Lives & Letters Mailing: April & May 2019
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to another Lives & Letters Mailing. This month’s mailing contains information about:
1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
– From the Blog: Mozart’s letters, the I-perspective, the letters & Elias’s analysis
– From the Blog: The ‘I-perspective’, Mozart’s letters and Elias’s argument
– From the Blog: Mozart has just died!
– From the Blog: The now/past of the mind
– From the Blog: Albie Sachs on whiteness
2. Writing Home: Literatures of Place & Belonging, c.1300-1600 (5/28/2019; 7/25-26/2019) Liverpool UK
3. CFA: The 3rd Conference of the South African Society for Critical Theory
4. Introducing Stuart Hall’s Archive
5. Call for papers: Conference on the future of social theory
6. Call for Papers – Race, Difference and Power: Recursions of Coloniality in Work and Organization
7. DFP Critical Histories of Aging and Later Life. Radical History Review 139 Abstract Deadline 6/1/2019
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1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
There are five new items of project news we would like to share, a number of them concerned with Mozart’s letters:
From the Blog: Mozart’s letters, the I-perspective, the letters & Elias’s analysis
This blog examines Elias’s use of Mozart family letters in his book on ‘the sociology of genius’. Although he had access to around 600 of them, there is little investigation of the interplay of the social, the interpersonal and the artistic that Elias identifies as analytically crucial. What is discussed is not an ‘I-perspective’, nor even a collective Mozart circle one, but a theoretical argument. To read more, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/the-late-mozarts-letters/
From the Blog: The ‘I-perspective’, Mozart’s letters and Elias’s argument
This blog focuses on discussing the places in Elias’s book on Mozart where he provides actual quotations from letters, rather than just referencing information. A total of 62 letters are referenced, and there are quotations from 27 of them. What conclusions might be drawn in relation to the idea of an I-perspective? To read more, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/the-i-perspective-mozarts-letters-and-eliass-argument/
From the Blog: Mozart has just died!
Having completed reading all of Mozart’s family letters, there are five substantive points to make. For the details, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/mozart-has-just-died/
From the Blog: The now/past of the mind
Thinking of many sets of letters, they were all at the forefront of my mind concerning what to read in what order and then write about in what order and what these different correspondences meant in their times. This is the now/past, that obliging aspect of the mind’s functioning which enables times and places long-gone to become part of the present of how we think and read and consider. For the now/past, go to: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/the-now-past-of-the-mind/
From the Blog: Albie Sachs on whiteness
The museum in Freedom Park in Pretoria is an under-visited place on the heritage and tourist trail. The blog concerns a quotation in one of its displays from Albie Sachs, targeted by National government security forces, although white, for his anti-apartheid politics, about the privilege of whiteness and that it was bestowed on him in spite of his rejection of it. To read more, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/albie-sachs-on-whiteness/
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2. Writing Home: Literatures of Place & Belonging, c.1300-1600 (5/28/2019; 7/25-26/2019) Liverpool UK
Writing Home: Literatures of Place & Belonging, c.1300-1600
25th-26th July 2019, University of Liverpool
Confirmed Keynote: Professor Wendy Scase
What makes a home? Is it our four walls and families, neighbours and neighbourhoods? Our parishes, towns, cities, and countries? Our values, cultural practices, and experiences? Or is home where we have come from, where we are, and maybe, hopefully, where we are going? Join us in July at the University of Liverpool for a two-day conference exploring how ‘home’ took shape in the literatures of the late medieval and early modern periods. We will explore the physical and conceptual parameters of home, and how these parameters changed over time in response to religious, political, and economic upheaval, civil unrest, and human and cultural migration.
Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Literary representations of domesticity and the household.
- The relationship between smaller and larger units of home & belonging (e.g. the household and the parish; the parish and the city; the city and the country, etc.).
- How the physical and/or conceptual parameters of home shifted in translations & redactions.
- Migrant experiences & home-building practices.
- Writing home abroad or in exile.
- Sensing home: somatic experiences of belonging.
- Reading homes in miscellanies (patronage, organising principles, signs of readership and manuscript culture).
- The ‘beginnings’ of home in origin narratives, foundation myths, and genealogies.
- Legendaria and folktales: literatures that enrich the history of home.
- Performing home on stage and at court.
We welcome abstracts for 20-minute papers related to the themes outlined above. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short biography of around 100 words to homeuol@liverpool.ac.uk. The deadline for submissions is Tuesday 28th May 2019.
