[Air-L] CFP: Social lives of and on computers, technology and the internet

[Jonathan Marshall]

People from Australia or people who are visiting Australia in September, please consider submitting a paper for the following panel at ‘Culture and Contest in a Material World’, the Australian Anthropological Society Conference 2012, 26th to 28th September 2012, University of Queensland, St. Lucia (Brisbane) Australia.

The Deadline for paper submissions is close: 4th May

P11 Social lives of and on computers, technology and the internet
Convenor: Jonathan Marshall (University of Technology, Sydney)

The material basis of many social interactions throughout the world is provided by computer software or other forms of technology such as mobile phones, local two-way radio and so on.  It is even possible that the material structures of communication form the ‘new’ infrastructure of global information capitalism. This relatively new situation opens up many ways of thinking about anthropology and what it can contribute to the world. The panel invites people to reflect upon the interaction of people, culture and communication within these forms of materiality. Questions that could be considered include: What happens to the ‘locale’ of communication, or indeed what happens to conceptions of the local? How do these forms of communication subvert, reinforce and extend existing cultural and social modes of action or understanding? Can what seems to be an extension or reinforcement, also induce disruption? How is the technology of communication and labour designed and implemented? How is technology changed by its users consciously or unconsciously? What are the social dynamics of software? What kinds of social organisations form ‘around’ communication technologies? What are the dynamics of living online? What are the social experiences of international call centre workers? What are the myths and motifs that are growing up around the technology of communication? What does all this tell us about the materiality, or ‘material base’ of socio-culture?  Both primarily theoretical and completely ethnographic-descriptive papers are welcome.

Please submit your abstracts by email to Jon Marshall jon.marshall at uts.edu.au by Friday, 4th May 2012.

More Panels from the same conference at:
http://www.uq.edu.au/aasconf2012/panels

Please further note, as additional attractions:
P1 The anthropology of media
Convenors: Anna Cristina Pertierra (the University of Queensland) and Heather Horst (RMIT).

P20 Build your own ethnograph: Creative reflections on ethnography and technology
Convenor: Kirrily Thompson (Central Queensland University)

plus much other intersting stuff.

The keynote speakers for the conference include:
Genevieve Bell director of User Interaction and Experience in Intel Labs, author of *Divining the Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing*.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen who will be talking about "The three crises of globalisation: Culture, climate, finance".

hope to see you there.

jon

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