Cultures of Movement: Mobile Subjects, Communities, and Technologies
in the Americas
Panel, paper, and alternative-format presentation submissions are
invited for the "Cultures of Movement: Mobile Subjects, Communities,
and Technologies in the Americas" conference, to be held in Victoria,
British Columbia, Canada, on April 8-10, 2010.
Open to students, scholars, and professionals, the conference is meant
to build new ties amongst all those interested in the theoretical or
applied study of mobilities. The study of mobilities is a young and
constantly evolving interdisciplinary field. The concept of "mobility"
refers to the social, political, historical, cultural, economic,
geographic, communicative, and material dimensions of movement.
Students and scholars of mobilities focus their attention on the
intersecting movements of bodies, objects, capital, and signs across
time-space, paying attention as well as to the way relations between
mobility and immobility constitute new networks and patterns of social
life. The multiple forms of mobility, or mobilities, are often taken
to include-amongst others-subjects such as: transportation; travel and
tourism; migration; transnational flows of people, objects,
information, and capital; mobile communications; and social networks
and meetings. While the conference is open to all themes pertinent to
the study of mobilities from a social and cultural
perspective-irrespective of the geographical site of empirical or
theoretical attention-the main focus of the conference will be on the
experience, practice, social organization, and cultural significance
of forms of mobility in North, Central, and South America.
Whereas in Europe the new mobilities paradigm has taken a strong hold
in academic units, professional research networks, and recognized
publication outlets, the study of mobilities is still in its infancy
in the Americas. In contrast, mobility is very much part of the core
of the social imaginary, geo-politics, and cultural life of the
Americas. Indeed, to be "on the move" is amongst the most
quintessential characteristics of what it means to be a citizen of the
Americas. Furthermore, the Americas are home to many, distinct mobile
cultures and practices: from indigenous cultures rooted in traditional
meanings of home to the historical institutionalization of colonial
and postcolonial trade routes and forced relocations, from
controversial experiments in free transnational trade, to the politics
and experience of migration and Diaspora, from the widespread
diffusion of portable communication technologies, to the mobilization
of surveillance systems, and from the leisure mobilities of tourism,
to the social and cultural significance of transportation and movement
in daily life.
For more information see here: http://tinyurl.com/l6k97s
<http://tinyurl.com/l6k97s>
