Definitely more than a few angles for surveillance studies folks here...
David.
Second Workshop
Premediation, Anticipation, Speculation:
Futures in Finance and Security
University of Amsterdam
21-22 January 2010
Call for Papers
Keynote Speaker: Richard Grusin (Wayne State University)
Finance and security act on the world through unknown and uncertain futures. While often
relegated to different societal and academic domains, finance and security share a
historical lineage and epistemological rationale as technologies of the future. Whether it be
stories of untold riches, pristine forests or new economies that stimulate financial
investment, or stories of unprecedented threats, pending catastrophes and immanent
attacks that stimulate security investment, mediations of the future are at the core of the
work done in finance and security. After 9/11 and the credit-crisis, imagining the future
has begun to exceed the logic of risk-calculation and turned to non-actuarial technologies,
e.g. scenario planning, stress testing, disaster imagination, speculation and attack
simulation. These technologies pivot on what may be called ‘premediation’, which seeks to
imagine and visualise multiple futures in order to enable action in the present.
This interdisciplinary workshop investigates narratives and technologies of premediation,
anticipation, speculation that are at the heart of finance/security in contemporary politics.
What are the shared cultural histories of imagining the future in finance and security, and
how do they relate? What are the visual and discursive methods of anticipation and
premediation as they are deployed in finance/security today? What role do cultural
practices including fiction, film and video gaming play in imagining actionable futures?
What are the consequences for political decision, responsibility and community of acting
on the premediated future?
Paper topics should aim to address both finance and security and could include, but are
not limited to:
• Future epistemologies and methodologies: speculation, scenario planning, stress
testing, counterfactual analysis, conditional VaR;
• Measurement, calibration, pricing and value of the unknown;
• Security premediation, imagination, fear and disaster ‘myopia’;
• Credibility, plausibility and actionability of potential futures;
• Anticipation and preparedness in the war on terror;
• Premediation, preemption, precaution and crisis;
• Complexity, correlation and resilience;
• Futures semantics in film, fiction, video-gaming, design, architecture.
We invite paper proposals from researchers across the social sciences and humanities.
Abstracts of 200-300 words should be sent to Nina Boy ([log in to unmask]) or Marieke de
Goede ([log in to unmask]) by 22 September 2009. We will notify you shortly
thereafter of the status of your submission. Accommodation and travel for successful
applicants will be partially funded by the Research Council of Norway, so please include
your estimated (economy-class) travel costs. Paper drafts are to be submitted by 22
December 2009. Work in progress is welcome.
Workshop jointly organised by PRIO’s ‘Understanding ‘financial security’ in an age of uncertainty’
project and the ‘9/11 Effect’ research group of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam.
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Dr. Marieke de Goede
Senior Lecturer
Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam
Spuistraat 134, kamer 628
1012VB Amsterdam
The Netherlands
tel: +31 20 525 6178
http://www.datawars.org
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