Everyday Transformations: The Twenty-First Century Quotidian
Annual conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia,
Perth / Fremantle, 9-11 December 2004
Call for Papers
New technologies, increasing work pressures, changing gender roles and family structures, increasing flows of refugees and asylum seekers, concerns about security, environmental risks, the escalating speed and complexity of social transactions – everyday life is today a terrain of rapid and unsettling change. Yet it retains associations also with pattern, order, routine – the familiarity of a favourite soap opera or talk show, the ordinary pleasures and irritations of shopping, cooking, negotiating traffic, managing domestic life.
How should cultural studies address questions of everyday life in the twenty-first century? The field can claim a rich tradition of work in the area, from ethnographies of street subcultures and shopping centres to writing on television and popular magazines. But everyday life has been transformed in significant ways since the time of many of the founding contributions. What remains relevant today in the study of everyday life? To what extent do we need new concepts and categories?
Transformations have also occurred in cultural studies’ motivations for engaging with everyday life. The everyday is a major point of intersection for many of its intellectual tributaries, including British cultural studies, feminism, semiotics, European surrealism, situationism, psychoanalysis and ethnomethodology. Yet the context for all of these has been affected by major shifts in the location of cultural studies, the nature and priorities of higher education, by the increasing market orientation of mainstream institutions and by conservative attempts to lay claim to the ‘ordinary’ and ‘mainstream’. What do we seek now in engaging with the everyday? What understanding of this engagement is most appropriate for the times?
Possible sessions/themes:
- New technologies
- Suburbia
- Television
- Food
- Magazine journalism
- Everyday spirituality
- Ordinariness
- Shopping
- Civility and manners
- Creativity
- Homes and gardens
- Risk and stress
- Globalisation
- Political activism in everyday life
- Speed and time
- Everyday sexualities
- Collections and archives
- Popular media
- Cultural geographies
- Sport
- Music
- Tourism
- Documentary
- Sustainability
- The apocalyptic and the everyday
- Dance
Abstracts of no more than 250 words for single papers, or suggestions for panel sessions, should be sent to:
Mark Gibson – mgibson@central.murdoch.edu.au
or : School of Media, Communication and Culture
Murdoch University
South St, Murdoch
WA 6150
Panel proposals are particularly welcome.
Refereed Publication Option: As an innovation on past CSAA conferences, ‘Everyday Transformations’ will also be offering the option of refereed publication in electronic conference proceedings. To be considered for this stream, full papers must be received by 27 August 2004.
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 30 July 2004