---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 06 Oct 96 13:30:12 -0500
From: "Roderick, Ian" <roderick@pathcom.com>
To: "cfp@english.upenn.edu" <cfp@english.upenn.edu>
Subject: CFP: Space & Culture (new journal)
=09=09=09=09_Space & Culture_
=09=09=09=09=09- the journal
The hallmark of the most exciting developments in contemporary social theor=
y
and research is that issues of space and culture are placed to the fore. Th=
e
distinction of _Space and Culture_ is its grounding in everyday life: the
habitual and the mundane practices that make up the material of contemporar=
y
culture. _Space and Culture_ is a cross-disciplinary journal that fosters
the publication of reflections on a wide range of socio-spatial arenas such
as the home, architecture, urbanism and geopolitics. We encourage the
application of contemporary theoretical debates in cultural studies,
discourse analysis, and post-colonialism to research on sexuality, migrant
and diasporic identities, virtual identities and virtual citizenship. _Spac=
e
and Culture_ is unique in having the explicit mission of bringing cutting-
edge theory to the contexts and sites of social change.
There is a hunger for writing that specifies the now overly-general orderin=
g
concepts by which most journals are edited. There is a demand for conceptua=
l
innovation that problematizes the fixity of the social science categories=
=20
(such as identity, globalization, society, and state). There is a need for
journals which function as meeting places: informative communication media
for researchers struggling to work across discipline borders.
We are not seeking applications of theory but rather work on the frontiers
of theoretical development which nonetheless retains an organic link to
everyday life and its positionality within its culture of origin.
Editors: R. Shields (Lancaster/Carleton)
=09 J. van Loon (Cardiff University of Wales/Tilburg)=20
=09 I. Roderick (Monash University, Melbourne)
Call for Papers on Key Themes
Flow as a new Paradigm - Issue 1:1 New theories, new objects of theory.
Apocalypse - Issue 1:2 The Collapse of Time and Space into a Void of 'The
End'.
Habitable Spaces - Issue 1:3 How are the Cruellest Spaces made inhabitable?
FLOW AS A NEW PARADIGM: the notion of 'flow', most widely known from the
work of Deleuze occurs repeatedly in social theory. Associated with a
paradigm shift within cultural studies and sociology from the analysis of
objects to processes, it is also linked by geographers to the notion of
'nomadism' and the breakdown of the fixity of boundaries and barriers. More
poignantly, it is the lived experience of the global mass migrations and
movements of refugees. In effect, the dominant metaphors for discussions of
sociality have swung from models of affinity to those of viscosity.
APOCALYPSE: an important and unexplored cultural condition of social
spatialisation. Tying in with the current debates about New Medievalism=20
(Brownlee et al. 1991), an issue is planned consisting of original
contributions to thinking the Apocalypse, beyond its rather restricted
conceptions as an element of the history of ideas and religious-
philosophical discourse. The Apocalypse is a space of conceptualisations
that emerge from information, communication, bio-genetic and nuclear
technologies and, as such, it is a principle factor inherent in the very
logic of modernisation. Phenomena such as ecological disasters, epidemics,
urban disorders and guerrilla warfare must be read alongside these
technological transformations. Of central importance in these
conceptualisations is the way in which 'the Apocalypse' signifies a mutual
collapse of time and space into a void indicating 'the end' (for example
dystopia). This returns to cultural practices of everyday life in a
multitude of forms: moral panics, crowd-anxieties, political apathy, hyper-
hedonistic consumption, public angst, lethargic cocooning, cybernetic
insomnia and domesticated terror. Suggested topics will include disorganize=
d
spaces: violence, crime, riots, urban terrorism, ecological disasters as
well as more `everyday' (dis)orders such as fires, accidents, power-cuts an=
d
epidemics.
HABITABLE SPACES: How are the cruelest spaces made inhabitable? Ioan Davies=
'
_Writers in Prison_ and _Assemblage_ - Violence and Space Special Issue are
good starts but only a beginning. This issue reverses the current trend for
regulation and fixity so as to focus on movement and flow (to be treated in
the premier issue). That the social sciences have proved so adept at
describing social spaces as disciplinary should be telling. As the social
scientist unveils and reveals the coercive apparatus and the docility it
demands, this doubled gaze risks becoming a reinvigorated scopophilia. What
the social scientist cannot see is the under-class of practices that do not
contribute to the systematicity she or he seeks to describe. Even the
cruelest of spaces, we argue, be it the prison, classroom, office partition=
,
home, and so on, must be made inhabitable.
Double spaced submissions in Harvard format in three copies and IBM diskett=
e
to the address below:
Future Issues:
=09=A4 Cultural economy=20
=09=A4 Spatial practices of identification=20
=09=A4 Crowds and spatial formations of race=20
=09=A4 Spatial violence and violent spaces=20
=09=A4 Spatial pleasures=20
=09=A4 Viral spaces=20
=09=A4 A global orient
Charter Subscriptions=20
$30Can/$25US/=A315 per year by money order (3 issues per year) to:
'Space & Culture'
Design, Space and Society Research Unit
Cartmel College
University of Lancaster
Lancaster LA1 4YL U.K.
Fax: +44 (01524) 594256
Tel: +44 (01524) 594193