CFP: Insecurities in Social and Political Thought (grad) (12/28/01; 3/22/02-3/24/02)

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Date: Sun Dec 02 2001 - 13:04:51 EST

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    STRATEGIES OF CRITIQUE XVI
    (IN)SECURITIES

    A GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE
    MARCH 22-24, 2002

    The graduate programme in Social and Political Thought at York
    University (Toronto) invites papers and art for its annual graduate student
    conference. This year’s conference is organized around the theme of:

    *********************

    (In)Securities

    Like the global itself, the term ‘security’ has come to operate at almost
    every possible level of social life. Perhaps to an unprecedented degree,
    the disjunctions and gaps between multifarious forms and levels of
    human ‘security’ are welded together under the blanket term. This term
    encompasses, among others: the individual subject (alienated, paranoid,
    identity-threatened), social movements (activism, migration, work), and
    the insecure associations of ‘free-democratic’ states in the face of
    perceived enemies. Can the contemporary obsession with security ever
    really be satisfied? What means will be employed in pursuit of this goal?
    How can we speak and act in security towards a democratic politics, or
    beyond it?

    Possible themes could include:

    Securities – political economy and capital investments and movements at
    the beginning of the twenty-first century (the mobility of capital, the
    ‘dot-com bubble’, computerization) and their relation to the problems of
    security in a wider sense.

    Familiar (in)securities – the family and individual subject in global-local
    contexts.

    (In)secure knowledge – academic and other forms of knowledge in an
    age characterized by increasing specialization and commodification.

    Security forces – private security, automated security, millitarization of
    policing, surveillance, detention, and punishment.

    Sexual (in)securities – gender identity, queer theory, and contested
    bodies.

    Securing sites – property, territory, city planning, architecture, institutions,
    and housing.

    (In)secure movements – activism and political protest as criminal activity.

    (In)secure borders – culture, race, ethnicity, nationality, refugees, and
    immigration in an age of hypermobility and immobility.

    Criticizing Security

    *********************

    Please submit a 250 word abstract by December 28th, 2001. Applicants
    will be notified by February 1st, 2002. Submissions, or questions, should
    be sent to strategies2002@hotmail.com, or mailed to Alex Lefebvre, 337
    Clinton Street, Toronto, M6G 2Y7.

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                          CFP@english.upenn.edu
                           Full Information at
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