[csaa-forum] The Fibreculture Journal—Call for Papers—Entanglements: Activism and Technology

[Andrew Murphie]

CFP—Issue 24 Fibreculture Journal: Entanglements: activism and technology

http://fibreculturejournal.org/cfp-entanglements/

Please note that for this issue, initial submissions should be abstracts
only.

Issue Editors: Pip Shea, Tanya Notley and Jean Burgess

Abstract deadline: August 20 2014 (no late abstracts will be accepted)
Article deadline: November 3 2014
Publication aimed for: February 2015

all contributors and editors must read the guidelines at:
http://fibreculturejournal.org/policy-and-style/
before working with the Fibreculture Journal

Email correspondence for this issue: p.shea at qub.ac.uk

This themed issue explores the entanglements that arise due to frictions
between the philosophies embedded within technologies and the philosophies
embedded within activism. Straightforward solutions are rarely on offer as
the bringing together of different philosophies requires the negotiation of
acceptance, compromise, or submission (Tsing 2004). This friction can be
disruptive, productive, or both, and it may contribute discord or harmony.

In this special issue, we seek submissions that respond to the idea that
frictions between technologies and activists may ultimately enhance the
ability of activists to take more control of their projects, create new
ethical spaces and subvert technologies, just as it may also result in
tension, conflict and hostility.

By dwelling in between and within these frictions and entanglements –
through strategic and tactical media discourses as well as the very concept
of an activist politics within technology – this special issue will
elucidate the context-specific nature, constraints and possibilities of the
digital environments that are co-habited by activists from proximate fields
including social movements, human rights, ecological and green movements,
international development, community arts and cultural development.

Past issues of the Fibreculture Journal have examined activist philosophies
from angles such as social justice and networked organisational forms,
communication rights and net neutrality debates, and the push back against
precarious new media labour. Our issue extends this work by revealing the
conflicting debates that surround activist philosophies of technology.

Submissions are sought that engage specifically with the ethics, rationales
and methods adopted by activists to justify selecting, building, using,
promoting or rejecting specific technologies. We also encourage work that
considers the ways in which these negotiations speak to broader mythologies
and tensions embedded within digital culture – between openness and
control; political consistency and popular appeal; appropriateness,
usability and availability.

We invite responses to these provocations from activists, practitioners and
academics. Critiques, case studies, and multimedia proposals will be
considered for inclusion. Submissions should explore both constraints and
possibilities caused by activism and its digital technology entanglements
through the following themes:

Alternative technology versus appropriate technology
Pragmatism and technology choice
The philosophies and practices of hacking technologies
Activist cultures and the proprietary web
Digital privacy and security breaches and errors
Uncovering and exposing technology vulnerabilities
Technology and e-waste
The philosophies of long/short term impact
Authenticity and evidence

Initial submissions should comprise 300 word abstracts and 60 word
biographies, emailed to p.shea at qub.ac.uk and t.notley at uws.edu.au

References:

Tsing, A. 2005 Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.

The Fibreculture Journal (http://fibreculturejournal.org/) is a peer
reviewed international journal, associated with Open Humanities Press (
http://openhumanitiespress.org/), that explores critical and speculative
interventions in the debate and discussions concerning information and
communication technologies and their policy frameworks, network cultures
and their informational logic, new media forms and their deployment, and
the possibilities of socio-technical invention and sustainability.

-- 

"A traveller, who has lost his way, should not ask, Where am I? What he
really wants to know is, Where are the other places" - Alfred North
Whitehead

Andrew Murphie - Associate Professor
School of the Arts and Media,
University of New South Wales,
Sydney, Australia, 2052

Editor, with Su Ballard and Glen Fuller—The Fibreculture Journal
http://fibreculturejournal.org/>
web: http://www.andrewmurphie.org/

tlf:612 93855548 fax:612 93856812
room 311H, Robert Webster Building
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