RN32 Political Sociology/ RN 33 Women’s and Gender Studies: Social Relations in Turbulent Times (Web)

Venue: Genf/Geneva, Switzerland
Time: 7th-10th September 2011
Deadline: 25th February 2011

Panel: Gendered Exclusion in Uncertain Times – (Post)Multiculturalism, Denizenship and Radicalism in Europe

The first decade of the third millennium appears to epitomize a turbulent times: the September 11th suicide attacks, the global economic meltdown, the rise of radical right populist parties across Europe, and the ever louder critical voices against multiculturalism.

These are just some examples among many other political developments that shape the debate around discursive exclusionary projects and the calls for forging a common national/European project around issues of shared identity and cultural homogeneity in turbulent times.

Paramount to all these concepts are the preoccupation with maintaining an illusory unity and the ever growing demographic panic, coupled with the fear of cultural dilution, which are used to justify an ever closer policing of hierarchies, borders and bodies. These fleshes out problems raised by a type of “second class of citizenship” projected onto immediate “Others”, based on differences of gender and sexual orientation, of class, religion, ethnicity and “race”. Distinctions and borders are construed around these dimensions, and keeping the so constructed categories apart is a constant discursive disciplinary preoccupation. Gendered hierarchies are elaborated to enforce heteronormative patriarchies as sole domains of intelligibility. In this context, fears of masculine feebleness or sexual deviancy, thus failure to accomplish the task of national reproduction, are seconded by that of national dilution – of allowing native women to interact with male immigrant “Others”. Concomitantly, the feminine “Others” are projected in terms of oppressed subjects that need the European civilizatory help in order to break free from aged patriarchal oppression.

With this in mind, authors are encouraged to submit papers investigating the apparently dichotomous distinction that separates the gendered categories of “Us” as opposed to “Others” in present Europe.

• Chair: Ov Cristian Norocel (University of Helsinki/ Stockholm University); cristian.norocel[at]helsinki.fi

For more information on the respective RN 32 Political Sociology and RN 33 Women’s and Gender Studies check the conference website.

Abstracts should be submitted here

KEY DATES FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

• 10th January 2011 Opening of Abstract Submission
• 25th February 2011 Closing of Abstract Submission
• 6th April 2011 Decisions on acceptance of abstracts by RN coordinators and RS conveners relayed to paper-givers and also relayed to the Conference Organizer in Geneva
• 20th April 2011 Programme of papers for each sessions sent by RN coordinators and RS conveners to the Local Committee