[Interpretationandmethods] Joint Seminar, Emancipation, Resistance and Violence

[Dvora Yanow]

This seminar could be of interest ....
For more info: http://www.casecollective.org/case-news/read/102
 

CASE III: Emancipation, Resistance, Violence
Call for Papers, Joint Seminar for Younger Scholars: Critical Approaches to Security in Europe III, Emancipation, Resistance and Violence. COST ACTION A24 : The evolving social construction of threats  University of Southern Denmark. 29 November - 1 December 2007 / Department of Political Science University of Southern Denmark, Odense.
  <http://www.casecollective.org/images/102.jpg> 
Seminar theme
Within critical approaches to security, the relation between security and politics has been the topic of much debate since the 1990s. For some, security enters the picture as a way of preserving the status quo, as the negative limit of political imagination as communities gel around an imaginary of enemies or of unease. For others, security might still be one of the political stakes worth struggling for. Increasingly, however, scholars agree that practices of security structure societies and politics in a particular way, creating excluded identities, marginalisation and inequality. It is no surprise therefore that questions of 'resistance', 'emancipation' and 'desecuritisation' have now begun to spur much intellectual debate within security studies. Indeed, as Richard Wyn Jones aptly observed, the issue of emancipation(s) may well be the common concern that unites otherwise different approaches on the critical edge of security studies. 

To further our thinking on questions of emancipation, resistance and violence, the University of Southern Denmark and COST action A24 on 'The Evolving Social Construction of Threats' organises a three day research seminar for younger scholars from 29 November-1 December, 2007. This seminar continues and builds upon the dialogue of critical security scholars at both the Paris COST Doctoral Training School (16-18 June 2005) and the Tampere research seminar on insecurity and the political (29 September-1 October 2006). The seminar will take place at the Department of Political Science, University of Southern Denmark in Odense. 

The main purpose of the research seminar is to reflect on the question of what concepts of 'resistance' and emancipation' might mean in the context of an expanding politicization and administration of political and societal questions on security grounds. How, and in which ways, is it possible to resist to or emancipate from securitised social structures and relations? To a large degree, the answer depends on our understanding of politics and the public stakes. Which principles are worth fighting for? Liberal democracy? Multiculturalism? Cosmopolitanism? Recognition and equality? Responsibility and ethics? Resistance to dominant security practices obviously comes in many guises and the aim of the seminar is to make us think about the ways in which we want to go beyond the securitised status quo, thinking about positive projects of defining 'normal politics'.

At the same time, questions of security, resistance and emancipation are also intimately related to the issue of violence. The seminar will therefore deals with the pertinent and complex question on how to analyse violence that is securitised and framed as criminally, religiously or culturally motivated as a strategy of political resistance, as a strategy that has its roots in exclusion from the political field. Besides speaking to a range of highly relevant empirical issues of anti-globalisation protests, urban riots, hooliganism, looting, terrorism and asymmetrical violence, the question of violence also requires us to think through questions of political agency, emancipation and resistance from novel directions.

Call for papers
The seminar will consist of keynote lectures, paper panels and a round table on emancipation. You are invited to submit a paper that relates to the overall theme of the conference or to critical security studies more generally. Papers can emphasise theoretical and conceptual issues as well as empirically driven analysis or any mix of the two. 

As the COST Action A24 is specifically interested in the social and political construction of insecurity in relation to (counter-)terrorism, the proliferation of WMDs, and the privatization of security organisation we would like to encourage paper givers to include issues relevant to these areas of research. In line with the previous meetings the seminar seeks both to represent the work on security that is done within the c.a.s.e. collective and to invite new people into the collective.

How to apply
A one-page abstract (including e-mail address and institutional affiliation) should be submitted before 27 July as an attachment (word/rtf file) to the following address: 
rvm at sam.sdu.dk. Participants will be notified before 28 September and at that time a draft program will be published. The housing and travel expenses of paper presenters will be funded by COST according to standard rates. Others might need to find additional funding.

Local organiser
Rens van Munster, University of Southern Denmark
T: + 45 65502165
E: rvm at sam.sdu.dk
 
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