Dear fellow list members,
please note the call for papers.
*On the Edge: Genealogies and Futures of Precarity*
Annual Graduate Conference of the Department of Sociology and Social
Anthropology,
Central European University, Budapest
Conference date: June 3-4, 2016
Proposal submission deadline: April 10, 2016
*Keynote speaker confirmed: **Isabell Lorey (European Institute for
Progressive Cultural Policies) *
The Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European
University in Budapest welcomes paper proposals for its annual graduate
conference, taking place June 3-4, 2016. This year’s conference title is*
On the Edge: Genealogies and Futures of Precarity.*
Conference Abstract:
The emergence of ‘precarity’ as a ‘worldwide symptom of neoliberalism’ signals
both a socio-economic condition and an ontological experience under the
global regime of late capitalism. In the current political moment,
precarity has come to designate a shift away from job security, an erosion
of social belonging, and a loss of well-being for a neoliberalized
citizenry, whose daily lives are increasingly marked by economic
instability, uncertain futures, risky livelihoods, and a perceived
dependence on the political will of elite actors. Such precarious shifts,
furthermore, are deeply embedded in an intersectional hierarchization that
signifies some bodies as more precarious and less grievable, with relating
differentiations in social positions of insecurity.
In tracing the conceptual lineage of ‘precarity’ - from Marx and Polanyi to
Butler and Bourdieu - we can explore how the state of precariousness has
been recognized and explored, and question whether it has disrupted or
reinforced the conceptual categories of class. We take a cue from Isabell
Lorey’s work (2015), which employed and refined this genealogy in order to
distinguish between precariousness, precarity, and governmental
precarization as a mode of being, a category of order and, respectively,
modes of governing. We are interested in exploring whether this approach
can help us to understand our current predicaments and move beyond them.
This conference hopes to unravel the analytical and political
potentialities of the term ‘precarity', exploring how uncertainty and
insecurity are increasingly being structurally built into contemporary
modes of being, working, and governing of people. Both reflecting on the
state of socio-economic precarity in the world today as well as extending
that conceptual framework to explore precarity as a mode of being that
pervades affective lifeworlds, this conference aspires to open up new
perspectives for recognizing the problems we now face and galvanizing
social movements to face them more effectively. We are looking for bold new
explorations of the use of ‘precarity’ as a disruptive conceptual
framework, crossing and clarifying bounded political, economic, and social
categories.
We welcome abstracts for proposed paper presentations from advanced Master
students, PhD candidates and junior researchers in the social sciences that
employ the concept of precarity in their research. Some of the topics and
questions we would like to consider, though not exclusively, include:
• precarity as an analytical tool and alternative political
discourse: How does the concept of ‘precarity’ assist us in understanding
current and past conditions of being/living/working/governing?
• ethnographically-grounded case studies of precarity: work
environments; migration experiences and refugee lives; gender, disability
and racial discriminations; contexts of war and violence; etcetera.
• the notion of the ‘precarious city:’ how can we make sense of the
production of urban precarity?
• the relation between precarity and consumption
• social movements and mobilization: how is ‘precarity’ being
mobilized as a banner for contemporary political protest?
• precarity and the university: how do increasingly precarious
conditions within academia impact the prospects for critical scholarship?
• precarious and shifting constructions of identities in narratives
of religion, nationalism, and ethnicity
• the relationality of precarity: how is precarity defined in
relation to other precarious lives? How is it related to stability,
calculability and expectability?
• precarity and modes of governing, dominating and control
• the relationship between precarious labor and precarious life
• precarization and neoliberalization: How can we explain the
relation between precarity and neoliberal notions of freedom, self
management, and entrepreneurship?
Submissions should include a title, an abstract of approximately 300 words
and a short biography including your name, institution and email contact. We
hope to provide accommodation for conference participants in our university
dormitory. Please let us know if you would need to be considered for this
when sending the abstract.
Please send your proposals to [log in to unmask] by April 10, 2016.
We will send the notifications of acceptance by mid to late April. We look
forward to hearing from you.
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