CULTURAL RESEARCH AND POLITICAL THEORY: NEW INTERSECTIONS

ICA Preconference 22 June 2010 Singapore

Organising division: Philosophy of Communication

Co-sponsoring divisions: Political Communication, Popular Communication, Journalism Studies

Organisers  Nick Couldry, Goldsmiths, University of London + Chair, PhilComm Division

                    Penny O’Donnell, University of Sydney, Journalism Studies

Call for papers

Exciting potential intersections are emerging between research into communications and culture and theoretical work on political norms. Alongside well-known experiments with new forms of public deliberation and debates on the public sphere in the 1990s and 2000s, there has been much new work in political theory that rethinks the reference-points of political practice:

• expanding the range of those who are treated as political actors (Benhabib The Rights of Others; Fraser, ‘Reframing Global Justice’)
• transforming the scales on which political decisions are appropriately taken, and the network of deliberations appropriate to those scales (Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, Fraser, ‘Transnationalizing the Public Sphere’) and in media’s specific role in enabling this (Bohman, Democracy Across Borders; Pauly ‘Media Studies and the Dialogue of Democracy’);
• improving our understanding of what counts as political ‘voice’, what practices sustain it, and the broader ends which voice serves (Norval, Aversive Democracy; Honneth, Disrespect)
• expanding the domain of the political, often in the cultural or aesthetic spheres, as suggested in recent work in Canada on ‘acts of citizenship’ (Isin and Nielsen, Acts of Citizenship).

Meanwhile, researchers in cultural studies and communications have become increasingly interested not only in questions of citizenship and democracy in general, but specifically in the role that popular culture and everyday communications play in helping us imagine, enact and sustain the new forms of practice that political theory proposes, for example:

• work on popular culture and queer citizenship (Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City 1997 ; Warner, Publics and Counter-publics  2001)
• work on ‘voice’ within contexts of development communications (Jo Tacchi and others);
• recent work on the practices of ‘listening’ across political, cultural and artistic fields (see special 2009 issue of journal  Continuum on the Australian ‘Listening Project’), and
• work on fan practices, social networking sites and politics (Jenkins, Convergence Culture).

This preconference aims to bring together researchers and communication practitioners interested in how cultural research can invigorate political theory, and vice versa. Its specific focus is on examining the terms and means of contemporary politics within and beyond the horizon of neoliberalism.

The preconference will be limited to 40 participants, with discussion either in a ‘round-table’ format or through a mixture of plenary and parallel sessions. Participants are invited who are interested in reflecting on the preconference’s themes, whether from the sponsoring divisions or beyond, including participants at the Association for Cultural Studies’ 2010 Crossroads conference in Hong Kong for whom this event is intended as a ‘post-conference’.

Prospective participants should submit an abstract (300 words maximum, with title) to n.couldry@gold.ac.uk and penny.odonnell@usyd.edu.au by the close of 8 November 2009. Decisions on acceptance will be communicated by December 15. The preconference will take place in the conference hotel on the basis of a preconference registration fee to be announced.