As usual, apologies for cross-postings...
Second call for papers: Polyphony and dialogism as ways of organizing
April 29-30, 2006, University of Essex
Organised jointly by Essex Management Centre (University of Essex), Centre
for Culture & Social Theory (Keele University) and the University for
Humanistics at Utrecht, Netherlands.
Please note further details on the conference:
Thank you to all who expressed their interest in the first call. We have
received a very good response so far – please keep those abstracts coming.
This promises to be an exciting event, with renowned keynote speakers that
you don’t want to miss:
Professor Fred Evans (Department of Philosophy, Duquesne University, USA)
presenting “Citizenship and art in the multi-voiced city”.
Professor Rolland Munro (Centre for Culture & Social Theory, Keele
University, UK) presenting “The Polyphony of Technology: from the succession
of ideas to the stream of consciousness”.
Professor John Shotter (Emeritus Professor, Department of Communication,
University of New Hampshire, USA) presenting “Multi-voiced dialogical
inquiry: action guiding anticipations and emergence of novelty”.
The conference will start on Friday 28 April with an opening
reception/dinner. Sessions will start on Saturday 29 April and continue into
Sunday afternoon. It is anticipated, but not yet finalised, that Alex Went
will perform Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape on the Saturday evening
ahead of dinner.
The registration fee is an all-inclusive £250, which comprises 2 nights in a
3 star Wivenhoe House Hotel located on the University of Essex campus
(http://www.wivenhoehousehotel.co.uk/), breakfasts, dinners, lunches and all
refreshments during the conference. The conference will take place in the
same hotel for the convenience of delegates. The conference location,
University of Essex, is very easily accessible by car, rail (1 hour direct
from London), from Stansted Airport (under 1 hour by direct bus) and all
other London airports. For more details on travel please see
http://www.essex.ac.uk/about/find.html.
Conference papers will be selected for inclusion in special issues of the
Journal for Cultural Research, to be negotiated, and Tamara: Journal for
Critical Postmodern Organization, already agreed.
Please note that the number of participants will be limited to 25 people to
allow space and time for close interaction and in-depth discussions. If you
are thinking of attending the conference, please get in touch with us to
book a place early. At the end of the call you will find a list of those who
have already expressed interest in the conference.
Abstracts should be sent before 15 February 2006 to Olga Belova at
[log in to unmask] and Rolland Munro at [log in to unmask] The
deadline for payments of the conference fee is 15 March 2006. Further
details on how to make payments will soon be available on
http://www.essex.ac.uk/afm/emc/polyphony_conf.shtm.
Looking forward to hearing from you
Olga on behalf of the Conference Organising Committee
**************************************************
This two-day conference takes the notions of polyphony and dialogism as
starting points for exploring ways in which philosophy and literary theory
can inform organizational research and practice.
The concepts of polyphony and dialogism were developed early last century by
the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin as alternatives to the univocality
of literary texts and represent part of his challenge to traditional
monological relations between author and heroes in novelistic writing.
Conceived as dialogic, narrative becomes an intersection of different
accents and voices, which are fundamentally ambivalent in taking on meaning
in relation to each other, rather than some absolute point of reference. The
polyphonic principle keeps those voices as valued and authoritative as that
of the writer. Bakthin’s propositions on novels in particular and language
in general (heteroglossia) call for a world that is inhabited by different
voices, differing vocabularies, and disparate dialects, which are bound to
produce multiple stories of that world. What matters then are not single
voices, but the relations between them.
