From:
Announcement list for BASEES members [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Libora Oates-Indruchova
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2018
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Subject: [BASEES-MEMBERS] CFP:
Creative Families: Gender and Technologies of Everyday Life
Creative
Families: Gender and Technologies of Everyday Life (working title)
In the book series:
Palgrave Studies in Mediating Kinship, Representation, and Difference
Editors
of the collective volume: Jana Mikats, Susanne
Kink-Hampersberger, and Libora Oates-Indruchová; University of Graz, Austria
The collective volume aims to bring together two strands of
current discussions in gender research through the concept of creativity. The
first concerns the changing and newly emergent family forms, the second new
media and technologies. The collection takes the perspective of social
sciences, exploring creative processes as relational and contextual (Gauntlett
2011).
This concept of creativity departs from the traditional, mostly
psychological approaches to creativity as an abstract product or invention of a
singular – usually male – genius (Eisler et al. 2016, Taylor 2015). Social
perspective on creativity includes its place in the public and professional as well
as private spheres, in family life and everyday interactions with others.
It also concerned with the ways individuals employ new technologies to maintain
intimate relationships and how they creatively transform the family and kin
formations themselves.
Social upheavals and technological
advancements that have taken place since the 1970s have reached deeply into the
organization of family structures and day-to-day family practices (Beck-Gernsheim 1998, Gillies 2003, Charles et al. 2008).
Women’s and LGBTQ movements, the collapse of the Eastern bloc, globalization
and migration are just a few of the processes effecting kinship relations and
family patterns. The norm of the heterosexual nuclear family, represented
through a married co-resident couple with their biological children, fades in Europe,
while elsewhere it has never been the ideal in the first place. The non-kin and
also the non-human are included into the understanding of a family unit and a
variety of long-distance or cyber arrangements are becoming increasingly
frequent. In the European context, the everyday life of families is shaped by
complex spatial and temporal involvements of all members, as they alternate
between diverse places of work, education, leisure and living. The
changeable and creative nature of family life and intimacy comes into the
foreground, instead of approaching them as fixed and normative structures
(Widmer and Jallinoja 2008, Dermott and Seymour 2011, Bertone and
Pallotta-Chiarolli 2015, Schadler 2016, Pfeffer 2017). Whether
in stories, homes, care or leisure activities, creativity constitutes a part of
everyday family practices, imaginations and relations.
Technological innovations
and digitalization have penetrated deep into all areas of family life. The use
of smartphones and tablets, apps and social media platforms stimulate creative
organizing of daily family life. Technological change further enables the
creation of new forms of family organization and offers a chance to overcome
traditional constellations of gender. Queer forms of parenthood become
possible, aided by new reproductive technologies.
We welcome original contributions from a range of social science
disciplines, including, but not limited to, sociology, media and communication
studies, cultural studies, political science, legal studies, anthropology,
family research, gender and queer studies. We are looking forward to receiving
chapter proposals that draw on empirical research, as well as theoretical
reflections. The topics may include, but are not limited to:
·
Creative
practices to maintain intimate relationships and connectedness despite the
progressive dissolution of segmented time and space due to globalization,
migration and heterogeneous ways of living. Information technologies (ICT) and
their role of and consequences for family routines, relationships, intimacy and
privacy.
·
The creativity
of becoming and doing kinship and family in different contexts, the involvement
of different actors against the background of the increasing fluidity of gender
identities, diversity of relationships and the permeation of technology.
·
Reproductive
technologies, the formation and maintenance of intimate and family
relationships, such as, queer forms of motherhood, fatherhood and childhood and
the creativity in the modes of their perception and expression.
·
The mantra of
authenticity and creativity, digitalization and the emergence of alternative
forms of working and living as a family. Transformation of the gendered
organization of family life, blurring of the boundary between home and
workplace.
·
Adoption of new
technologies in families from, say, online grocery shopping to self-driving
cars, and their creative potential in achieving work-life balance and
organization of leisure time.
