The Global Studies Association – Eleventh Annual Conference,
July 5th – 7th 2012.
Globalizing cultures and identities: sport, lifestyle, heritage
www.globalstudiesassociation.org/11th-gsa-conference-2012/
The conference will be held at Manchester Metropolitan University – where the GSA was first established in 2000 – in conjunction with the Department of Sociology.
The following will be keynote speakers at the conference.
Professor Richard Guilianotti joined the Sociology Department at Loughborough University in November 2011 from his previous post at Durham University. He is the author of three books, has edited several volumes and published numerous academic journal articles on the way to establishing for himself the reputation of being a leading authority on globalization and sport. Professor Guilianotti is currently taking part in an on-going study for the London Olympics on ‘policing and police-community relations.’ Professor Guilianotti will be guest-editor for an upcoming issue of the British Journal of Sociology.
Professor David Inglis, University of Aberdeen, has written extensively on the topics of culture, globalization, social theory and the sociology of art. His authored books include The Globalization of Food, Culture and Everyday Life and Confronting Culture: Sociological Vistas. Professor Inglis’ current work often centres around the issue of irony and reflexivity within sociology. He is on the editorial board of several leading sociology journals and is a founding editor of the journal Cultural Sociology.
Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester, Sharon McDonald brings a unique focus on cultural heritage and the globalization of heritage to the GSA conference. Professor McDonald has authored three books and several publications as well as having taken part in many events, conferences and research projects. In 2009, Professor McDonald published a work on negotiating Nazi architectural heritage in the context of a broader interest in ’difficult heritage’. She is currently working on a project entitled,Memory
We are also organizing panels led by other leading scholars in this area.
We invite scholars, postgraduates and other interested lay-persons to submit abstracts by March 31st at the latest. We are approaching a publisher with a view to producing at least one reader incorporating the most interesting papers from the conference.
Please send your abstracts to Paul Kennedy: p.kennedy@mmu.ac.uk
Outline of themes. Recent research and theory have expanded our understanding of global practices that increasingly shape the way we conduct our lives, construct our identities and affiliations and pursue our hopes and aspirations. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fields of leisure and the construction of our everyday personas and lifestyles. Here, innumerable fragments of other people’s cultures flow into our lives through the Internet, films, music, art genres, travel and holidays, health and sport practices, heritage experiences, TV, magazines and newspapers, advertising, branding and consumerism, fashion, foods and gastronomic repertoires – among others. Sometimes they empower individuals to seek other worlds and identities. At others, they generate resources with which to construct our preferred life biographies or alter communities. The possibilities not just for personal but also for social transformation resulting from these experiences are endless. Through globalizing cultures, too, some find ways to break free from their original embeddedness within particular ethnic/national boundaries and form global allegiances and lifestyles for which there is no precedent.
In contrast, the circumstances that engender indifference and/or resistance to globalizing cultures are equally valid as themes. Thus, we also welcome papers that explore the limits to, and possibilities for, developing a global consciousness or varieties of cosmopolitanism as outcomes of global cultural and lifestyle experiences and/or which critique concepts in this field. Although the primary emphasis here is on cultural experiences linked to the construction of leisure and lifestyles, we also welcome papers which explore how exposure to globalizing work, religious or political practices are changing people’s identities.
Possible directions and themes: guidelines.
The migration and /or cross fertilization of sport practices, institutions and celebrities across cultural and national boundaries and their wider socio-cultural impact.
The diffusion, role and take-up of globalizing health practices and the mechanisms through which this occurs;
How different kinds of skilled transnational migrants – working in the arts, film, TV, theatre, popular entertainment and music etc – are influenced by and in turn shape the dominant cultural, political and other forms evident in the host society;
How poor economic migrants, who retain strong ties to their societies and cultures of birth, nevertheless forge multiple identities through engagements with migrants from societies different from their own or with members of the host society via participation in leisure activities and lifestyle activities;
The borrowing, mixing and/or hybridization of genres, styles or practices across ethnic/national borders in any field of the arts, film, music, literature, theatre, dance etc – and the origins, vehicles and outcomes of such cultural mobilities;
Becoming or being cosmopolitan through engaging in globalizing leisure or lifestyle practices;
The significance of the heritage and tourism industries asways of encountering the cultural other and of exploring and substantiating past and current identities;
Global or globalizing lifestyles and identities and their possible links to the expression of varying forms of political protest.
Please send your abstracts to Paul Kennedy: p.kennedy@mmu.ac.uk
Further details: http://www.globalstudiesassociation.org/11th-gsa-conference-2012/
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