[Dino] REMINDER: call for papers - Symposium on transnationalism in Helsinki

[lkaunone at mappi.helsinki.fi]

International symposium:

Foreign impulses, local responses: transcending national and cultural borders

Time: 18-19 April 2012

Venue: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Study, Fabianinkatu 24,  
Helsinki, Finland

Deadline for abstracts: 15th January 2012

Cosmopolitanism, localism, nationalism, and trans-nationalism are  
widely used concepts in academic as well as political discourses.  
Although originally referring to quite different phenomena, the issues  
and questions they address increasingly overlap today.Living in a  
trans-national world, individuals can adopt an open, inclusive  
attitude or a closed, defensive one. In the first case, individuals  
are labelled cosmopolitans, while in the second case they are labelled  
as locals. Underlying this approach is the issue of attachment to  
specific places, institutions, locales, traditions, and so on.

Keynote speech will be delivered by Professor Emeritus Ulf Hannerz.

Ulf Hannerz was Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm  
University since 1981 (acting professor 1976-1980). He has studied  
urban anthropology, media anthropology and the anthropology of  
globalization. His field studies have been in the United States, West  
Africa and the Caribbean, and he has also worked multilocally in  
Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Tokyo and elsewhere in a study of newsmedia  
foreign correspondents. He is currently directing an interdisciplinary  
project on cosmopolitanism, with other participants from the  
Department of Social Anthropology, the Department of Political  
Science, and the Universities of Lund and Malmö. His own work in the  
project focuses on geocultural scenarios and their place in  
transnational public culture.

Symposium is organized in cooperation with the Helsinki Collegium for  
Advanced Studies and the Institute of Finnish Literature, the  
Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies,  
University of Helsinki; and the Centre for Applied Social  
Research,University of Bradford.

It is our intention to organize the symposium around questions, such as:
How are we to understand the cosmopolitan-local continuum in terms of  
cultural exchange, migration, policy making, and the crossing of  
national and / intellectual / ethnic borders?

What are the values, ideas and ideologies associated with cultural,  
social and political meanings of cosmopolitanism and trans-nationalism?
What are the ideological implications of the use of discourses of  
cosmopolitanism?

There are positive examples of individuals who are able to negotiate  
successfully between local and cosmopolitan orientations. What kind of  
strategies do they use in constructing simultaneous local and  
cosmopolitan / trans-national identities combined with particular  
social, ethnic, and gender identities?

Sometimes national cultural interests are dominant; and almost  
excluding foreign cultural influences which are considered as  
undermining the value of domestic culture. What problems do  
intellectuals and artists face when trying to import foreign ideas,  
artistic trends, and intellectual impulses from abroad?
What is the role of so-called local cosmopolitans, artists, writers  
and intellectuals as cultural mediators of 'foreign' influences, new  
artistic trends and intellectual impulses from abroad? Local  
cosmopolitans are often balancing between local attachment and the  
effort of breaking free from national cultural patriotism. While more  
or less based in their native countries, their connections to the  
European intellectual scene do not merely signify just freedom and  
openness. Cosmopolitan identity is rather an instrument and a weapon  
in a cultural combat on their domestic front.

The ambition of the symposium is to have a critical discussion about  
the concepts of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism and to develop  
our shared, and differing, understanding of the issues raised around  
it. Theoretical as well as empirical approaches to transnationalism  
are welcome.

Mail your abstract (max 300 words) to the following address:
transnationalism-2012[at]helsinki.fi.
Deadline for abstracts is 15th January 2012.

Abstracts will be reviewed by the symposium committee. You will be   
notified by January 20th, 2012 whether your paper has been accepted.  
Please note: we are not in a position to be able to assist with  
conference travel or subsistence.


Symposium language is English. Registration is free. A selection of  
symposium papers will be published in the COLLeGIUM e-series, a  
scholarly, open-access series of interdisciplinary publications by the  
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.


Coordinator and Contact Person:
Leena Kaunonen
Ph.D, Docent in Finnish literature, Research Fellow, Department of   
Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki
  E-mail: leena.kaunonen at helsinki.fi


Other Members of the Organizing Committee:
Charles Husband Ph.D. Professor of Social Analysis, University of Bradford
Sari Kivistö, Ph.D. Docent in Comparative literature, Academy of  
Finland Research  Fellow,Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

Link to the symposum website:

http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/events/foreign-impulses.html