Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging
Sunday 16th September 2012 – Wednesday 19th
September 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
Call for Papers:
This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore
the new and prominent place that the idea of
culture has for the construction of identity and
the implications of this for social membership in
contemporary societies. In particular, the project
will assess the context of major world
transformations, for example, new forms of
migration and the massive movements of people
across the globe, as well as the impact of
globalisation on tensions, conflicts and on the
sense of rootedness and belonging. Looking to
encourage innovative trans-disciplinary dialogues,
we warmly welcome papers from all disciplines,
professions and vocations which struggle to
understand what it means for people, the world
over, to forge identities in rapidly changing
national, social and cultural contexts.
Papers, workshops and presentations are invited on
any of the following themes:
1. Challenging Old Concepts of Self and Other
~ Who is Self and who is Other?
~ The new value of social diversity and cultural
multiplicity; breaking with homogeneity and sameness
~ What is the place of difference and alterity, of
normality and normalisation in defining identity
and membership
~ How to account for social membership and
cultural identity?
~ Making sense of transformations and their
effects over culture, identity and membership
~ Othering, excluding, stygmatising
2. Nations, Nationhood and Nationalisms
~ What does it mean, today, to belong to a nation?
~ New migrants, new migratory flows and massive
movements from peripheral to central countries
~ Resurgence of the local and the diminishing
importance of the national
~ Are we living post-national realities?
~ What is the place of cultural claims in today's
forms of social membership?
~ Models of multiculturalism and the contemporary
experience of multiculturalism(s)
~ Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other
forms of placing the responsibility of change on
the Other
3. Institutions, Organizations and Social Movements
~ Evaluating the promises and institutions of
post-national governing
~ Institutions and organisations that do more for
money than for people
~ Political battles over globalization
~ Social movements, new rebellion and alternative
globalizations
~ Trans-cultural connections that escape
institutional and political intentions or control
~ New forms of global exclusion
4. Persons, Personhood and the Inter-Personal
~ De-centering individuals and the making of
persons; thinking and acting with others in mind
and interpersonally
~ Tensions, contradictions and conflicts of
identity formation and social membership
~ New sources and forms of belonging; new
tribalism, localism, parochialism and communitarianism
~ Bonds of care across boundaries of inequality
and exclusion, ideologies and religions, politics
and power, nations and geography
~ Who am I if not the relation with others?
~ Non-recognition as cultural violence
5. Media and Artistic Representations
~ The role of new and old media in the
construction of cultures and identities, of
nations and place
~ Production and reproduction of cultural typing
and stereotyping
~ The contested space of representing culture,
identity and belonging
~ Art, media and how to challenge the rigid and
impenetrable constructions of culture
~ Living, being and belonging through art
~ Life imitating art and fiction
6. Transnational Cultural Interlacing of
Contemporary Life
~ What is shared from cultures? How are cultures
shared? Who has access to the sharing of cultures?
~ Cultural claims and human rights
~ Exploring multiculturalism as a plural
experience: Shouldn't we be talking about
multiculturalisms?
~ Living in a context with the cultural markers of
a different context: Is that transculturalism?
~ Languages, idioms and new emerging forms of
wanting to bridge the 'invisible' divide of cultures
~ Symbols and significations that connect people
to places other than 'their own'
~ Culture, identity and belonging by choice
7. New Concepts, New Forms of Inclusion
~ Recognition and respect without exclusion
~ An ethics for social relations in a new millennium
~ What to do with historically old concepts like
tolerance, acceptance and hospitality?
~ Should not we all be strangers? Should not we
all be foreigners?
~ Is there any use for cosmopolitanism these days?
~ Loving the other within the self; building fluid
boundaries of belonging and being
The 2012 meeting of Multiculturalism, Conflict and
Belonging will run alongside the forth meeting of
our project on Fashion – Exploring Critical Issues
and we anticipate holding sessions in common
between the two projects. We welcome any papers
considering the problems or addressing issues of
Fashion, Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging.
Papers will be considered on any related theme.
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday
16th March 2012. If an abstract is accepted for
the conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012.
300 word abstracts should be submitted to the
Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d)
title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to
10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Multiculturalism
Abstract Submission
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain
from using any special formatting, characters or
emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline).
Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned
for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts
will be included in this publication. We
acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper
proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply
from us in a week you should assume we did not
receive your proposal; it might be lost in
cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an
alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs
Dr S. Ram Vemuri
School of Law and Business, Faculty of Law,
Business and Arts
Charles Darwin University
Darwin NT0909, Australia
Email: Ram.Vemuri@cdu.edu.au
Rob Fisher
Network Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
E-Mail: mcb6@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the Diversity and
Recognition research projects, which in turn
belong to the At the Interface programmes of
Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together
people from different areas and interests to share
ideas and explore discussions which are innovative
and challenging. All papers accepted for and
presented at this conference are eligible for
publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may
be invited to go forward for development into a
themed ISBN hard copy volume.
For further details of the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-
recognition/multiculturalism-conflict-and-belonging/
For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-
recognition/multiculturalism-conflict-and-belonging/call-for-papers/
Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a
not-for-profit network and we are not in a
position to be able to assist with conference
travel or subsistence.
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