> Mobilities
> A Conference Organized by the Amsterdam School of Social science Research
>
> In Honour of Abram de Swaan
>
> In celebration of its 20th anniversary and in honour of its first Dean Abram de Swaan, the Amsterdam School of Social-science Research (ASSR) will hold a multi-disciplinary conference on the mobility of people, goods, technologies and money, and ideas on 24-26 January 2007. This conference aims to attract scholars from across the globe who are specialists in the disciplines of the ASSR: history, anthropology, sociology and political science. The conference will last for two days and includes six > '> theme based> '> panel sessions during which the papers of the participants> '> papers will be `briefly> '> presented and > '> widely> '> discussed. Following the opening of the conference by a distinguished academic, participants will be able to join these parallel sessions in accordance with their own interests. After the conference, selected papers will be chosen for a book on the multidisciplinary analysis of mobility. The conference focuses on three themes: the mobility of people; the mobility of goods, technology and money; and the mobility of ideas.
>
> 1 Mobility of people
> (coordinators: Jelle Visser and Willem van Schendel)
>
> The past two decades can be considered as an era of tourism and labour migration. The expansion of these two different types of human mobility clearly indicates contradictory aspects of the moderncontemporary world.
> On the one hand, at least in some parts of the world, having a good holiday in a remote foreign country has ceased to be the sole preserve and a privilege of the wealthy as tourism began to emerge as an industry, which could save the (third) world. In this process, the media extensively propagated the images of > '> exotic destinations> '> , while short vacations to these exotic places became affordable to the middle class in the developed world through a complex network of travel and tourism agencies. In this way, almost anyone living in the developed world could take the dual liberty of > '> forgetting> '> their real world and > '> ignoring> '> the problems of the exotic holiday vacation worlds.
> On the other hand, for an increasing number of people, the idea of going elsewhere to be able to live decently began to emerge as the only feasible life project, as poverty became a natural feature of the landscape in some parts of the world. Increasing opportunities for mobility were thus regarded as offering hope to some people, while the same idea began to be perceived as a menace by others, who believe that illegally mobile aliens are unjustly exploiting their resources. Consequently, while the mobility of people has been promoted as the engine for economic growth, it has almost simultaneously been discouraged given that it is viewed as an impediment for the worsening economies of both host and home localities.
> The conference will explore this dual process in two different ways. Firstly it will be able to tackle the question of how to theorize the causes and consequences of human mobility in the modern world without excluding any of the contradictory aspects of this concept. Secondly, it shall address the question of how to study human mobility in its entirety on an empirical level given the practical difficulties involved, (particularly) with respect to the issue of illegal mobility.
>
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> 2 Mobility of goods, technology and money
> (coordinators: Anita Hardon and Geoffrey Underhill)
>
> As the merits of a seemingly invincible free market economy were promoted worldwide and advances in technology offered new opportunities for connecting the demand with supply (regardless of the distance in between these two), both money and goods have started to move more quickly than anything else in the modern world. This is exemplified by the emergence of flash capital, the worldwide diffusion of product designs, the music market, the illicit use of copyright, or the spread of technology through trade and production patterns.>
> With respect to goods, not only the conditions of their consumption but also the locus of their production has become particularly dynamic. Interestingly, the fact that many people are routinely able to consume almost any product, which has been produced somewhere else in the world, in their own homes has been accompanied by a subtle fear of unemployment due to the better production opportunities, which have emerged in other places. The simultaneous mobility of production and consumption of goods have thus engendered both the idea of belonging to a global community and the fear of being isolated from it.
> On the other hand, the movement of money across the world proved capable of undermining consolidated financial systems. Companies not only had to act in accordance with the trends in the product markets, but they were also obliged to be sensitive to the fluctuations in the financial markets in order to be able to satisfy their shareholders, who may indeed move their resources elsewhere if dissatisfied by the companies> '> value. Yet attracting these mobile resources has become the utmost priority for those countries that seek rapid development. These developments ignited the fear of a new world in which capital may dictate everything while the labour force is forced to submit without any resistance.
> This conference will analyze the role of the mobility of (the production and consumption of) goods in relation to people> '> s identity and shall address the question of whether the mobility of money has led (or may lead) to a world of over-powerful capital and hopelessly weak labour.
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> 3. Mobility of ideas
> (coordinators: Nico Besnier, Jan Willem Duyvendak, Peter Geschiere)
>
> Advances in technology and the increasing mobility of people have inevitably paved the way for the rapid circulation of ideas (including ideas of technology and innovation) around the world. Moreover, global organizations have used their capabilities in order to promote certain ideas (the free market, democracy, peace, environment friendliness, fear of terrorism etc.) to the extent that the same ideas started to be employed in order to refer to and explain the developments, which occurred at remote locations. The ideas of Christian or other `fundamentalisms> '> (and ideologies in general) are particularly mobile due to new technologies.
> This situation sometimes seems to have increased the unification of humankind throughout the past two decades, at least with respect to a few basic issues, while at the same the mobility of essentially divisive and exclusionary ideas casts doubt on the notion that globalization leads to convergence and homogeneity. One can also argue that the separation of ideas from the places and circumstances that generated them may have created a fissure between reality and discourse: as people attempt to comprehend reality with ideas, which have been generated without any heed to local particularities, they may confuse the discourse with reality and gradually replace the reality with discourse. In the course of this process, what is important may be obscured by what is supposed to be important and the priorities of > '> here> '> may be determined by the dynamics of > '> there> '> , while the only connection between here and there remains an imagined one.
> The conference may proceed in two different ways: on the one hand, the problem of identifying and analyzing the influence of globally circulating ideas on remote localities can be addressed by case studies; on the other hand, the conditions under which an idea may be globally circulated can be examined.
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> Papers relating to any of the conference themes are warmly invited. Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be forwarded to Teun Bijvoet ([log in to unmask]) by 1 June 2006. Full papers will be pre-circulated (see www.assr.nl) and should be in no later than > 5 January 2007.
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> Please note: Abram de Swaan will deliver his validictory lecture (afscheidscollege) directly after the conference,
> on friday 26 January 2007, 2.00 p.m. (Auditorium, Universiteit van Amsterdam)
>
>
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Justus Uitermark, M.A.
Amsterdam School for Social science Research (ASSR)
University of Amsterdam
Kloveniersburgwal 48
1012 CX Amsterdam
The Netherlands
 
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: 0031-20-5252277
Website: www.justusuitermark.nl