The ideas of polyphony and dialogism have been explored in the fields of
philosophy, literary theory and linguistics, but their relevance to
organisation studies still awaits recognition. This two-day conference aims
to initiate and develop such an interest. We propose to go beyond
understanding polyphony and dialogism as types of text and explore them,
instead, as ways of organising. Bakhtin’s terminology is evocative,
intellectually stimulating and relevant to organisation studies, which is
today a changing, reflexive and eclectic field that draws on different
disciplines, no less than on literature and philosophy. Increasing
globalisation, mixed identities, as well as a well-noted dissolution of
traditional structures of authority, all indicate a more general transition
from the univocal toward a multi-voiced world in which speech is
heteroglossic, strategy is polyphonic, and research writing takes the form
of different genres and authorships. Aside from its more specific
applications, Bakhtin’s critique of monologic author-hero relations also
leads us to re-consider the logic of scientific writing with its univocality
and objectivity. The rooting of his philosophy in the analysis of literary
works (for example in the novels by Dostoyevsky and Rabelais) provides an
inspiration to explore alternative sources, while his revision of dualistic
philosophies underpinning much Western social theory and practices offers
further avenues for expanding ontological and epistemological positions.
In wishing to explore these strands further, this conference takes an
interdisciplinary approach and invites contributions that address, but are
not limited to, the following themes:
- Applications and elaborations of Bakhtin’s thought in organisation
studies, such as globalisation, organizational change, strategy, identity
etc.
- Political and ethical implications of notions of dialogism, polyphony,
heteroglossia etc. in organisational contexts.
- Textual and authorial strategies employed by organizational researchers
and practitioners.
- Questioning the boundaries between scientific and creative writing.
- Author-reader-text relations in the production of meaning.
- Polyphony and multi-voicedness in research accounts; rhetorical figures
and literary devices used in 'recording' organizational phenomena.
- Polyphony and noise in helping define time and space.
- Insights from literary theory and writing; organization theory as a
literary genre.
- New ways of theorizing the relationship between self and other;
formulating alternative principles of sense-making and organizing.
- Theorising research and organisational events in terms of relationships
based on logic different to that of systems, structures etc.
Theoretical as well as empirical contributions are welcome. The number of
participants will be limited to 25 people to allow space and time for close
interaction and in-depth discussions.
Deadline for abstracts (no more than 500 words) - 15 February 2006.
Conference organisers:
Olga Belova (University of Essex) - send your abstracts to
[log in to unmask]
Rolland Munro (Keele University) - send your abstracts to
[log in to unmask]
Conference committee:
Ian King (University of Essex)
Hugo Letiche (University for Humanistics)
Martyna Sliwa (University of Essex)
********************************
List of those who have already expressed interest in the conference:
Prof. Vladimir Alpatov, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy
of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
Prof. Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, Department of Management, Politics and
Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.
Dr. Olga Belova, Department of Accounting, Finance and Management,
University of Essex, UK.
Dr Robert van Boeschoten University for Humanistics, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Prof. David Boje, Management Department, New Mexico State University, USA.
Asmund W. Born, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy,
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.
Dr. Leon Burnett, Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies,
University of Essex, UK.
Prof. George Cairns, Department of Accounting, Finance and Management,
University of Essex, UK.
Prof. Fred Evans, Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy,
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA. Keynote speaker.
David Hamilton, Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, University of
Sheffield, UK.
Dr. Heather Hopfl, Department of Accounting, Finance and Management,
University of Essex, UK.
Dr. Miguel Imas, Business School, Kingston University, London, UK.
Dr. Marsalidh Kilalea, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South
Africa.
Dr. Ian King, Department of Accounting, Finance and Management, University
of Essex, UK.
Eliza Mood, St. Martin's College, Lancaster, UK.
Prof. Hugo Letiche, University for Humanistics, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Dr Jean-Luc Moriceau, Department of Management Science, National Institute
of Telecommunication, Evry, France.
Prof. Rolland Munro, Professor of Organisation Theory, Keele University, UK.
Keynote speaker.
Prof. Greg Nielsen, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia
University, Montreal, Canada.
Prof. George Pattison, Christ Church, University of Oxford, UK.
Martyna Sliwa, Department of Accounting, Finance and Management, University
of Essex, UK.
Prof. John Shotter, Emeritus Professor of Communication in the Department of
Communication, University of New Hampshire, USA. Keynote speaker.
Dr. Bent Meier Sorensen, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy,
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.
Dr. Paul Sullivan, Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, University
of Bradford, UK.
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