Print

---

Dear All,
I hope that the following call for papers will be of interest. Please pass this on to anyone you might think is interested.
Many thanks,
George Revill
 
 
  Second Call for Papers   

	Lively Temporalities: A Half-Day Workshop for New Researchers  

	ESRC/NERC Interdependence Seminar Series

	Saturday, 1 July 2006: London UK

	

	 

	 "If you knew Time as well as I do," said the Hatter, "you wouldn't talk about wasting it."       (Lewis Carroll)   

	With all the talk about the value of time, the "faster" pace of life, and unprecedented changes in the world around us, Time seems to be a pressing issue. In the last two decades, for instance, it has become the subject of TV documentaries (BBC's About Time), general non-fiction (Griffiths' Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time), art films (Koyaanisqatsi), and new scholarly journals (Time and Society). It has long been a central concern for many theorists (Bergson, Heidegger, Benjamin, Arendt, Kristeva, Bhabha, and others). In social science, landmark texts have appeared in anthropology (Greenhouse's A Moment's Notice: Time Politics across Cultures), geography (May and Thrift's TimeSpace: Geographies of Temporality), and sociology (Adam's Timescapes of Modernity). In the natural sciences, best-sellers have been penned by physicists (Hawking's A Brief History of Time), biologists (Gould's Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle), and climatologists (Alley's Two Mile Time Machine). Hollywood has made millions from time-travel plots (Terminator II, etc), and non-linear narratives have perplexed countless movie-goers (e.g. Memento) and entranced many readers in award-winning novels (e.g. Roy's The God of Small Things). In short, the weft and warp of time are timely topics.

	

	As part of the Interdependence Day project (http://www.interdependenceday.co.uk <http://www.interdependenceday.co.uk> ), we invite postgraduates with research about lively and diverse temporalities in a globalised world to talk about their work in London on 1st July 2006. We are looking for brief, theoretically-informed, empirically-based presentations about the ways that the varied temporalities of nature and various cultural notions of time can change an understanding of interdependence in any particular context of environmental change, community or regional development, or political engagement. The topics might include (but are certainly not limited to) such issues as: 

	*	
		new understandings in earth science about the dynamics of gradual or abrupt change; 
	*	
		varied natural rhythms & constructed time-frames of an environmental project/policy; 
	*	
		cultural technologies of timing and social discipline amidst neo-liberal globalization; 
	*	
		disjunctive or conjunctive temporalities of the past and present in historical recoveries; 
	*	
		methods of response (via subject position & temporalities of surprising relationships); 
	*	
		temporality, visual methods, and knowledge in the humanities or sciences.

	

	The workshop will build on recent work about the dynamic temporalities of nature and diverse social constructions of time, in order to outline fresh views about environmental change, globalization, and sustainable development. Recent scholarship has asked us, for example, to consider constructions and experiences of time (like those of space) as multiple, dynamic, and highly uneven around the world. Compare the months it takes for cocoa beans to be sown, grown, and harvested in the South, for instance, with the seconds it takes for cocoa "futures" to be bought and sold on the stock markets in the North before the plants have even germinated. Or consider the intimate relationships between the past and present that have been variously articulated in postcolonial studies, where the past can be understood as folded into the present, and the present is often thought to be folded back into understandings of the past. Arguably, then, the way we understand interdependence, causation, and responsibility are wholly entwined with various notions and analyses of time: sequence and simultaneity, continuity and change, event and duration, etc. This suggests that discussions about time and its lively temporalities may provide provisional starting points for better understandings of interdependence. 

	

	

	Presentations should be planned to last about five to seven minutes. In lieu of lengthy arguments that try to persuade listeners, participants might consider simply providing a sketch of the location in which their research is situated, a short outline of their approach to the dynamics of timing and temporality in that site, how their approach might effect new understandings of interdependence and responsibility, and what their aspirations are in conducting the research.  The workshop will then provide a venue in which to discuss how new research from a variety of field-sites and disciplines might inform better understandings of time and interdependence, how these understandings might engage a broader or different audience, and what other tactics might support the research-based intervention at work.

	We especially hope to enliven any strategies that bring this fresh thinking to a broader audience by connecting a small, diverse group of emerging scholars with other academics, writers and activists. We are inviting several well known discussants from a range of backgrounds, who can draw from their experience as activists, journalists, and/or scholars in the social and natural sciences to provide feedback during the workshop. We strongly encourage postgraduate students and new researchers from a wide range of organizations and disciplines across the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences to consider participating. Support for travel expenses will be available for postgraduate students in the UK. Similar support may be available for new researchers elsewhere in Europe who wish to present.

	

	If you want to learn more about the workshop, please contact the organizer, Matthew Kurtz, at Open University: [log in to unmask] The workshop will be followed by the UK's first annual Interdependence Day, which consists of a range of afternoon activities at the Royal Geographical Society, including plenary speakers, creative workshops, and doctors surgeries for the planet. Workshop participants will have free entry to the afternoon events. If you are interested in participating in the "Lively Temporalities" workshop, the deadline for an abstract about your proposed presentation is Friday, 26 May 2006. Please send it to Matthew Kurtz using the email address above.