This may of interest to some.
Ross
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----- INVITATION AND CALL FOR PAPERS -----
Postmodern Culture, Global Capitalism,
and Democratic Action
The 1997 Couch-Stone Symposium of the Society for the Study
of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) will be held at the University of
Maryland, College Park from Thursday April 10 through Sunday
April 13, 1997. The conference, like its theme, will be
interdisciplinary and international in character.
--- Symposium Theme ---
Global capitalism and postmodern culture both in their own
ways threaten, or at least challenge, democracy, citizenship, and
civil society. Global capitalism not only shifts the locus of
the formation of decisions far from persons most directly
affected by them, it also undermines the importance of the
institutional context that historically has been central to
citizenship -- the nation state. Likewise, postmodern culture
fragments identity and undermines the integrity of the person.
Yet historically to act as a citizen has meant to act as a whole
moral person in the public sphere. Further, postmodernity
encourages the proliferation of a multiplicity of dissonant
language games apparently at the expense of any lingua franca
that might be the medium of civic discourse.
At the same time, global capitalism often breaks down
autarkic economies and the despotisms and oligarchies that depend
on them, and encourages the formation of larger middle classes
that, since Aristotle, have been thought to be central to
democratic cultures. Likewise, postmodern criticality provides a
method of resistance against political and other totalisms, and
implies a tolerance that could support more pluralistic public
cultures.
Our emphasis will be on the interactions between postmodern
culture and sensibility and the world political economic system,
and their respective relations to democratic practice. There has
been much academic research and public discussion on the global
economy, but we know much less about the emerging culture that
accompanies it. The post-industrial economy is global in scope,
and it tends to commoditize, relativize, and fragment everything
under its aegis, including both polities and personal identities.
Essence and appearance, surface and depth, use value and exchange
value, all come to be experienced on the same (anti)ontological
"surface." Conversely, advanced capitalism can be seen as a
system of signs, in production as well as exchange and
consumption. But what is the exact character of this postmodern
culture? And what are its precise relations to the emerging
global political economy? What (to use modernist terms) are its
origins, nature, and destiny? In a world where many of our
problems are global, we need new forms of democratic action to
address these issues in non-technicist, non-totalitarian ways.
But what will be the shape of such democratic practices -- beyond
both modernism and postmodernism -- and how might they be
encouraged, especially by symbolic interactionists and other
scholars?
--- Conference Format ---
Our format will be alternating plenary sessions and multiple
parallel workshops with ample breaks between them for
intellectual sociability. All accepted papers will be presented
briefly in the workshops, and some will be presented in one of
several plenary sessions. Advanced graduate student papers are also
invited.
--- Location and Further Information ---
The College Park campus is located within easy access of
Washington and Baltimore, and is a short drive from the Dulles,
National, and BWI airports.
For further information, postings, and conversation, check
the conference web site:
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/CSS97/index.html
Further information is also available by mail from:
Richard Harvey Brown
Couch-Stone Symposium
Department of Sociology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-1315
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