·
Creative
communication strategies developed by family members, employing the new media
(e.g. GPS-tracking app to monitor the whereabouts of teenage children, or
checking homework online).
·
Creative
representations of family life through Web 2.0 (e.g. blogging or YouTube) and
their gendered dimensions.
·
Representations
of these diverse family transformations in culture, the media and political
discourses.
We invite 300-word abstracts for book chapters of around 8,000
words.
Please send the abstract and a 150-biographical note by 31st
March 2018 to:
Key dates and deadlines:
Abstract submission:
31st March 2018
Notification on acceptance of abstracts:
15th May 2018
Full versions of book chapters due:
31st
August 2018
Editors’ feedback
October, 2018
Final versions due
31st January 2019
Expected delivery of the manuscript to the publisher: 30th
April 2019
About the editors:
Jana Mikats is Lecturer at the Department of Sociology of the
University of Graz and PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Vienna.
In her dissertation, she
studies family practices in the context of home-based work.
Susanne Kink-Hampersberger is Lecturer at the Institute of
Professional Development in Education of the University of Graz. She is
completing a PhD on the gendering of disciplinary science cultures at the
University of Graz.
Libora Oates-Indruchová is Professor of Sociology of Gender at
the University of Graz.
About the book series
Series editors: May Friedman, Associate Professor, Ryerson
University, Canada; Silvia Schultermandl, Assistant Professor, University of
Graz, Austria
This book series brings together analyses of familial and kin
relations with emerging and new technologies that allow for the creation,
maintenance and expansion of family. We use the term “family” as a working
truth with a wide range of meanings in an attempt to address the feelings of
family belonging across all aspects of social location: ability, age, race,
ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, body size, social class and
beyond. This book series aims to explore phenomena located at the intersection
of technologies including those that allow for family creation, migration,
communication, reunion and the family as a site of difference. The individual
volumes in this series will offer insightful analyses of the representations of
these phenomena in media, social media, literature, popular culture and
corporeal settings.
References:
Beck-Gernsheim,
Elisabeth (1998). On the way to a post-familial family: From
a community of need to elective affinities. Theory,
Culture & Society 15 (3): 53–70.
Bertone, Chiara, Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli (eds) (2015). Queerying Families of Origin. Milton Park, NY: Routledge.
Charles, Nickie, Charlotte Aul Davies, Chris Harris (2008). Families in Transition: Social change, family
formation and kinship. Bristol:
Policy Press.
Dermott, Esther,
Julie Seymour (2011). Displaying Families: A
new concept for the sociology of family life. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Eisler, Riane,
Gabrielle Donnelly, Alfonso Montuori (2016). Creativity, society, and gender: Contextualizing and
redefining creativity. Interdisciplinary
Journal of Partnership Studies 3 (2): Article 3. Available at:
http://pubs.lib.umn.edu/ijps/vol3/iss2/3
Gauntlett, David
(2011). Making is Connecting: The social
meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0.
London: Polity Press.
Gillies, Val (2003). Family and
Intimate Relationships: A review of the sociological research. Families and Social Capital Research Group: South Bank University.
Pfeffer, Carla
A. (2017). Queering Families: The postmodern
partnerships of cisgender women and transgender men. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Schadler, Cornelia (2016). How to define ever
transforming family configurations? A new materialist approach. Journal of Family Theory and Review 8 (4):
503-514.
Taylor, Stephanie (2015). A new mystique? Working for yourself in the
neoliberal economy. Sociological Review
63: 174-187.
Widmer, Eric¸ Riitta Jallinoja (eds) (2008). Beyond the Nuclear Family: Families in a configurational perspective. Bern: Peter Lang.
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Prof. Libora Oates-Indruchova,
PhD
Professor of Sociology of Gender
University of Graz
Department of Sociology
Universitätsstraße 15/G3
A-8010 Graz
Austria