CALL FOR PAPERS

For two inter-linked, consecutive workshops under the theme of Subjects and Practices of Resistance to be held 9-11 September 2013 at University of Sussex.

The first workshop (9-10 Sept) is on Discipline(s), Dissent and Dispossession and the second on Counter-Conduct in Global Politics (10-11 Sept).  The workshop convenors encourage attendance at both workshops.  However, paper proposals should specify the intended workshop and which days participants would be able to attend.

The workshops are generously sponsored and supported by the BISA Poststructuralist Politics Working Group (PPWG) and the Centre for Advanced International Theory (CAIT) at the University of Sussex

 

Workshop 1: Discipline(s), Dissent and Dispossession

9-10 September 2013

Contemporary struggles against dispossession – from the 2011 Occupy movement to ongoing land rights conflicts in the Ecuadorian rainforest – not only remind us of existing forces of domination and exploitation, but also challenge the ready-made concepts and frameworks through which such struggles are often interpreted.   Building on a previous project – “Disciplining Dissent”* – this workshop aims to open up discussion on the intersections between the politics of resistance and the politics of knowledge. How might we conceptualise dissent or resistance in ways that are sensitive to the social and epistemic relations within which anti-systemic struggles are embedded? How might we frame the complementarity and tensions between political dissent and intellectual critique? How might available concepts and frameworks occlude the complex interplay between resistance and repression, discipline and dissent, obscuring what is at stake politically in existing practices of struggle?

We welcome contributions that consider these themes from diverse theoretical perspectives and academic disciplines, including international relations, international political economy, sociology, philosophy, geography and anthropology.

Questions that might be addressed include (but are not limited to): how is dissent rendered intelligible in ways that serve to contain, nullify or depoliticize struggles; the politics of knowledge in political dissent; the place of normative political critique in the absence of universal categories or emancipatory blueprints; the ways in which dissenting communities are building their own theories of dissent or are theorising out of their own dissenting practices; the forms of subjectivisation incited, subverted or arrested through practices of dissent and/or their relation to the types of dissenting subjects assumed by intellectuals and experts; the ways in which academic disciplines interpret, appropriate and discipline both dissent and critique; the nature and purpose of academic critique at a moment of austerity and economic “crisis”.

It is hoped that the workshop will serve as a basis for a journal special issue, as well as for further collobarations around these themes.

Abstracts of approx. 300 words should be sent to L.Coleman@sussex.ac.uk and cait@sussex.ac.uk by 31 May 2013 (please indicate whether or not you plan to attend both workshops).  

Convenors:

Lara Montesinos Coleman, University of Sussex

Doerthe Rosenow, Oxford Brookes University

Karen Tucker, University of Bristol

 

*published as Lara Montesinos Coleman and Karen Tucker (eds.), Situating Global Resistance: Between Discipline and Dissent (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012) and as a special issue of Globalizations 8:3 (2011).

 

Workshop 2: Counter-Conduct in Global Politics: Theories and Practices

10-11 September 2013

Resistance, and its study, is on the rise. Protesting, agitating, dissenting, and occupying inter alia have received increased attention and theorisation in the past tumultuous decade since 11 September 2001. However, such academic and public attention has tended to focus on the visible and politically discernible practices of dissent against sovereignty, economic exploitation, dispossession and other forms of oppression. Little systematic attention has been paid to potentially less visible practices of resistance or those who do not participate in an expressly political register but that attempt to resist ‘power that conducts’ (Foucault 2007). To this end, the workshop has four main aims. First, to theoretically develop, refine and critically interrogate the concept and theorisation of ‘counter-conduct(s)’, a term that, until recently, has received scant attention within the social sciences. We encourage the further critique, development and modification of Foucault’s initial attempts to understand subjects’ ‘possible inventions’ as counter-conduct (1982, 2007). Second, to provide a space in which empirical, multi-disciplinary investigations of counter-conduct in a variety of thematic areas and spaces of global politics can be presented. Third, to facilitate reflection on the variable and contingent forms of counter-conduct, examining its close relationship with conducting power and revealing the processes of invigilation of resistance and adjustment of conducting strategies. Finally, to reflect on the methodological implications and issues, which affect the study of the variegated practices of counter-conduct.

We welcome contributions that consider these themes not only from a Foucaultian perspective but also that bring diverse theoretical perspectives  — and views from a variety of academic disciplines, including politics, international relations, international political economy, sociology, political theory and philosophy, geography and anthropology – to bear on the study of counter-conduct.

Format: consisting of longer paper presentations, followed by substantial constructive feedback from discussants and audience, the format of the Counter-Conduct in Global Politics workshop aims to facilitate intensive and extensive engagement among participants with a view to producing article length contributions to a significantly placed journal special issue. Given the lack of systematic focus on practices and subjects of counter-conduct, it is hoped that such a special issue will engender further debate and consideration of the study of counter-conduct in global politics and potentially act as a reference for postgraduate and doctoral research as well. Abstracts of approx. 250 words should be sent to L.Odysseos@sussex.ac.uk and cait@sussex.ac.uk by 31 May 2013 (please indicate whether or not you plan to attend both workshops).

