[csaa-forum] CFP: Cultures of Capitalism, CSAA 2017 Conference, Wellington 6-8 December

[Sy Taffel]

*Cultures of Capitalism*

*Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Conference 2017*



*December 6-8*

*Massey University, Wellington Campus*

*Aotearoa New Zealand*



Keynote Speakers: Professor Patricia Hill Collins (University of Maryland),
Professor Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges), Professor Jeremy
Gilbert (University of East London), Professor Wendy Larner (University of
Victoria, Wellington).



The relationship between capital and culture is hotly contested. On the one
hand, dominant political discourses valorise “culture” as the solution for
ailing communities, cities and industries. Discourses of neo-liberal
globalization claim that, in the face of mass migration, war and climate
change, communities equipped with the “right” culture will adapt and
endure, while others will be left behind; discourses of urban planning
celebrate culture as the key to revitalising municipal economies through
creativity and social participation; and discourses of post-industrial
work, parsing radical shifts in the manufacturing sector, champion
cultural, intellectual and creative labour as the paradigm for new forms of
work. On the other, a range of critical voices, many of them associated
with Cultural Studies, offer a decidedly less rosy vision of the
relationship between culture and emergent capitalist formations. For these
critics, nascent technologies of capital have led to a renewed reification
and exploitation of racialised, sexualised, and classed populations, even
as newly precarious conditions of labour give rise to affective economies
marked by depression, antagonism and the “crisis ordinary.”



The 2017 Cultural Studies Association of Australasia conference will focus
on the work that cultures do in constructing, contesting, and constituting
new capital formations. While the “culture industry” critique cast culture
as the opiate through which economic dominance is propagated, cultures can
potentially mediate economic conditions in multiple and heterogeneous ways.
This conference invites contributions that explore these mediations. In
doing so, we return to one of the key concerns of early cultural studies:
to make sense of the mutually-determining relation between culture and its
capitalist context. If, following Stuart Hall, we understand ‘culture’ as
the production of meaning through language and representation, what are the
modes of communication through which capitalism/s are created? How are
capitalism/s materialised in different spaces? How is it embodied in
different identities and communities? What is the role of the economy in
shaping the possibilities for culture? What is the role of Cultural Studies
as critical praxis in the present economic time?



Papers are invited to address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

·              The cultural politics of neoliberalism

·              Precarious and/or immaterial labour

·              Digital capitalism

·              Capitalist affects

·              Trump, Brexit and the resurgence of capitalist nationalisms

·              Capitalism, culture and technology

·              The cultural and creative industries

·              Capitalism, culture and sustainability

·              Cultures of surveillance and war

·              Cultural identity and globalisation

·              Cultural resistance and activism

·              Productive and unproductive cultures

·              Base, superstructure and mediation

·              Formal and real subsumption of culture

·              Representations of capitalism, class and markets

·              Political economies of online, digital and social media

·              Anticapitalist, Socialist, Anarchist and Communist cultures

·              Racial capitalism

·              Critical theory, Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies



The conference also accepts papers that fall within the general
disciplinary area of Cultural Studies. We are also happy to accept
submissions for pre-formed panels: if you wish to submit as part of a
pre-formed panel, please indicate this in your submission.



In addition, to the regular conference events, we will also be holding a
pre-fix day for postgraduate students and early career researchers. More
details regarding this event will be announced shortly.



Early bird registration costs for the event will be $350 NZD for faculty
and fully waged participants, and $250 NZD for students, adjunct faculty
and unwaged participants. Registration will include membership of the CSAA.



If you are interested in presenting at the conference, please send a 250
word abstract with your name, e-mail address and affiliation to
csaa2017 at massey.ac.nz by August 1 2017. Any other enquires regarding the
event should also be addressed to csaa2017 at massey.ac.nz.



Website: csaa2017.ac.nz



Organising Committee: Nicholas Holm (Massey University), Sy Taffel (Massey
University), Holly Randell-Moon (University of Otago), Pansy Duncan (Massey
University), Ian Huffer (Massey University), Kevin Veale (Massey
University).



Sy Taffel, PhD

Lecturer in Media Studies |Co-Director, Political Ecology Research Centre

College of Humanities and Social Sciences | Massey University

Email: s.a.taffel at massey.ac.nz | Telephone: +64 (06 ) 356 9099 ext. 84527



Recently Published:

Ecologial Entanglements in the Anthropocene
<https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498535694/Ecological-Entanglements-in-the-Anthropocene>,
edited by Nicholas Holm and Sy Taffel, Lexington Books

Technofossils of the Anthropocene: Media, Geology and Plastics
<http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/12/3/355.abstract>.
Cultural Politics 2016:3, 355-375
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