Chasing Dragons

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 204

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'British Memory of Colonial Brutality in Kenya and Elsewhere' by Laura Routley at CSI-Newcastle

• 'It's Time to Stand Up For Collective Forms of Higher Education and Contest the Enclosure and Commodification of the University' by Richard Hall at lseimpactblog

• 'Whose Afraid of a Little Literary Theory' by Evan Gottlieb at huffingtonpost.com (via @tmccormick)

• 'How Beyond a Boundary Broke Down the Barriers of Race, Class, and Empire' by Selma James at guardian.co.uk

• 'The Neoliberal Assault on Academia' by Tarak Barkawi at aljazeera.com

Stay safe. And Happy Mother's Day Mum and Grandma!

Photo credit: Seyed Mostafa Zamani

Call for Papers: Popular Culture and World Politics v. 6

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

Call for Papers: Power, Popular Culture and World Politics

Call for Papers

1st European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS)

5-8 June, 2013, Tartu

Power, Popular Culture, and World Politics (Workshop #10)

Deadline for Proposals: 15 December, 2012

I am convening a four day workshop on popular culture and world politics (PCWP) as part of the European International Studies Association's 1st European Workshops in International Studies. The workshop will be held in Tartu, Estonia from 5-8 June 2013.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers in order to explore the state of the art in aesthetic, phenomenological, and representational explorations of contemporary relations of power as well as best practices in teaching these approaches to PCWP.

The workshop particularly seeks papers that:

• critically engage with the questions of whether popular culture matters in world politics, how it might matter, to whom it might matter, and how its myriad influences might be assessed or perceived?
• explore methodological issues in PCWP--including aesthetic and phenomenological approaches to the analysis of artifacts and power dynamics. 
• focus on the political impacts of embodiment, affect, the material design of devices, and the modes through which contemporary media are experienced.
• analyse cultural forms as a way of problematising world politics and its supporting structures.
• share best pedagogical practice in terms of deploying popular culture in the seminar room and/or in teaching appropriate research methods for the field. 

To all of these ends, work from across the arts, humanities, and social sciences is warmly welcome.

The central organisers have stated that a workshop may accept up to 20 participants. With the four day length, this upper limit allows for extended paper presentations beyond conference norms and ensures that a significant amount of time can be dedicated to discussing each paper. From talking with colleagues who have previously attended ECPR workshops that are run along similar lines, the format is said to be very conducive to developing works-in-progress and exploring themes of common research interest.

If you are interested, you can submit a paper proposal here. Please indicate that you are applying for workshop #10 in the drop-down menu on the form.

More information on the EWIS can be found here

The registration fee is €50 (full)/€30(research students).

If you have any questions, please get in touch with me via email

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 175

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Living Under Drones' by the Stanford Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at livingunderdrones.org

• 'In Interview, Yemeni President Acknowledges Approving U.S. Drone Strikes' by Greg Miller at washingtonpost.com

• 'Not Even the White House Knows Drone Body Count' by Noah Shachtman at dangerroom

• 'Free Market Football' by Robert Hariman at nocaptionneeded.com

Enjoy the weekend.

Photo credit: Kevin Dooley

Constructing the Spirit of Cricket

I recently came across this film produced by the British Council in 1950 introducing cricket. I found the narrative fascinating, particularly the way that the rhythms, traditions, and totems of the game are presented as pastoral in origin. There is an emphasis on manners, leisure, and craft in the film. My argument then is that this film provides a performative of the spirit of cricket for an international audience.

Cricket became institutionalized as a national game during the Victorian era. Its development as a sport  was deeply embedded in the dramatic social changes brought about by industrialization, capitalism, and imperialism. From the start, cricket attempted to recall an era that had passed, never-mind if such an era had even ever existed in the form presented by its 19th century conservative proponents. Its mythology was pedagogical. It was geared towards the  transmission of proper social mores, etiquette, and deference to authority. More recent initiatives regarding the spirit of cricket, like that drafted by the MCC, have attempted to reinvigorate these disciplinary qualities that exist in excess of the formal laws of the game. But for me, what this film demonstrates is that the English cricket has always been locked in a process of becoming, performatively asserting itself to hide the absence of any true substantive spirit.

