[Air-L] Locating Internets: Histories of the Internets in India: Call for Participation

[Nishant Shah]

Dear All,
I thought that this might be of interest to people on the list. Especially
for those who are in India. Please distribute this as appropriate. Apologies
for cross-posting

*Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India*

*Research training and curriculum workshop : Call for participation*

*Deadline for submission:* 15th July 2011-06-08

*When: *19th - 22nd August, 2011

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*Where:* Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) University,
Ahmedabad


*Organised by:* Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore and CEPT
University, Ahmedabad.


LOCATING INTERNETS is an innovative, multi-disciplinary, workshop that
engages with some of the most crucial debates around Internet and Society
within academic scholarship, discourse and practice in India. It explores
the Where, When, How and What has changed with the emergence of Internet and
Digital Technologies in the country. The Internet is not a singular
monolithic entity but is articulated in various forms – sometimes
materially, through accessing the web; at others, through our experiences;
and yet others through imaginations of policy and law. Internets become a
part of our everyday practice, from museums and archives, to school and
university programmes, living rooms and public spaces, relationships and our
bodily lived realities. It becomes necessary to reconfigure our existing
concepts, frameworks and ideas to make sense of the rapidly digitising world
around us. The Internet is no longer contained in niche disciplines or
specialised everyday practices.


LOCATING INTERNETS invites scholars, teachers, researchers, advanced
research students and educationalists from any discipline to learn and
discuss how to ask new questions and design innovative curricula in their
discipline by introducing concepts and ideas from path-breaking research in
India. Comprised of training, public lectures, open discussion spaces, and
hands-on curriculum building exercises, this workshop will introduce the
participants to contemporary debates, help them articulate concerns and
problems from their own research and practice, and build knowledge clusters
to develop innovative and open curricula which can be implemented in
interdisciplinary undergraduate spaces in the country. It showcases the
research outputs produced by The Centre for Internet and Society’s
Researchers @ Work Programme, and brings together 9 researchers to talk
about alternative histories, processes, and bodies of the Internets, and how
they can be integrated into mainstream pedagogic practices and teaching
environments.


*Knowledge Clusters for the Workshop:*

LOCATING INTERNETS is designed innovatively to accommodate for various
intellectual and practice based needs of the participants. While the aim is
to introduce the participants to a wide interdisciplinary range of
scholarship, we also hope to address particular disciplinary and scholarly
concerns of the participants. The workshop is further divided into three
knowledge clusters which help the participants to focus their energies and
ideas in the course of the four days.

a.   *Bridging the Gap:* This workshop seeks to break away from the utopian
public discourse of the Internets as a-historical and completely
dis-attached from existing technology ecologies in the country. This
knowledge cluster intends to produce frameworks that help us contextualize
the contemporary internet policy, discourse and practice within larger
geo-political and socio-historical flows and continuities in Modern India.
The first cluster chartsdifferent pre-histories of the Internets, mapping
the continuities and ruptures through philosophy of techno-science,
archiving practices, and electronifcation of governments,to develop new
technology-society perspectives.

 b.   *Paradigms of Practice:*One of the biggest concerns about internet
studies in India and other similar developed contexts is the object oriented
approach that looks largely at specific usages, access, infrastructure etc.
However, it is necessary to understand that the Internet is not merely a
tool or a gadget. The growth of Internets produces systemic changes at the
level of process and thought. The technologies often get appropriated for
governance both by the State and the Civil Society, producing new processes
and dissonances which need to be charted. The second cluster looks at
certain contemporary processes that the digital and internet technologies
change drastically in order to recalibrate the relationship between the
State, the Market and the Citizen.

c.       *Feet on the Ground: *The third cluster looks at contemporary
practices of the Internet to understand the recent histories of movements,
activism and cultural practices online. It offers an innovative way of
understanding the physical objects and bodies that undergo dramatic
transitions as digital technologies become pervasive, persuasive and
ubiquitous. It draws upon historical discourse, every-day practices and
cultural performances to form new ways of formulating and articulating the
shapes and forms of social and cultural structures.

*Workshop Outcomes:*

The particpants are expected to engage with issue of Internet and it various
systemic processes through their own discipiliniary interests. Apart from
lectures and orientation sessions, the participants will actively workshop
on their own project ideas during the period in groups and will be guided by
experts. The final outcome of the workshops would be curriculum for
undergraduate and graduate teaching space of various disciplines in the
country

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*

*Participation Guidelines:*

LOCATING INTERNETS is now accepting submissions from interested participants
in the following format:

1.       Name:

2.       Institutional Affiliation and Title:

3.       Address:

4.       Email address:

5.       Phone number:

6.       A brief resume of work experience (max. 350 words)

7.       Statement of Interest (max. 350 words)

8.       Key concerns you want to address in the Internet and Society field
(max. 350 words)

9.       Identification with one Knowledge-cluster of the workshop and a
Proposal for integrating it in your research/teaching practice (max. 500
words)

10.   Current interface with technologies in your pedagogic practices (max.
350 words)

11.   Additional information or relevant hyperlinks you might want to add
(Max. 10 lines)

*Notes:*

·         Submissions will be accepted only from participants in India, as
attachments in .doc, .docx or .odt formats at
locatingInternets at cis-india.org <locatinginternets at cis-india.org>

·         Submissions made beyond 15th July 2011 may not be considered for
participation.

·         Submissions will be scrutinised by the organisers and selected
participants will be informed by the 20th July 2011, about their
participation.

·         Selected participants will be required to make their own travel
arrangements to the workshop. A 2nd A.C. return fare will be reimbursed to
the participants.  Shared accommodation and selected meals will be provided
at the workshop.

·         A limited number of air-fare reimbursements will be available to
participants in extraordinary circumstances.

*Chairs*: Nishant Shah, Director-Research, Centre for Internet and Society
Bangalore;

Pratyush Shankar, Associate Professor & Head of Undergraduate Program,
Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University

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*

*Supported by:* Kusuma Foundation, Hyderabad

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*Experts:*Anja Kovacs, Arun Menon, Asha Achuthan, Ashish Rajadhykasha,
Aparna Balachandran, Namita Malhotra, Nithin Manayath, Nithya Vasudevan,
Pratyush Shankar, Rochelle Pinto, Zainab Bawa

You can find more information at
http://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/workshop

-- 
Nishant Shah
Doctoral Candidate, CSCS, Bangalore.
Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society,( www.cis-india.org )
Asia Awards Fellow, 2008-09
# 00-91-9740074884



-- 
Nishant Shah
Doctoral Candidate, CSCS, Bangalore.
Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society,( www.cis-india.org )
Asia Awards Fellow, 2008-09
# 00-91-9740074884