The digital age transformed the traditional forms of violence but also caused new ones. The hopes to overcome the negative sides of the human community in the age of Internet and social networks have come true only to a certain degree. New 'weaker' and more democratic communication modes reproduce the system of control and overall oppressing structure of victimization, but in an even more inclusive sense.
The legitimacy of "Europe" and "the West" as identifiable territorial and imagined entities is in crisis. The awareness has grown of a world becoming more polycentric. At the same time, the field of Discourse Studies is growing at a dazzling rate across the globe. Discourse Studies is known for theoretical orientations and methodological tools that account for meaning production as a social practice mobilizing languages, media and technologies.
Discourse Studies cover a growing field of interdisciplinary research on meaning making practices, communicative activities and symbolic representations. Cultural studies, linguistics, media analysis, geography, and history, among others, highlight the role of texts, pictures and language in the constitution of truth and reality. Actor-oriented disciplines such as political science, sociology, pedagogy or economics and management studies are interested in the formation of subjectivities,
Discourse can be addressed as a vehicle for power, a positioning practice which enlightens the role and the relationship among the speakers. Power is a way of defying and measure relationships and interactions between individuals. These relations and interactions lead one part to affirm its will against another part, no matter on what bases this will is grounded (Weber, 1974).
The world is ever ‘on the move’. The opportunities and challenges of both real and virtual travel are very much at the heart of the emergent interdisciplinary field of ‘mobilities’, which deals with the movement of peoples, objects, capital, information and cultures across an increasingly globalised and apparently borderless world. In the practices, processes and performances of moving – whether for voluntary leisure, forced migration or economic pragmatism – we are faced with the negotiation and re-negotiation of identities and meaning relating to places and pasts.
Deadline for paper proposal submissions (500 words): 15 July, 2011
(Deadline has been extended for all sessions and sub-conferences)
Conference Languages: English, Castilian, German, French and Nahuatl
Languages for presentation: English, Castilian.
Call deadline: March 31, 2012
Plenary speakers
Mats Alvesson (Lund University, Sweden)
Patrick Charaudeau (Universite Paris 13, CNRS, France)
Jonathan Charteris-Black (University of the West of England, UK)
Veronika Koller (Lancaster University, UK)
Joao Cesar das Neves (Catholic University of Portugal)
Ruth Wodak (Lancaster University, UK)
Deadline for abstracts: 15 September 2013
Keynote speakers
Lloyd Axworthy, Former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs (TBC)
Sonia Picado, Chair of the UN Advisory Board on Human Security
Context and aims
PARIS - L'Etat, La Révolution et le Transfert Social - Hervé HUBERT, Psychiatre, Psychanalyste, Chef de Service CPMS