Thanks to the generous support of the Society of Renaissance Studies and the Liverpool Centre of Medieval and Renaissance studies, we have a limited number of £80 bursaries available for PGR/ECR delegates to contribute to travel and accommodation costs. If you wish to be considered for a bursary, please put a note in your bio. Applicants must not have access to institutional funding.
We are also delighted to confirm the first of our keynote speakers. Professor Wendy Scase, the Geoffrey Shepherd Professor of the University of Birmingham, will be speaking about ‘Belonging, Scribal Practice, and Graphic Culture’.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Craig Howes, List Manager
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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3. CFA: The 3rd Conference of the South African Society for Critical Theory
Call for Abstracts
Contested Identities: Critical Conceptualisations of the Human
The South African Society for Critical Theory (SASCT) invites abstract submissions of up to 500 words for its 3rd Annual Conference which will take place at the Howard College Campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban, South Africa), from the 22nd to the 23rd of November 2019.
SASCT invites papers which address the vexed notion of the “human” in the contemporary age. As part of such considerations, this conference welcomes papers that consider the possibilities and pitfalls of identity theory in relation to Critical Theory. What analytic and conceptual resources does identity politics offer Critical Theory? What might a critical analysis of identity politics reveal? Do identity politics serve as an instance of a process whereby we come to view our own individuality in terms of pre-constructed cultural categories? What stance should Critical Theory adopt towards identity politics?
This conference also welcomes papers that explore the concept of “the human” and “human nature” from a critical perspective. What, for instance, might we construe as “essential” human characteristics? Is critical reason to be understood as such a characteristic? Is the question of the “human ” even meaningful any longer? Would the attempt to define the “human” in its present historico-social conditions enable us to map its future trajectory? Would the attempt to formulate such a definition facilitate liberation or merely serve a repressive ideological function? If the “human” or “human nature” are no longer meaningful categories, then what is it that Critical Theory aims to liberate? Has the technological mediation of existence altered our understanding of humanity? In short, what is the future of the “human”?
The conference welcomes approaches from all aspects of Critical Theory, broadly construed. In particular, the conference welcomes papers that address issues relating to: African Critical Theory, Digital Culture, the intersections between Critical Theory of European origin (Frankfurt School, Foucault, etc.), Black Existentialism, and Africana Critical Theory as well as contributions on any and all aspects of Critical Theory, e.g. the 3 generations of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Postcolonial Theory, De-colonial Theory, Critical Feminism, Critical Film Studies, Critical Race Theory, Critical Theory of Technology, Critical Legal Studies, Post-structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Critical Hermeneutics, Liberation Theory, Critical Pedagogy, Critical Theology, Critical Anthropology, etc.
The Conference organisers would also appreciate papers that address thinkers whose work lies outside the “canon” of Critical Theory, but whose work can extend current research in Critical Theory or whose work in itself embodies alternative forms of Critical Theory. Whilst the organisers encourage contributions that address the conference theme, the theme itself should be viewed as merely suggestive.
Please submit abstracts to sascrit@gmail.com by the 7th September 2019. Acceptance letters will be sent by the 21st of September at the latest. Should you have queries regarding any aspect of the conference then please do not hesitate to contact the conference organising committee.
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4. Introducing Stuart Hall’s Archive
Stuart Hall (1932–2014) was a foundational figure in the British New Left. A Jamaican-born British intellectual and political activist, Hall is famous for his tenure as Director of the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, where he pioneered new approaches to studying the interweaving threads of culture, politics, race, and ethnicity.
Hall’s archive recently arrived at the University of Birmingham’s Cadbury Research Library, where it is accessible for study. At this lunch-time seminar, archivist Dr Helen Fisher and historian Dr Rob Waters will introduce some of the highlights of the archive, talking about how its holdings relate to the history of political activism and black intellectual work in Birmingham.
All welcome. Please book as places are limited to 25.