Convenors:

Carl Death, University of Manchester (as of August 2013)

Helle Malmvig, Danish Institute of International Studies

Louiza Odysseos, University of Sussex

 

 

Centre for Advanced International Theory

Department of International Relations

University of Sussex

Falmer

East Sussex

BN1 9SJ

 

E cait@sussex.ac.uk

T 01273 876615

CALL FOR PAPERS

Critical War Studies: emerging field, developing agendas

One day workshop, 11 September 2013, University of Sussex

 

What is left out when critical reflection on armed conflict is conducted under the sign of ‘security’? What are the forms of contemporary militarism? How can the discourses and practices of fighting, transition to ‘peace’, war preparation and military and strategic thought be engaged reflexively? How might militaries be understood as sites of subaltern labour, resistance and critique? How can attentiveness to experiences of war generate critical resources within international relations, sociology, geography, anthropology, history and other disciplines?

 

Multi-disciplinary proposals are invited for a one-day workshop convened by the University of Sussex Centre for Conflict and Security Research. The organisers welcome contributions engaging the idea of Critical War Studies, the themes outlined above and below, or suggesting other appropriate topics. It is envisaged that this will be the first of several events leading to opportunities for peer-reviewed publication.

 

Draft workshop structure:

 

Panel 1: What is ‘Critical War Studies’?

 What’s in a name? ‘War’, ‘security’ and the analytical status of fighting

 Critical approaches within strategic theory: who is strategy ‘for’?

 Theory and the experience of war

 War in/and society

 

Panel 2: Political Sociologies of fighting

 Technologies, transformations of war, transformations of self

 Subaltern military labour and military history in Europe and beyond

 Battle narrative and identity

 Gendering war

 ‘Normality’ and ‘extremity’ in fighting and dying

 

Panel 3: Contemporary militarisms, contemporary militaries

 Ideology contra experience: reflections on the policy/ practice disconnect in the war on terror

 Beyond the strategic studies/ peace studies divide: continuity and change in militarism after the Cold War

 The social construction of weapons

 Military orientalisms and the representation of violence

 

Deadline for proposals: June 7th

 

Queries should be directed to: Joanna Wood

E scsr@sussex.ac.uk

T 01273 876615

More details can be found here: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/scsr/news?id=18934    

 

 

Sussex Centre for Conflict and Security Research

Department of International Relations

University of Sussex

Falmer, Brighton

BN1 9SJ

Prize Call

Sussex International Theory Prize

www.sussex.ac.uk/cait/prize

 

The Centre for Advanced International Theory invites nominations for the 2013 Sussex International Theory Prize for the best piece of research in International Relations published in book or article form in 2012.  The recipient will be invited to present their research in a Public Lecture at the University of Sussex and will also receive £150 worth of books from Cambridge University Press and a two-year print and online subscription to International Theory.

 

In 2011, the Centre for Advanced International Theory (CAIT) was established by the Department of International Relations within the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex.  The core mission of the Centre is to support and disseminate innovative fundamental research in international theory. 

 

To this end, the Sussex International Theory Prize is awarded annually for the best piece of innovative theoretical research in International Relations.  Last year’s Prize was awarded to Helen M. Kinsella (University of Madison-Wisconsin) for her book, The Image Before the Weapon: a Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian (Cornell University Press, 2011).

 

In the autumn of 2013, the prize will be awarded for the best piece of research published in book or article form in 2012. 

 

 

Prize Details

 

Eligibility:

• The work should be in International Relations, broadly conceived – including sub-fields
• The work must have been published in 2012: judged by copyright date

 

Submission/Nomination

• The award is made annually on the basis of nominations by individuals, publishers and peers.
• Nominations should take the form of a statement of less than 200 words on why the work could be considered the best piece of innovative theoretical research in International Relations, from the previous year. 
• Nominators (including publishers) are limited to one submission. 
• If the nomination is for an article, the published version should be attached as a PDF document to the email nomination
• If the nomination is for a book, it is the nominator’s responsibility to contact the publisher and request that five copies of the title be sent by the nomination deadline to Centre for Advanced International Theory, Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9SJ, UK.
• Nominations can be made by email submission through to 2^nd April 2013 to the CAIT Administrator, Joanna Wood cait@sussex.ac.uk.  Nominated books must also arrive by this date.
• The recipient will be notified in June 2013.

 

Prize

• The recipient will be invited to present his/her research in the public Prize Lecture at the University of Sussex.
• The winner receives £150 worth of books from Cambridge University Press and a two-year print and online subscription to International Theory.

 

 

 

Centre for Advanced International Theory

Department of International Relations

University of Sussex

Falmer

East Sussex

BN1 9SJ

 

E cait@sussex.ac.uk

T 01273 876615