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 139

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'The Crash and Burn Future of Robot Warfare' by Nick Turse at guernicamag.com

• 'Five Day Gratification' by Wright Thompson at cricinfo.com (on the rhythms of test cricket in a world where speed rules)

• 'Lazy Higher Ed Journalism' by Melonie Fullick at insidehighered.com

• 'Models of Representation in Carl Schmitt' by Charles Kollmer at telospress.com

• 'The Politics of the Sweater Vest' by Vanessa Friedman at ft.com

• 'Special Forces Get Social in New Psychological Operation Plan' by Noel Shachtman at dangerroom

Enjoy!

Photo credt: mtkopone

Popular Culture and World Politics v. 5.0

Popular Culture and World Politics v. 5.0

9-11 November, 2012

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Geneva, New York, 14456, USA

What do zombies have to do with world politics? How might the Twilight sagas inform and illuminate our way of understanding world politics and changes in the global political economy? In what ways do videogames, the sales of which now exceed those of music CDs and DVDS combined, shape the identities and political understandings of frequent players? Is visual media destined to replace print as the primary source of news and entertainment in advanced industrial societies and how might this affect the construction of meaning of world affairs? As a means of communication readily available to an ever-expanding number of individuals and groups, how might the internet offer paths of resistance to corporate and Western news and entertainment hegemony? How can tango dancing make the world a more peaceful place?

This conference explores the multiple ways of investigating the intersections of world politics and the production, circulation, content, and consumption of various popular cultural forms. Engaging a range of disciplines and practices in the social sciences, humanities and the arts, the conference encourages participants to question what terms such as ‘global,’ ‘popular,’ and ‘culture’ mean both in isolation and when used in conjunction. It asks in what ways and with what effects popular culture has become a series of sites at which political meaning is made, where political contestation takes place, and where political orthodoxy is reproduced and challenged. The conference provides a highly-focused and interdisciplinary environment in which the increasing numbers of scholars that are engaging in culture-related research can present their work and participate in the kind of extended discussion that larger conferences do not permit. The conference aims to provide an intimate forum at which debates about interdisciplinary methods and theoretical approaches can be developed to facilitate debate across disciplines that share interests in world politics and culture. We welcome proposals for performances, screenings, panels, or individual papers, on any aspect of world politics and popular culture.

Building on the preceding four PCWP conferences, version 5.0 will be held on the campus of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, a small liberal arts institution located in the beautiful Finger Lakes (wine-making) region of western New York state.

Inquiries should be sent to PCWP@hws.edu
The deadline for proposals is 15 July 2012

Many thanks to Kevin Dunn who has graciously agreed to host and organize this year's event!

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 123

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'How Baseball Explains Modern Racism' by David Sirota at inthesetimes.com

• 'Claim of Selectorial Bias in Stuart Meaker's Selection is Red Herring' by David Hopps at thespin [should be retitled 'Claim of Red Herring in Stuart Meaker's Selection Provides Further Evidence of English Cricket's Remarkable Ability to Pretend Race and Class Don't Matter']

• 'George Osborne: From the Bullingdon Club to the Heart of Government' by Elizabeth Day at guardian.co.uk

• 'Students Under Watch: Visa Checks and the Rise of Surveillance in UK Universities' by the Manifesto Club at manifestoclub.com

• 'An Illegal and Counterproductive Assassination' by Yasir Qadhi at nytimes.com

• 'Who Believes Photographs?' by David Campbell at david-campbell.org

• 'Working to Contract' by Stuart Elden at progressivegeographies.com

Have a good weekend.

Photo credit: alisonmseward12

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 106

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'The Libyan Artists Driving Gaddafi to the Wall' by Rory Mulholland at guardian.co.uk

• 'Why We have College' by Louis Menad at newyorker.com

• 'Cricket: A Vehicle for Post-Colonial Pride' by Matt Owen at leftfootforward.org

• 'Civic War and the Normalization of Violence' by Robert Hariman at nocaptionneeded.com

• 'United Nations Report: File-Sharing Disconnections Violate Human Rights' at gamepolitics.com

• 'Conspiracy Theories Abound in American Politics' by Mark Barabak at latimes.com

Enjoy the weekend!

Photo credit: Dan Zen

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 101

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'How Election-Ready Wardrobes Win the Day' by John Allemang at theglobeandmail.com

• 'The Royal Wedding Reminds Us that Hereditary Princple is Alive and Well in the UK' by Bart Cammaerts at lseblog

• 'Interview with Gil Kerlikowske (US Drug Czar)' by Susan Glasser and Joshua E. Keating at foreignpolicy.com

• 'Racism by Any Other Name: Whitewashing Les Bleux' at globalsociology

• Dictator Chic' by David Sirota at salon.com

Happy May Day!

Photo credit: midiman