Directions: The Cadbury Research Library is located on the Lower Ground Floor of the Muirhead Tower, R21 on the campus map
The Migrant Festival: This event is held in association with IKON, The Migrant Festival, 30 May – 2 June 2019
Location: Cadbury Research Library – Chamberlain Seminar Room
Date: Thursday 30th May 2019 (13:00-14:00)
Contact: Email special-collections@bham.ac.uk or call +44 (0)121 414 5839 to book
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5. Call for papers: Conference on the future of social theory
BSA Theory Conference: The Future of Social Theory CfP
6th September 2019
BSA Meeting Room, London
It is an interesting time for social theory. Internally, advances in fields such as the biosocial, actor-network and intersectional approaches and the revival of relational sociology have offered new insights. Meanwhile, post/decolonial critiques have encouraged us to look again at our canon and inspirations. These challenges have stretched the sociological imagination to include a broader range of theorists and theoretical perspectives, in addition to those coming from Bourdieusian, feminist, critical realist and poststructuralist positions, which continue to be especially significant in British sociology. Alongside this, theorists have responded to the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2008 and subsequent rise in right-wing populism with an increased focus on questions of class, power and politics. But social theorists in Britain write in an environment where funding for theoretical work is significantly decreasing, while the space needed to think is squeezed by the competing demands of academic life. External conditions, therefore, also pose numerous challenges for them.
This one-day conference seeks to explore the position of social theory today by seeking papers which answer the following question: what is, or should be, the future of social theory? We welcome papers which explore this question from any perspective within social theory.
Keynote speaker: Dr Monika Krause (London School of Economics)
Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by Monday 1st June via the BSA website: https://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/key-bsa-events/bsa-theory-conference-the-future-of-social-theory/
Lunch, along with tea and coffee, will be provided on the day. Any questions about the conference can be directed to the BSA Theory study group convenors, Matt Dawson (matt.dawson@glasgow.ac.uk), Charlie Masquelier (C.Masquelier@exeter.ac.uk) and Susie Scott (s.scott@sussex.ac.uk).
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6. Call for Papers – Race, Difference and Power: Recursions of Coloniality in Work and Organization
Gender, Work and Organization journal
Special Section Call for Papers
Race, Difference, and Power: Recursions of Coloniality in Work and Organization
As recent events and political developments around the world have shown, race in its various incarnations is still one of the key organizing principles for action. Why then do we persistently fail to think about race in organizations and the study of them? And, perhaps most urgently, what does this mean for those whose life and work always already evidences the expectedness of racial power?
This special section seeks to draw attention to questions of difference and power as they emerge within the context of work and organizations. Scholarship on the subject of racial difference, in particular, has sought to engage with how power relations have historically been constructed and deployed in order to produce the ‘diverse’, racial Other (Ahmed, 2007; Ahonen et al., 2017). Yet, within the context of studies of work and organisation, there has been a tendency to elide such discussions of power and the ways in which notions of equality, diversity and inclusion become appropriated to objectify difference (Ahonen et al 2014; Tienari and Ahonen 2016). As such, discussions of difference seem to rely on its representational aspects – with a focus on the constructing, cataloguing and critiquing of organizational differences. Despite such engagements, fifteen years after Cox and Nkomo (1990) first wrote about the silence on race in management and organization studies, Proudford and Nkomo (2006:335) made the sad observation that ‘we are left where we started: we still know that differences exist, but little about the mechanisms that perpetuate and sustain those differences and, consequently, how to eradicate the negative consequences of racial differences in organizations’. More than ten years later, we are not much further.
While the field of critical diversity studies has provided valuable insights into the historico-political underpinnings of the production and maintenance of organizational inequalities (Knights and Omanović, 2016; Nkomo and Al Ariss, 2014) and to some extent the effects of colonial forms of knowledge (Ahonen and Tienari, 2015), we argue that conceptualizations of organizational difference in writings on diversity have so far insufficiently provided recognition of the force of coloniality. The analytic of coloniality reveals how power is perpetuated through a ‘cognitive model’ (Quijano 2000: 552) that naturalizes difference as essential and hence unresolvable. In this articulation, difference is, first and foremost, an onto-epistemic rather than merely a structural effect. The analytic of coloniality thus reveals how difference, as objectified in political categories such as race, sex and gender, legitimizes relations of domination and subjugation that follow from it. While engagements with coloniality are most often limited to discussions of racial difference, it is undoubtedly pertinent to comprehending the arrangements of sexual and gender difference. Indeed, critical engagements with coloniality help comprehend how the architecture of each of these categories renders them, and their material effects, analytically inseparable (cf. Lugones, 2008).
But how, then, do we account for the mechanisms of power in the production and effects of difference without reductive recourse to representation, that is, without approaching difference as a matter of ‘body-count’? There is, as Swan (2016: 371) points out, still a lack of ‘philosophizing of difference’ in organizational contexts.
