Dear all,
This is a reminder that we are approaching the deadline for the call for abstracts for an AAA session on the popular aesthetics of non-state sovereignty. Please contact the organizers directly if you are interested.
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Session at the AAA Annual Meeting
Washington DC, Nov. 29-Dec. 3, 2017
The popular aesthetics of non-state sovereignty
In legitimizing their power over territories and populations, non-state sovereigns – from drug traffickers and paramilitary organizations to certain religious groups – rely on a range of strategies to produce consent. Most research has focused on their use of violence and the provision of material goods and services. Less attention has been paid to the role of the imagination and of popular aesthetics in endowing such “social sovereigns” with authority. However, a focus on popular culture and specifically on music, stylized practices, and visual images can help us understand how these figures develop and maintain strong loyalty in and beyond their direct spaces of dominance. In this panel, we propose a further engagement with the role of popular culture in hedonopolitics, exploring how power works through pleasure as well as through fear (Kivland 2014). Drawing, amongst others, on the work of Jacques Rancière (2006), we explore the political "work" that popular aesthetics does on the body, utilizing his concept of the "distribution of the sensible" to indicate the ways in which art organizes what is visible, audible, conceivable, and speakable.
Linking aesthetics, politics, the body, and the built environment, this panel will examine the emotional and ethical work that texts, sounds, performative practices, and visual images do in specific material contexts. We invite papers that explore the aesthetic dimensions of popular culture and how they are related to power regimes. What role do the visual, aural and material elements of popular culture perform in the legitimization and de-legitimization of power actors? What can a focus on popular culture teach us about the processes through which non-state actors gain authority and legitimacy? How could the investigation of the politics of aesthetics strengthen our analysis of urban conflicts? More broadly, we are interested in understanding the sensorial aspects of political community formation and centering aesthetics and non-human agents in order to strengthen our analyses of social processes.
This session invites contributions that combine ethnographic and theoretical explorations of popular culture, the aesthetics, and non-state sovereignty. Please email your abstract of no more than 250 words, accompanied by a brief bionote, to the organizers:
- Martijn Oosterbaan, Utrecht University [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
- Sterre Gilsing, Utrecht University [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
- Tracian Meikle, University of Amsterdam [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
The deadline for abstract submission is March 25. For more information about the AAA meeting see http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/.
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