[csaa-forum] CFP Re-thinking cultural economy, Manchester Sep 5-7

[Melissa Gregg]

CRESC Annual Conference 2007

5-7 September 2007, University of Manchester

Re-thinking cultural economy

The term 'cultural economy' is deployed as part of a claim about the
importance of culture both to understanding what is happening to
economic and organisational life, and to effective practical
interventions in the worlds of production and consumption.

There are many ways of thinking about cultural economy which, like any
umbrella heading, covers a multitude of distinctive and often
non-reducible developments. These include the culturalisation of a range
of activities previously considered preponderantly "economic"; as well
as the growth of the so-called 'cultural industries' and the importance
of 'creativity' and 'knowledge' to contemporary economic success. 

Within the social sciences and humanities, the 'cultural turn' has led
to a new preoccupation with the analysis of cultural forms and a
realisation that culture was not limited to a particular sphere or set
of activities - the arts, the cultural industries - but was basically to
be found everywhere. While in consultancy rhetoric and managerialist
programmes of organisational reform, organisational ethics and employee
identities are perhaps re-configured to express a 'New Spirit of
Capitalism'.

Equally there is a need for re-thinking cultural economy understood as
the assumptions and claims of those working in this new and contestable
field. Scholars from the humanities, social sciences, organisation and
management studies are raising fundamental questions about how to
understand power and privilege, effect and affect in present day
capitalism. How do constructivist oriented forms of knowledge relate to
older general, structural analyses of capitalism? How do the discursive
and performative relate to more traditional ideas of mechanics and
causal logic? 

How do "critical" scholars evaluate ascendant practices like management
or evaluate epochal claims about network societies

This Conference seeks to assess where the various debates about culture
and economy and cultural economy have got to, and to explore where they
may be going in the future. Discussion and debate will be structured
around parallel streams of themed session papers as well as plenaries
that address the following themes:

* Finance and Financialisation

* Consumer Culture, Branding and Marketing

* New Spirits of Capitalism: materiality, ethics and identities

* Theorising Culture, Economy and Cultural Economy

* The Cultural Economy of Management, 

Managerialism and New Organisational Elites

* Difference, Money and Borders

Please submit either (a) 250 word abstracts for individual papers, or
(b) proposals for panels including 3 papers by *31 March 2007*.
Guidelines and Proposal Forms are available from
http://www.cresc.ac.uk/events/conference/guidelines.html
<http://www.cresc.ac.uk/events/conference/guidelines.html> 

and should be sent to: CRESC Conference Administration

178 Waterloo Place, Oxford Road, University of Manchester, Manchester
M13 9PL

Tel: +44(0)161 275 8985 / Fax: +44(0)161 275 8985/
cresc at manchester.ac.uk/ <mailto:cresc at manchester.ac.uk/
<mailto:cresc at manchester.ac.uk/> >

Bussie Awosanya

Centre Secretary

ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC)

178 Waterloo Place

The University of Manchester

Oxford Road

Manchester M13 9PL

www.cresc.ac.uk <outbind://6/www.cresc.ac.uk>  <http://www.cresc.ac.uk
<http://www.cresc.ac.uk/> >

Tel: 0161 275 8985

Fax: 0161 275 8986

 
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