[Air-L] CFP: 2nd Call - History of Modernity and Telephony in the non-West

[Vit Sisler]

History of Modernity and Telephony in the non-West

Call for Papers
CyberOrient: Online Journal of the Virtual Middle East
Editor-in-Chief: Daniel Martin Varisco
Guest Editor: Burçe Çelik
Submission deadline: April 30th, 2014 (Full Papers)

Aim

For the past few decades, history of modernization began to be written
by focusing on how technologies as components of modernization
processes change the lives of humans, their daily practices and
imaginations, and the ways in which they construct and express their
identities. Telephony, which functions in both public and private
spheres and witnesses social and political changes in private as well
as professional relations, is regarded as especially important for
historical analysis. Functioning on multiple levels, social history of
telephony can unearth the ways in which technologies obtain meanings
and values in changing cultural contexts and the dynamics of social,
political and cultural transformations. The history of modernization
in the non-western societies is often studied by focusing on the
projects of the rulers and on the discourses of the ruling parties
that aim a social/political change in accordance with a particular
Occidentalism – where modernity is imagined with a model of the
western modernization processes. Yet, the question of how people of
these landscapes contributed to the modernization processes and how
they produced their own modern practices in daily organizations,
relations and experiences, did not receive enough scholarly attention.

This special issue of CyberOrient invites articles that focus on the
history of modernity and telephony in the non-west that take the user
perspective to the center. Topics could include the daily practices of
users with telephone technology, the meaning and values that have been
attributed to this technology by users, the role of telephony within
the social, cultural and political struggles of users, and the effect
of the ownership or non-ownership of telephony in social, cultural and
political lives of individuals and collectives. We welcome submissions
from across disciplines and methodological approaches that are
empirically and critically grounded.

About CyberOrient

CyberOrient (http://www.cyberorient.net/) is a peer-reviewed journal
published by the American Anthropological Association, in
collaboration with the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in
Prague. The aim of the journal is to provide research and theoretical
considerations on the representation of Islam and the Middle East, the
very areas that used to be styled as an “Orient”, in cyberspace, as
well as the impact of the internet and new media in Muslim and Middle
Eastern contexts.

Submission

Articles should be submitted directly to Burçe Çelik
(burce.celik at bahcesehir.edu.tr) and Vit Sisler
(vit.sisler at ff.cuni.cz). Articles should be between 6,000 and 8,000
words (including references), and follow the AAA style in referencing
and citations. Upon acceptance, articles will be published online with
free access in autumn 2014.

More information can be found here:
http://www.cyberorient.net/detail.do?articleId=3682

-- 
Vit Sisler, Ph.D.

Charles University in Prague
Faculty of Arts
Institute of Information Science and Librarianship
New Media Studies

http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/sisler/