Popular Culture and World Politics Conference v. 6
Pirating the Popular
Stockholm University, September 13-14, 2013
Call for Papers
Abstracts should be submitted to
abstractspcwp@statsvet.su.se.
Please indicate in the subject box in your email message
"Abstract for PWPC".
This will ensure proper handling of your abstract.
Keynote speeches by
Siva Vaidhyanathan, Robertson Family Professor
University of Virginia
and
Elisa Kreisinger, well-known activist and artist
Conference deadlines
• Suggestions for panels and performances – May 1, 2013
• Paper abstracts – June 1, 2013
Please note that there will be a modest conference fee.
More information later.
The study of world politics and popular culture is now an
established area of interest for many disciplines in the
social sciences, humanities and the arts. Popular culture
relates to contemporary politics in numerous ways: It can
offer expression that soothes and humours the soul. It can
satirize and play off cultural resonance to resist powerful or
repressive forces. And it can stimulate political or
community engagement, as demonstrated clearly in the role
that music and performative satire played in the Arab
Uprisings and in the Occupy activities around the world.
This conference addresses the multiple ways in which popular
culture engages with world affairs. It takes as its starting
point the observation that we live in an age of interregnum -
a time where the old institutions and old rules no longer
function sufficiently and new ones have not yet taken their
place.
Ours is an age where processes of globalisation are
contributing to the ‘divorce’ of politics from power,
resulting in what Zygmunt Bauman identifies as a
‘liquid modernity’ of endemic uncertainty.’ This
uncertainty about authority and interpretation -
compounded by ubiquitous connectivity and audio-visual media -
gives rise to power struggles, problematizes the ability to
judge relationships between cause and effect, provides new
opportunities for political engagement and changes the
foundations on which authority rests.
Hosting this conference in Stockholm seems particularly
timely given Sweden’s various, if not contradictory,
interventions in the ambiguous world of popular culture:
from the foundation of The Pirate Bay to the Wikileaks case,
from a culture of ‘free viewing’ to Spotify’s corporate
entrepreneurialism, from strongholds in Marxist media theory
to Facebook’s Swedish server farms, and many more.
The general theme Pirating the Popular covers a broad range
of practices concerning the complex, dubious and dynamic
nature of popular culture in world politics. We welcome
proposals for papers, panels, performances and screenings
addressing the many different aspects of world politics and
popular culture that are evoked by the metaphor of piracy.
Themes for papers and panels could include:
- The politics of consumerism and commercial exploitation
- Labour policies and regulation in popular culture industries
- The role of popular culture in protest movements and ‘non-movements’
- The militarization of popular culture (militainment)
- The role of popular culture in nation-branding
- Surveillance and the securitization of the digital landscape
- Popular culture and the politics of citizenship
- The role of popular culture in the MENA region before, during and after the Arab spring
- Cultural globalisation: mediated control and resistance
- Illegal trafficking or migrating media?
- Transnational media witnessing
- Transnational news and popular culture
- The politics of local and regional popular cultures
- Music and politics
- Visual culture and globalisation
- Methodological approaches to popular culture and world politics
- Popular culture and political scandals
Conference conveners:
Michele Micheletti (Lars Hierta Chair of Political Science)
michele.micheletti@statsvet.su.se
Kristina Riegert (Professor of Media and Communication
Studies), kristina.maj.riegert@ims.su.se
The official conference website can be found here
Photo credit: Adobe of Chaos
