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

[Jonathan Marshall]

If anyone, is from Australia or feels like it might be good to visit Australia for an Anthropology conference in the last quarter of the year, then please consider submitting a paper by early May 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.

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 Jonathan 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 note the panel list is not yet complete as the call for panels is still open)

Please further note, as additional attractions, the keynote speakers for the conference (not for the panel) include: 

Genevieve Bell director of User Interaction and Experience in Intel Labs, author of *Divining the Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing*. Topic still to be announced.
&
Thomas Hylland Eriksen who will be talking about interconnectedness in the contemporary world.

UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F
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