Author: Nassef Manabilang Adiong

Where: Istanbul, Turkey
Date: 29 Nov – 1 Dec 2012

Organisers: KULeuven Gülen Chair for Intercultural Studies (GCIS), Intercultural Dialogue Platform (IDP) and Department of Sociology (Suleyman Sah University, Istanbul)

Workshop theme and questions

Identity, Religion and Ethnicity are three terms interrelated and become all important issues in the European Union and its neighbourhood. The social change and economical transformation of societies fallowed by flow of people, objects, symbols and places enforce the change on identity and citizenship relations. In sum, in addition to the flows, all changes concern the interpersonal and inter-group dimensions. Today, a high degree of human mobility, telecommunications have contributed to the new understanding of citizenship as a mode of identity in relation to national identity, ethnicity, religion, groups and social movements. Belonging to an ethnic-religious group and distinctions are increasingly blurred or strengthened in the new national and international contexts.

The motivations and modalities of belonging and identifying are much more diverse. It is therefore useful to explore relatively new patterns of the intersection between religion, identity and ethnicity issues.  As noted “Race, ethnicity, and nation are not things in the world but ways of seeing the world. They are ways of understanding and identifying oneself, making sense of one’s problems and predicaments, identifying one’s interests, and orienting one’s action. They are ways of recognizing, identifying, and classifying other people, of construing sameness and difference, and of “coding” and making sense of their actions” (Brubaker, Loveman, and Stamatov 2004). The workshop proposes to analyse the relation between these three notions interconnected in different political, cultural and economical cases to understand also some challenges and pitfalls in a plural society.

What is the relation between identity, ethnicity and citizenship in a global world? What are the new patterns of ethnic identities in plural societies? Can globalization de-ethnicize religion? How ethnical and religious identity is changed and faced with social and economic changes? What are the roles of social movements in these undergoing changes? What are the challenges for the classical religious-ethnic identity? How can nation state models regulate the plurality of religious and ethnic groups? How does EU deal with ethnical pluralism and diversity?

Participants in the workshop Identity, Religion and Ethnicity will explore the answers of these questions. The workshop will analyse the interaction and the interpenetration of race, ethnicity and identity through the problematic of transnationalism, globalization and nation-state approaches. The workshop will be accompanied by practical visits with local communities. Participants are invited to discover the theoretical debates and issues in local different areas with practitioners and civil society representatives to further having insights from demographic, economic, philosophic, legal and socio anthropological approaches. This workshop looks at identity, citizenship and ethnicity issues across Belgium as well as in the Turkey, focused primarily on Belgium-EU cases.

Topics of Workshops

The workshop will be organized around three central themes.
Authors are invited to send abstracts (maximum 500 words) of their papers on themes of their own choosing, which may include (by way of example only):

Ethnicity and ethno-nationalism
Multiple language policies and education
Racism and nationalism
Immigration, Assimilation and National History

Religion and ethnic identities
Religious Minority and Identity
Immigration and Religion

Politics and Ethnicity
Identity policies and Citizenship
Citizenship and Nation state
Multiculturalism and ethnic relations

Programme
A detailed schedule will follow in due course.

Tuition Fees and Scholarships
There is no tuition fee for the workshop programme.  The IDP will pay all the costs of accommodation and board, and transfers, and there is no registration fee for participants in the Workshop. However, authors are expected to pay the costs of their flight to and from Turkey (currently about 300 euros). A limited number of scholarships are available for outstanding candidates to cover tuition, travel and accommodation.

Outcome
Within six months of the event, a book will be produced and published by the GCIS, comprising some or all of the papers presented at the Workshop. The papers will be arranged and introduced, and to the extent appropriate, edited, by scholar(s) to be appointed by the Editorial Board.
Copyright of the papers accepted to the Workshop will be vested in the GCIS.

Selection Criteria
The workshop will accept up to 20 participants, each of whom must meet the following requirements:
– have a professional and/or research background in related topics of the workshop;
– be able to attend the entire programme.
Doctoral and postdoctoral researchers as well as civil servants and professionals from intergovernmental and governmental agencies working in ethnicity, migration areas are encouraged to apply.
Since the Workshop expects to address a broad range of topics while the number of participants has to be limited, writers submitting abstracts are requested to bear in mind the need to ensure that their language is technical only where absolutely necessary and intelligible to non-specialists and specialists in disciplines other than their own; and present clear, coherent arguments in a rational way and in accordance with the usual standards and format for publishable work.

Timetable
1. Abstracts (300–500 words maximum) and CVs (maximum 1 page) to be received by 10th August 2012.
2. Abstracts to be short-listed by the Editorial Board and papers invited by 30th August 2012.
3. Papers (2,500 words minimum – 5,000 words maximum, excluding bibliography) to be received by 1st October 2012.
4. Papers reviewed by the Editorial Board and classed as: Accepted – No Recommendations; Accepted – See Recommendations; Conditional Acceptance – See Recommendations; Not Accepted.
5. Final papers to be received by 20th October 2012.

Workshop Editorial Board
Johan Leman, KULeuven
Erkan Toguslu, KULeuven
Ismail Mesut Sezgin, IDP and Leeds Metropolitan University

Workshop Co-ordinator
Ismail Mesut Sezgin

Venue
Suleyman Sah University, Istanbul, Turkey
The international workshop will be entirely conducted in English and will be hosted by Suleyman Sah University in Istanbul.

