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The apocalypse has apparently been indefinitely postponed. Therefore, you should have the time to check out these items on the reading roundup:
Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
Phot credit: davitydave
I'm pleased to announce the 2nd year anniversary of the chasingdragons blog. Okay, so it technically took place last week but I'm going to operate under a 'better late than never' policy.
I've written 320 posts since May 2009 and have welcomed somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15,000 unique readers from 132 different countries over that time. A big thank you to everyone who has read, linked, tweeted, facebooked, subscribed, or commented on content posted here. It's greatly appreciated!
But enough with the shameless self-promotion. Given all the talk that the end is nigh--read deranged proclamations from a weirdo who has been wrong before--I thought I would go into the cellar and bring out four old posts that are relevant:
Umm, enjoy them while you can?
Photo credit: Sasha Wolff
This weekend in the reading roundup:
Have a good weekend!
Photo credit: mikebaird
Please see the call for papers for the 4th (!) annual Popular Culture and World Politics Conference at the University of Lapland. Many thanks to Laura and Julian for organizing and hosting what will prove to be a great event!
Popular Culture and World Politics IV (PCWP 4): Call for Papers
23-25 November 2011 at University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Lapland, Finland
We study popular culture to understand the representational practices through which power relations are constructed worldwide, and grasp the aesthetic practices through which the intolerability of power relations are given political expression, and out of which new political subjectivities and peoples are brought into being. Deconstructing the former is integral to the processes of struggle by which we can contribute to the composition of the latter.
The Department of Politics and International Relations (Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lapland) is pleased to invite you to continue this effort at the Popular Culture and World Politics Conference (PCWP 4) to be held in Rovaniemi, Finland, 23-25 November 2011. The conference is the fourth in a groundbreaking series of annual events that began in the University of Bristol in 2008. Since then the series has developed into an exciting annual event which attracts scholars, practitioners and artists from throughout the world and across the disciplines and fields to debate and discuss the world politics of popular culture.
This year, the conference will be held on the ultra-northern verges of Europe, in Lapland, which occupies liminal space in-between popular imaginaries of Western modernity and Arctic wilderness.
The three-day conference will attract papers and presentations from thinkers whose work is inspiring contemporary forays into the relations between politics and culture across the humanities, social sciences and the arts. Invited keynote speakers include Michael J. Shapiro (Hawai'i), Tiziana Terranova (Napoli, Italy), and Scott Wilson (Kingston, UK).
With this Call for Papers we invite participation in all possible forms. In addition to panels and individual papers, we welcome proposals for art exhibitions, screenings, performances or other modes of expression. In so doing we hope to build the event into a rich experience which involves not only talking about popular culture but also experiencing, sensing, feeling, producing and, in most cases, enjoying it.
Suggested themes for panels, papers and other presentations include (but are not limited to):
All other themes will be entertained too.
If you are interested in attending the conference please Click here to submit a brief abstract of your paper, panel proposal (including the names and titles of each presentation) or artistic contribution (max. 450 words). The deadline for abstract submissions is June 30th.
More information about practical issues and forms for advance registration will be added on this website by the end of May.
For any queries about the scientific contents of the conference, please contact:
Julian Reid (julian.reid(at)ulapland.fi) and Laura Junka-Aikio (laura.junka-aikio(at)ulapland.fi)
For any queries about practical issues, please contact:
Rovaniemi-Lapland Congresses
University of Lapland
PO Box 122
96101 Rovaniemi, Finland
Tel. +358 40 484 4462 and +358 40 721 8260
Fax +358 16 362 940
Email: congress@ulapland.fi
Original site can be found here.
Image credit: Eemil Karila and Julija Goyd
Based on recent events, the reading roundup this weekend has an obvious theme:
Some important issues to think about here with a case that makes it easy to circumvent reflection. Enjoy the weekend.
Photo credit: Emily Mills
Yesterday, I blogged some of my initial thoughts in reaction to the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by US Special Forces in Pakistan. With a bit more time to ponder things over--in part because I've been busy with media requests--there are some issues that I think need to be raised:
1. Why has there been an obsession with making predictions over if/when there may be a retaliatory attack? If the chief aims of terrorism are to instill fear and disrupt everyday activities, politicians, the media, and other pundits by engaging in this discussion are doing the job already. Are we really incapable of getting beyond the politics of fear?
2. Similarly, why is the death of Osama Bin Laden being framed in terms of its potential contributions towards a safer and more secure world? While his death may be symbolically important, events of the Arab Spring have unequivocally shown that Bin Laden's political ideology is at best extremely marginal, if not completely irrelevant to contemporary developments. The message is clear: popular protest has trumped religiously-themed violence orchestrated by elites.
3. Will it now become possible to have a reasonable discussion of Al Qaeda that does not degenerate into hyperbole? What Al Qaeda is/was and its capabilities have been contentious issues. Will officials now begin to admit publicly that the group is not a formal organization with a clear chain of command over operations but rather a loose network that, for a time, provided an ideology and a recognized brand that could be utilized by others? This is not to discount the horrible crimes that those operating under the Al Qaeda brand may have committed, aided, and/or abetted, but rather to stop portraying them as omnipotent 'super-villains'. Instead, let's see them for what they were/are: criminals with a very good social media strategy.
4. How will the death of Bin Laden and emerging stories regarding how details of his whereabouts were obtained shape popular understandings of Guantanamo Bay? For me, the potential rehabilitation of Gitmo, torture, and extraordinary rendition are the most worrying developments that arise from this story, not the possibility of future attacks.
5. Will our political imaginations be able to move beyond simplistic notions of specific individual agents being the key to geopolitical transformation? If Western powers want to make the world a safer place, efforts must move towards sorting Israel-Palestine, initiating viable exit strategies for Afghanistan and Iraq, and ending all forms of support for corrupt and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and beyond. These issues are essential to improving global security. Assassinating those we find dangerous and/or politically unpalatable is not.
Photo credit: duncan
It's official. The world's most wanted fugitive and allegedly most dangerous terrorist mastermind has been killed by US Special Forces in Pakistan. As more details come in, a few random thoughts spring to mind:
1. Although roughly 500km off in terms of the ultimate location, how prescient was the forecasting in this piece by Thomas W. Gillespie and John Agnew published in the MIT International Review in 2009?
2. What does it mean when a clandestine special forces operation to capture the most elusive person on the planet is live-tweeted by a local resident?
3. What role will visual confirmation/evidence play in the politics to follow? Will the US government release photos of his body or video of the raid? How will these be received and interpreted around the world?
4. Where will the 9/11 conspiracy nut-jobs go from here?
5. As a part of the representational politics of the war on terror, neo-cons, spooks, and the press were obsessed with the notion that Bin Laden and his followers were living in caves. While I would not expect that mansion residency will now be tarnished in the same way, will anyone be brave enough to note that his choice in hide-out speaks to how Bin Laden was of the same global class as the Western elites he despised (and vice versa)?
6. As seen in Iraq, Libya, and Af-Pak, what are going to be the broader political ramifications of the personalization of advanced war-fighting strategies? What happens when targeted killing becomes both the rationale and modus operandi for war as opposed to being a complimentary tactical practice? These are questions that I will be considering in my forthcoming book project on the politics of assassination...
7. What kind of political advantage will the Democrats be able to take from this event? Will they maximize this advantage in the same way that the Republicans would? For example, can we expect to see a bill proposed for a national day of celebration with riders attached for further health care reform, social spending increases, and a repeal of the Bush tax cuts?
Photo credit: ssoosay
This weekend in the reading roundup:
Happy May Day!
Photo credit: midiman