The veiling of the logic of coloniality in the contemporary global ‘postcolonial’/‘multicultural’ moment renders difference a social artefact – one that can be known and managed – such that unequal relations can be ‘fixed’. Yet, the imperative of ‘measurement, quantification, externalization (or objectification) of what is knowable with respect to the knower [seeks] to control the relations among people and nature and among them with respect to it, in particular the property in means of production’ (Quijano cited in Lugones 2008: 4). In other words, taxonomic approaches to difference restage the coloniality of power. Moreover, as Limki (2018: 337) notes, ‘relational and structural changes [to relations of domination and subjugation] cannot offer an adequate solution to this problem unless we recognize why such relationships become legitimized in the first place’.
In this special section we seek to address these critiques by drawing upon diverse scholarly traditions including the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, Black feminist theory, postcolonial studies, subaltern studies, critical anthropology, and critical race theory to consider how race and coloniality as a persistent and organizing fact of life. We invite theoretical and empirical papers addressing, but not limited to, such themes as:
- Conceptualizing race and coloniality in work and organization studies
- De-naturalizing and de-ontologizing race and gender as categories of difference
- Entangled architectures of race and gender
- Operations of coloniality in the global south
- Race and coloniality in the global distribution of work
- The role of coloniality in the emergence of new forms of work
- Lived experiences of racial difference in organizations
- Material, psychic and epistemic violence of racial difference
- Conceptual and ethical limits of representation and ‘body-counts’
- Critical race theory and postcolonial critique in work and organization studies
We welcome both conceptual and empirical contributions to the special section. Please feel free to contact the guest editors should you have any questions about submitting.
Pasi Ahonen (pasi.ahonen@essex.ac.uk)
Mrinalini Greedharry (mgreedharry@laurentian.ca)
Marjana Johansson (marjana.johansson@glasgow.ac.uk)
Jennifer Johnson (jljohnson@laurentian.ca)
rashné limki (rlimki@ed.ac.uk)
Submission guidelines
Submit your manuscript online at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gwo. The manuscript should be submitted in 3 separate files: title page; main text file; figures. Please note that as all submissions will be subject to double-blind peer review, the main text file should not include any information that might identify the authors.
Further details about the submission procedure and manuscript types can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/14680432/homepage/forauthors.html
Please direct any questions to the guest editors, as above.
The deadline for submissions is October 1st, 2019.
References
Ahmed, S. (2007). The language of diversity. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(2): 235-256.
Ahonen, P, Greedharry, M. & Tienari, J (2017) Thinking Diversity and Its Management Through Postcolonial Feminism. A paper presented at Diverse organizing /organizational diversity – Methodological questions and activist practices workshop. Copenhagen Business School, 2-3 May 2017.
Ahonen, P. and Tienari, J. (2015) Ethico-politics of diversity and its production. In: Pullen, A. and Rhodes, C. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Politics and Organization. London: Routledge. 271-287.
Ahonen, P., Tienari, J., Meriläinen, S., & Pullen, A. (2014). Hidden contexts and invisible power relations: A Foucauldian reading of diversity management. Human Relations, 67(3): 263-286.
Cox, T. and Nkomo, S. (1990) Invisible men and women: A status report on race as a variable in organization behavior research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 11:419–31.
Knights, D. and Omanović, V. (2016) (Mis)managing diversity: exploring the dangers of diversity management orthodoxy. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 35(1): 5-16.
limki, r. (2018) On the coloniality of work: Commercial surrogacy in India. Gender, Work & Organization, 25(4): 327-342.
Lugones, M. (2008) The Coloniality of Gender. Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise, 2(Spring): 1-17.
Nkomo, S. (1992) The emperor has no clothes: Rewriting ‘race’ in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 17: 487–513.
Nkomo, S.M. and Al Ariss, A. (2014) The historical origins of ethnic (white) privilege in US organizations. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 29(4): 389-404.
Proudford, K. and Nkomo, S. (2006) Race and ethnicity in organizations. Handbook of Workplace Diversity. SAGE Publications.
Quijano, A. (2000) ‘Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America’,Neplanta: Views from South, 1(3): 533-580.
Swan, E. (2016) Diversity studies: The contribution of black philosophers. In Mir, R., Willmott, H. and Greenwood, M. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies. Abingdon: Routledge. 370-378.
Tienari, J. and Ahonen, P. (2016) Caveman Meritocracy: Misrepresenting Women Managers Online. In: Elliott, C., and Stead, V., Mavin, S. and
Williams, J. (eds) Gender, media, and organization: Challenging mis(s)representations of women leaders and managers. Women and Leadership. Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, NC. 133-151.