Papers and abstract should be sent to Erkan Toguslu erkan.toguslu@soc.kuleuven.be

For more information plz contact:
Erkan Toguslu
KULeuven Gülen Chair for Intercultural Studies
Parkstraat 45 – box 3615
3000 Leuven
erkan.toguslu@soc.kuleuven.be

http://www.gcis-kuleuven.com/cpt_events/identity-religion-and-ethnicity-new-patterns-realities-and-pitfalls/?preview=true&preview_id=559&preview_nonce=04c7ca206f

CFP : Book Project

Cyber Space and International Relations: Theory, Prospects and Challenges

The cyberspace is everywhere – this saying is no longer just a saying, it is an empirical fact. In today´s world, nearly everything is connected to the Internet, not only our computers and mobile phones but also our cars, fridges, and things of everyday use. Furthermore, the world has become more and moreinterconnected through cyberspace  – the Internet has made conducting business and communicating easier than it used to be at any other time of human economic activity; it has created new, innovative, and productive branches of business that we do not want to miss today (think about Amazon, Gmail, Facebook, and Hulu for example).

Likewise, cyberspace has not only fostered business around the globe – it has also created the so-called “global village” – the cyberspace connects people and enterprises and helps us to get notified about news from all over the globe in time and to spread all kind of information. Making money and building businesses in our times has become dependent on the interconnectedness made possible by the Internet and the cyberspace. But, the cyberspace has a Janus-faced character: On the onehand, it has created immense opportunities for business, communication, and so on, but on the other hand – due to fact that more and more processes are dependent on the interconnectedness of today’s digital infrastructure – it has also become a serious source of newly emerging threats for national, commercial, and private security.

Although the emergence and ever increasing diffusion of the cyberspace have most obviously significant implications for international politics, global economic activity and transnational social relations, there is still a cloudy spot in research in terms of addressing these implications theoretically and empirically in onecomprehensive and wide-ranging volume. Of course there is a vast number of articles and books on security related issues of the cyberspace (cyber security, cyber warfare, cyber power, and so forth) as well as on the processes and the modalities of what we may call the digital transnationalization of social spaces and relations, but an inclusive volume on the implications of the process of “cyberization” of IR is still missing. Here, “cyberization” of IR refers to the ongoing penetration of all different fields of activity of international relations by different mediums of the cyberspace on the one hand, and the growing dependence of actors in IR on infrastructure, instruments, and means offered by the cyberspace on the other hand.

Because of the evolution of a “cyberization” of IR and due to the ever-increasing relevance of the cyberspace for contemporary international politics and global economic and social activities, there is profound need for political scientists and scholars of IR, to  identify, describe, and explain these developments, prospects, and emerging challenges theoretically and empirically in an accurate manner.
Therefore, this book is designed to bring together scholars and scientist as well as experts from cyberspace’s everyday practice, to give elaborated and sophisticated answers and insights into how to cope conceptually, theoretically, and empirically with the relation of cyberspace and international relations. Contributors are asked to present their thoughts related to one of three parts:

I. The Cyberspace and IR – Conceptual andTheoretical Considerations

In this part, authors will present their considerations on how to conceptually and theoretically explain the relationship of the cyberspace and international relations. This goal will be achieved by presenting approaches and frameworks that either deal with the general relation of IR and the cyberspace or develop theoretical approaches to explain the dynamics of this relation in specific fields of activity (like cyber security, cyber warfare, diffusion of information and knowledge through the cyberspace, interconnectedness of economic and social activities through the cyberspace and so forth).

This opening part of the book aims at bringing together conceptual and theoretical papers on the relation of the cyberspace and IR (in terms of actors, spaces, fields of activity and so on), to foster and boost our understanding of theconsequences and implications of the process of “cyberization” for states’ security, power positioning, interest achievement, diplomatic activity amongst others, as well as for economic and civil actors that are likewise affected by the “cyberization“ of IR. Papers answering question like “Which consequences does the cyberspace have for states’ power and national security,” “What are the theoretical implications of the new instruments and means offered by the cyberspace and how to explain their effects on IR”, or “How uncontrolled dissemination of information and new ways of obtaining information change the politics among nations and enterprises” are welcome to contribute to this part of the book.

II. The Cyber Space: Emerging Challenges and Prospects for International Politics, GlobalEconomic Activity and Transnational Social Relations

Part II of the book will bring together contributions that focus on specific empirical fields of activity (security, economy, diplomacy, cultural activity, transnational communication, critical infrastructure, cyber espionage, social media, and more) to address emerging challenges and prospects of the process of “cyberization” of IR. The papers in this part of the book should focus on specific empirical phenomena that make the process of “cyberization” of IR comprehensible and visible, while at the same time addressing the implications of their findings on their field of IR.

III. Outlook: How the Cyber Space has changed (and continuously will change) IR    

Finally, the last part of the book is devoted to deliver an outlook on How the Cyberspace has changed (andcontinuously will change) IR, by bringing together the insights of scholars and practitioners on this question. The papers in this part will explicitly deal with the estimation of future developments in a more general way by offering expert prognosis.

If you believe that you might be able to help the project to address one or several questions/topics addressed in the parts I to III, we strongly invite you to participate in the project.

Please feel free to send us abstracts (up to 500 words) as well as complete papers. The deadline for submitting abstracts/chapter proposals is the 15th of July 2012.

When submitting an abstract the editorial team will inform you within three weeks if we would like you to submit a paper, based on your abstract for the book (“does the abstract match with one of the topics of the book”…).

The deadline for draft-chapters will be the 30th of October  2012. Final contributions should not exceed the amount of 10,000 words. Final chapter are due on the 20th of December 2012. The book can be expected to be published in late-spring / early-summer 2013. It will likely be published by Palgrave, Continuum or Springer.

Please send your abstracts to both editors:

Jan-Frederik Kremer
Research Associate and Lecturer, Center for Global Studies, Chair for International Relations, University ofBonn (Germany)
jkremer@uni-bonn.de

Benedikt Müller
IBM Deutschland GmbH
benedikt.mueller@de.ibm.com

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