AFOR 6th Asian Conference on Cultural Studies
Art Center of Kobe, Kobe, Japan
Thursday, June 2 – Sunday, June 5, 2016
„Cultural Struggle and Praxis: Negotiating Power and the Everyday“
In this conference participants are invited to explore and question the ways in which cultural struggle characterises our present times. Given that culture is the fabric of meaning making, understanding its relationship to politics and society is crucial. Cultural struggle, for instance, alerts us to the political dynamics of how meaning making is controlled, contested and communicated through the core institutions of society such as media, education, law, medicine, government, the family, religion, the market and so on – all of which impact upon and influence everyday life.
Nowhere is the cultural struggle more evident than in questions of belonging (and un-belonging), identity and mobility; refuge, exile and community. In the convergence of culture and narrative, the contemporary and historical story of the human condition is particularly marked by how power and the everyday are negotiated through the experience of displacement and dispossession or privilege and status. Culture, expressed, articulated and represented through sites and locales, practices, actions and values, identities and forms, histories and memories, myths and traditions, is a pivotal lens through which we are able to understand and interpret the way society works, and to see how power and the everyday intersect.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Professor John Nguyet Erni, Hong Kong Baptist University
Negotiating ‚Refuge‘: Humanitarianism for the ‚Included-outs‘
FEATURED PLENARY PANELS
Chair: Koichi Iwabuchi, Monash University
„Social movements and critical pedagogy“
* Noriko Manabe, Princeton University
* David H. Slater, Sophia University
Discussant: Baden Offord, Curtin University
„Public pedagogy and social praxis“
* Megumi Yuki, Gunma University
* Gon Matsunaka, NPO?“Good Aging Yells“
* Shigeaki Iwai, Immigration Museum, Tokyo
Conference Chairs:
Professor Baden Offord, Curtin University
Professor Koichi Iwabuchi, Monash University
Professor Emerita Susan Ballyn, University of Barcelona
Professor Donald E. Hall, Lehigh University
CALL FOR PAPERS:
Abstracts submission: February 1, 2016
VISIT WEBSITE: http://iafor.org/conferences/