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7. DFP Critical Histories of Aging and Later Life. Radical History Review 139 Abstract Deadline 6/1/2019
Critical Histories of Aging and Later Life
Radical History Review
Issue number 139
Abstract Deadline: June 1, 2019
Issue editors: Amanda Ciafone, Devin McGeehan Muchmore, and David Serlin
In 2017, the United Nations estimated that the share of the world’s population over the age of sixty will have doubled between 2000 and 2050. Politicians, corporate executives, and popular commentators warn of a “crisis” produced by population aging, variously invoking concerns about slowed economic development in the global south, strained pensions and welfare systems, a shrinking labor force, and a care deficit. Concomitantly, academic gerontologists have produced a paradigm of “active” and “successful” aging, conceiving of a physically “healthy,” socially enriched, and economically productive old age that is both a product of, and a solution to, human longevity. These narratives of a “New Old Age” rely upon an overly tidy and teleological account of aging’s history, decrying a simple vision of the bad old days of prejudice and dependency.
The Radical History Review seeks to foster critical perspectives on the histories and politics related to these contemporary understandings of aging and what has been called “later life.” We need radical histories that bring age and aging to the center of analysis and probe the deep past to elucidate antecedents, critiques, and alternative frameworks for making sense of both the “aging crisis” and possibility for thinking about aging and longevity in broader historical perspective. Old age has long bubbled beneath the surface in radical history scholarship: in articulations of kinship and political authority; within transformations of intergenerational relationships wrought by colonialism, industrialization and long histories of migration and settlement; within social welfare and capitalist, socialist, and post/colonial state building; within the ongoing struggles of caring labor and the biopolitical management of life itself; and within the brutal exclusions from old age and infirmity through global systems of inequality and deprivation.
We invite contributions from all time periods and geographies that investigate aging and later life and put them in historical context: as axes for multiscalar and intersectional identities or inequalities, as contested objects of knowledge and governance, as community formations, and sites of cultural and political struggle. We are especially interested in submissions that continue to push the boundaries of aging scholarship beyond Europe, East Asia, and North America, and/or explore histories before the nineteenth century. Such critical approaches would help challenge the narrowly-defined perspectives of the “longevity revolution” among contemporary policy makers and biomedical scientists.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to) histories of:
- Pre-modern and pre-industrial notions of aging, productivity, community, and selfhood
- Labor, consumption, and the lifecycle, wealth and poverty, and political economies of aging
- Aging through the lens of disability history and critical disability studies
- Biopolitics of populations, state formation, and welfare
- Ageism as a racial and colonial project, slow death, and necropolitics
- Death and dying, mourning, and widowhood
- Aging and heteronormativity, gender hierarchy, and eroticism in later life
- Elder activism and historical agency
- Decolonizing aging studies
- Care, kinship, and intergenerational relations
- Aging in relation to globalization and migration
- Archives, oral history, knowledge production, and the age politics of the university
The RHR publishes material in a variety of forms. Potential contributors are encouraged to look at recent issues for examples of both conventional and non-conventional forms of scholarship. We are especially interested in submissions that use images as well as texts and encourage materials with strong visual content. In addition to monographic articles based on archival research, we encourage submissions to our various departments, including:
- Historians at Work (reflective essays by practitioners in academic and non-academic settings that engage with questions of professional practice)
- Teaching Radical History (syllabi and commentary on teaching)
- Public History (essays on historical commemoration and the politics of the past)
- Interviews (proposals for interviews with scholars, activists, and others)
- (Re)Views (review essays on history in all media–print, film, and digital)
- Reflections (Short critical commentaries)
- Forums (debates)
Procedures for submission of articles:
By June 1, 2019, please submit a 1-2 page abstract summarizing the article you wish as an attachment to contactrhr@gmail.com with “Issue 139 Abstract Submission” in the subject line. Please send any images as low-resolution digital files embedded in a Word document along with the text. If chosen for publication, you will need to send high-resolution image files (jpg or TIFF files at a minimum of 300 dpi) and secure permission to reprint all images.
By July 15, authors will be notified whether they should submit a full version of their article for peer review. The due date for completed articles will be November 1, 2019. Those articles selected for publication after the peer review process will be included in issue 139 of the Radical History Review, scheduled to appear in January 2021.
Contact Info: contactrhr@gmail.com
Contact Email: contactrhr@gmail.com
URL: http://www.radicalhistoryreview.org/call-for-papers/critical-histories-of-aging-and-later-life/
Craig Howes, List Manager
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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Last updated: 17 May 2018
