims to cover a broad range of conflict-related themes such as media production and regulation of information on forced migrants in a ‘post-Truth’ era; fake news; the humanitarianism-securitization nexus, migration management, social and political conflicts related to migrant and diaspora communities, radicalization and online counter-terrorism, hate speech and racism, but also solidarities, activism and protest.

Digital technologies and innovations constantly offer new ways to approach these issues, both theoretically and methodologically. The organizers invite papers that explore the complexity of migration and communication flows through conceptual interventions as well as qualitative and quantitative studies.

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME
The conference will include:

• Keynote lectures by Marie Gillespie and Pedro Oiarzabal.
*Marie Gillespie is Professor of Sociology, The Open University, coordinator of the Mapping Refuge Media Journey project (2016-2018).
“The “Mapping Refugee Media Journeys” project investigates the parallel tracks of the physical and digital journeys of Syrian and Iraqi refugees. It documents the media and informational resources that refugees use from the point of departure, during their journeys across different borders and states, and upon arrival (if they reach their desired destination)”. For more information, see https://www.open.ac.uk/ccig/research/projects/mapping-refugee-media-journeys
*Pedro Oiarzabal is an Internet and Basque studies scholar, and a migration and diaspora researcher. His research examines diaspora creation and diaspora interaction with information and communication technologies as well as the meaning of identity in both homeland and diaspora realities, with particular emphasis on the Basque case.

• A roundtable to establish bridges of dialogue between academics studying the coverage of migrants and journalists reporting on various conflicts in Europe, addressing methodological and ethical challenges.
• A YECREA event dedicated to young scholars (PhD and postdoc level): see below for more information.
• A joint panel organized with the ECREA ‘Intercultural and International Communication’ division to broaden the empirical, conceptual and methodological scope of the conference and to explore future collaborations.
• An elaborate social programme, including a conference dinner and boat tour, allowing participants to enjoy the city of Bilbao.
Call for panel and paper proposals

To explore the issue of migration and communication flows in an informal and stimulating atmosphere, we invite participants to submit paper and panel proposals to the 2017 ECREA Diaspora, Migration & Media conference.

We particularly welcome proposals on the following topics:
• Rethinking the category of the migrant: forced migrants, guest-laborers, postsocialist, postcolonial, expatriates
• ‘Bottom-up’ digitally mediated processes, such as transnational and local networking and connectivity, diaspora organizations, identity construction, urban communications
• ‘Top down’ digitally mediated processes of migrant management: border control, surveillance & control systems for population movements, migrant detention centres, express flights, arrests at the street, lack of public information
• The humanitarianism-securitization nexus, human/communication rights, border management, express flights, street arrests, surveillance and political economy
• Migrants, media and language: the impact of migrants on linguistic dynamics (particularly in the context of natively bilingual societies), building resilience for new and local minority media structures
• Intersectional analyses of migration and communication flows: how do axes of difference, including race, gender, sexuality, nation, location, generation religion, class together co-constitute subordination and identity
• Methodological considerations in media and migration studies, including, but not limited to digital migration studies

We encourage scholars whose abstracts have been accepted, to submit full papers by 1 October 2017 in order to compete for the first ECREA Diaspora, Migration & Media Paper Awards. There will be one award for junior scholars and one for senior scholars.

TIMELINE:
Abstract deadline: April 16, 2017
Notification of acceptance: May 16, 2017
Full-paper submission: October 1, 2017
Registration deadline: October 1, 2017

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Please send 200-300 word abstracts by 31 March 2017.
Please include a short biography (max 100 words)

Indicate in your submission whether you are interested:

-in the YECREA event
-sessions jointly organized with ICC
-being considered for the special issue “Migration and communication flows: rethinking borders, conflict and identity through the digital”

Submit your abstract + bio to ecreadmm@gmail.com, indicate in your email header
[Submission last name + paper title]

ORGANIZING TEAM:


Irati Agirreazkuenaga, PhD
ECREA Diaspora, Migration and the Media Vice Chair
Assistant professor information genres, radio speech & corporate communication
Graduate Social Communication Programme, Department of Journalism
University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain

Koen Leurs, PhD
ECREA Diaspora, Migration and the Media Chair
Assistant professor gender & postcolonial studies
Graduate Gender Programme, Department of Media & Culture
Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Kevin Smets, PhD
ECREA Diaspora, Migration and the Media Vice Chair
Assistant professor in media and culture
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium 
Postdoctoral fellow, Research Foundation Flanders, University of Antwerp, Belgium

Melis Mevsimler, MA
ECREA Diaspora, Migration and the Media Young Scholar Representative
PhD student Digital Crossings in Europe. Gender, Diaspora and Belonging 
Utrecht University, the Netherlands