[csaa-forum] Promises: Crisis and Socio-Cultural Change, Final CFP

[Melissa Gregg]

(Apologies for cross-posting)

CRESC Annual Conference
Promises: Crisis and Socio-Cultural Change
The University of Manchester, UK
Wednesday 5th-Friday 7th September 2012


Speakers include:

Barbara Adam (Social Sciences, Cardiff University)
Robert Boyer (ENS, Paris)
Will Hutton (Hertford College, Oxford University)
Elizabeth A. Povinelli (Anthropology, Columbia University)
plus 
Aditya Chakrabortty (The Guardian) and Paul Mason (BBC Newsnight)
 
In the midst of global financial crisis and radical transformations in
states, institutions, environments and social relations, it is vital to
explore the role promises play in effecting socio-cultural change. We use
the word Opromises¹ to encapsulate the range of plans, policies, projects,
dreams and visions that both open and close the possibility of different
kinds of socio-cultural futures (and pasts). Asking OWhat promises are
contained in the current moment of crisis?' And OWhat social futures should
we plan for or anticipate?¹ the 2012 CRESC conference will explore how
promises are made to work and fail in the following contexts and fields:
  
·      Capitalism: in the midst of rolling crisis, what are the (broken)
promises of financialised and globalised capitalism? What rewards do
consumption and investment now promise?
·      Democracy: what projections can we make for future democracies, for
forms of civic representation and participation? What futures are
anticipated in the political reforms of crisis and in the actions of elites?
·      Expertise: what are the prospects of the knowledge fields of
politics, higher education, media, law, science and the sustainable
environment? What is the emergent potential for new, progressive or
transformative public knowledge?
·      Intimacies: what promises are implicated in transformations of
everyday intimacies and personal relationships? How are intimacies being
re-configured through objects, networks, technologies and bodily practices?
·      Cultures: what counts as a successful future in terms of cultural
policy, production, participation, engagement or inclusion? Which histories
and whose values underpin forecasts of lifestyles, life chances and cultural
futures?
·      Methods: what methods and techniques meet the challenge of
understanding complex patterns of socio-cultural change? How are we to
understand promises when confronted by different (non)coherencies,
(dis)connections, localities and dispersals?

We invite paper contributions on these and related topics that seek to
explore ­ both theoretically and empirically - the ways in which different
plans, projects and visions are shaping social futures and patterns of
socio-cultural change. We are concerned with how such promises inform and
relate to concrete impacts, successes and failures - as well as their
rhetorical function and their intended and unintended consequences. Overall,
we aim to show how promises both sustain and transform socio-cultural
worlds.   

Please submit either a) proposal for individual papers or b) full panel
proposal by Friday 20th April 2012

Proposal Forms can be downloaded from the CRESC website at by clicking on
the following link:

http://www.cresc.ac.uk/events/cresc-annual-conference
 
and returned via CRESC.AnnualConference at manchester.ac.uk

Alternatively, proposal forms can be returned to the following address -
CRESC Conference Administration, 178 Waterloo Place, Oxford Road, University
of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.

Tel: +44(0)161 275 8985 / Fax: +44(0)161 275 8985

For more information please contact Dr Mark Banks, CRESC 2012 Conference
Chair at m.o.banks at open.ac.uk <mailto:m.o.banks at open.ac.uk>
 


MELISSA GREGG | Senior Lecturer
Gender and Cultural Studies | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
J406, Quadrangle A14 | The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006
T +61 2 9351 3657 | F +61 2 9351 3918 | M +61 408 599 359
E melissa.gregg at sydney.edu.au | W http://sydney.edu.au