(Deadline for the submission of abstracts: 6th December, 2019)
Call for Papers for the Conference "Diversity Affects | Troubling
Institutions"
Annual Conference of the Collaborative Research Center 1171 Affective
Societies: Dynamics of Social Coexistence in Mobile Worlds, Freie
Universität Berlin.
In cooperation with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Schwules
Museum, Berlin.
KEYNOTE BY SARA AHMED
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
8th-9th May, 2020
How and with what affective ramifications is diversity evoked, realized,
or silenced in institutional and organizational settings? Which affects
do processes of diversifying institutions arouse in _all_ actors
involved? And how do these processes trouble or shape particular
affective environments and scripts for everyday interactions, practices,
and performances within and beyond institutional spaces? How are current
debates on, and contestations of, "institutionalizing diversity"
grounded in wider processes of globalization and human mobility,
postcolonial societal realities, and the digital and technological
transformations of everyday institutional and non-institutional life
worlds?
"Diversity management" has become a buzzword of institutional change
today, although important historical precursors of organizational
engagement with anti-discrimination measures and affirmative action
policies have been in place since the 1960s. Simultaneously, the
institutional quest for diversity has triggered highly emotional and
affective reactions from a wide range of heterogenous actors within and
across different sociocultural and institutional domains. On the one
hand, the fostering of diversity in existing institutional settings - in
domains such as culture and art, education and research, government,
healthcare, and the media - has evoked hopes and desires for more
inclusive organizational environments. Furthermore, new actors have
begun to push for the establishment of diverse (infra-)structures in
public and institutional spaces. For organizational cultures aiming to
reflect "true" social realities through practices of hiring and
management, the explicit acknowledgment of categories like age, class,
dis/ability, gender, migratory background, race, religion, and sexuality
holds an emancipatory appeal. On the other hand, however, critics bemoan
that diversity has primarily become an economic asset of neo-liberal and
neo-capitalist management practices and marketing strategies that reify
cultural difference and identity politics at the expense of
acknowledging, and transcending, deep-rooted social inequalities and
injustices. Furthermore, populist discourses and actors have
increasingly brought institutional diversity practices under attack in
their quest to contain cultural multiplicity and policies of inclusion
in an interconnected world.
This conference will consider the multiply intertwined processes of_
institutionalizing diversity_, on the one hand, and their _affective
repercussions within and beyond institutional settings_, on the other.
Striving for "diversity" entails multiple "affective lives," and these
lives trouble numerous institutional routines. The work of diversity can
thus potentially illuminate transformative, liberating or queer
potentials; yet it can also serve to stabilize power relations and
existing hierarchies within and beyond institutional space. With these
potentials and pitfalls in mind, we raise the following questions: How
do institutions convey specific emotional repertoires for the
representation and enhancement of their own cultural and social
diversity - both for internal and external purposes - and how do these
affective registers relate to broader institutional histories of (not)
engaging with diversity and difference? How do such positionings
correspond to specific affective responses and practices among a wide
range of concerned actors within and beyond these institutional spaces?
What kinds of frictions and conflicts are elicited by divergent ways of
dealing with diversity in the same institutional spaces, and how do
affective experiences and articulations of multiple actors expose the
"gaps" in such diversity management? In the context of cultural
production, how do artworks (texts, performances, films etc.) reflect
and enhance specific understandings of diversity in different cultural
domains, and how do these works relate to the controversies and attacks
that the promotion of "diverse cultural publics" currently faces? How
does the mediatization of these processes - as images, sounds, language
etc. - mobilize or disguise certain forms of diversity in institutional
settings, and what kinds of material and aesthetic arrangements are
being created here? How are diverse institutional spaces and their
affective modalities regulated and structured through specific modes of
governance, and how does the notion of "diversity" itself become an
object of affective engagement under these circumstances?
We invite abstract submissions that address these themes and questions
from different disciplinary perspectives in the humanities and social
sciences and with regard to particular institutional settings and the
contexts in which they are embedded. We are open to innovative modes and
alternative formats of presentations (lecture performances, creative
readings, roundtables, fireside chats and curated dialogues etc.). We
also prefer submissions that are based on original research and not yet
published or submitted for publication. Please send your abstract of no
more than 300 words together with a short bio statement (max. 150 words)
as a single pdf file to: [log in to unmask] The deadline
for submitting abstracts is 6th December, 2019. Full- or part-funding
for the travel and accommodation expenses of the selected speakers may
be available upon request. Please indicate when submitting your abstract
if you would like to avail this option.
_Organized by_: Hansjörg Dilger, Juliane Gorke, Omar Kasmani, Dominik
Mattes, Hans Roth, Matthias Warstat (_CRC Affective Societies: Dynamics
of Social Coexistence in Mobile Worlds_ [1])
_Funded by_: German Research Foundation | Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft
https://www.sfb-affective-societies.de/en/veranstaltungen/news/2020-05-08_Jahrestagung_Callforpapers.html
--
Prof. Dr. Hansjörg Dilger
Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Freie Universität Berlin
Twitter: @h_dilger [2]
Links:
------
[1] http://www.sfb-affective-societies.de/en/index.html
[2] https://twitter.com/h_dilger
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