Khepa Baul ([info]khepa) wrote,
@ 2008-04-10 09:00:00
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MATERIALITIES OF DEMOCRACY, Transnational Sociology Workshop
I will be presenting at the upcoming transnational workshop. Timothy Mitchell, a prominent social theorist and political scientist will be the keynote.



MATERIALITIES OF DEMOCRACY
The 9th Transnational Sociology Workshop
April 12, 2008

Room 22 Education Building

9:00 Reception (Breakfast buffet and coffee)
9:30 Keynote by Professor Timothy Mitchell: "Carbon Democracy"
10:45 Coffee break

11:00 Technologies of Colonialism

Jamie McGowan (UIUC, Geography)
"Interpreting Conventional Signs & Imperial Designs: The Surveying and Mapping
of Colonial Ghana, 1874-1932"

Cheng-Heng Chang (UIUC, Sociology)
"Cultivating Hokkaidō: Environment, Modernity and Japan's Colonial Regime"

Discussant: Prof. Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi (UIUC, Sociology)


12:30 Lunch and coffee
1:30 Technologies of Justice

Sharif Islam (UIUC, Sociology)
"Problematizing Information and Communication Technology as Progress:
Assessing the Wider Social and Political Role of Free and Open Source
Movement"

Chandler Armstrong (UIUC, Sociology)
"Development with Appropriate Technology in the Information Age"

Discussant: Prof. Rayvon Fouché (UIUC, History)

3:15 Coffee and snack break

3:30 Transnational Metabolisms

Dan Lord (UIUC, Sociology)
"Building a Global Energy System: Remembering the Nineteenth-Century
"Origins" of Oil Capitalism"

Prof. Zsuzsa Gille (UIUC, Sociology)
"Materialities of State Socialism and Postsocialism"

Discussant: Prof. Diana Mincyte (UIUC, Advertising)


5:15 Break

5:30 Concluding Remarks by Professor Timothy Mitchell


Papers will be available on the Sociology Department's wepbage:
http://www.soc.uiuc.edu/



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[info]radio2io
2008-04-10 03:39 pm UTC (link)
Looks cool -- the conference title and general panel titles strike me as ambiguous and intriguing. And even with your paper, the title is not a giveaway -- I'm curious to know how it turns out.

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[info]khepa
2008-04-10 04:47 pm UTC (link)
I guess academia thrives on ambiguity....

I don't like like conference title either. But the basic theme is connecting technology with colonialism and global capital system.

My main argument, as a Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) user and supporter is that although FOSS is challenging the dominant software production paradigm and intellectual property regime, it is part of the global political and economic (neoliberalism, finance capital) dynamics that gave birth to the information and communication technology industry. This industry has military and commercial past and birth of the FOSS movement is a reaction to it, however, the inherent technocentric (i.e digital/cyber utopianism) attitude is still present in FOSS. For instance, FOSS use in Brazil has been compared to globalization from below. Although this helped Brazil move away from Microsoft, the success of globalization from below is not solely dependent on the use of FOSS and the Internet. We cannot ignore or get rid of this technocentric attitude, but we need to carefully think about our information technology choices in a more localized context without all the hyperbole.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

well done
(Anonymous)
2008-05-08 01:12 pm UTC (link)
Cool page!, bro

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