Call for abstracts: Making Europe through infrastructures of (in)security, Nov 12-13, 2020
Dear colleagues,
please see below the call for abstract for our workshop on “Making Europe
through infrastructures of (in)security” at Vienna University!
Deadline: July 15, 2020
We are looking forward to your contributions!
Nina Klimburg-Witjes & Paul Trauttmansdorff
(on behalf of the organizing team)
Making Europe through infrastructures of (in)security
Interdisciplinary Workshop
12-13 November 2020
University of Vienna
Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Claudia Aradau (King´s College London)
Prof. Annalisa Pelizza (University of Bologna)
Prof. Johan Schot (University of Utrecht)
Organizers: Nina Klimburg-Witjes, Paul Trauttmansdorff, Pouya Sepehr (Dep. of
Science and Technology Studies) Katharina T. Paul, Christian Haddad (Dep. of
Political Science), Philipp Knopp (Dep. of Sociology)
Call for Abstracts
With this interdisciplinary workshop, we aim to extend a longstanding concern
with the processes and practices of infrastructuring in STS, sociology,
political science, and other fields, to emergent forms of surveillance and
securitization in Europe. Furthermore, the workshop is inspired by the need to
investigate how different arrangements of infrastructures and practices of
in/security participate in the making of “Europe” (Aradau, 2010; Pelizza,
2019).
Infrastructures have always been crucial objects of political promises,
desirable futures, and collective imagination, and they have been instrumental
for (re)configuring political practices and social values, for in/excluding
certain groups of users or enacting populations (Grommé & Ruppert, 2019).
Currently, we witness a return to infrastructures in the context of European
policies and discourses of in/security. Examples include the so-called
“Security Union” proposing technological interconnectivity and
interoperability as solutions to contemporary threats, concerns with cyber
in/security, infrastructural practices to govern borders and migrations, or
projects around “smart cities”. In the most recent moment of
infrastructural politics, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed contestations in
manifold ways in which different countries in Europe and beyond are responding
to in/security in relation to health diplomacy.
The workshop will bring these various threads together and collect papers that
address the ways in which infrastructures of in/security are designed,
envisioned and assembled, and how these infrastructuring practices
co-construct “Europe” (Pelizza, 2019; Schipper & Schot, 2011).
We invite both conceptual and empirical contributions that address, but are
not limited to, the following themes:
Practices of (de)securitization of European infrastructures (e.g. of health,
borders, space and defense, surveillance);
Promises and perils of futures of in/security that are imagined and enacted in
the making of “Europe”;
Processes and practices of infrastructuring in the construction of European
statehood;
Politics of in/visibility of in/security infrastructures
Deadline: July 15, 2020.
Please send your abstracts (max 300 words) to
nina.witjes@univie.ac.at and paul.trauttmansdorff@univie.ac.at
This workshop is jointly funded by the faculty of social sciences of the
University of Vienna within the framework of its interdisciplinary program
“Knowledge, Materiality, and Public Spaces” and the Horizon 2020 project
InsSciDE (grant agreement no 770523), 2018-2021
Travelling and accommodation expenses can be provided to a limited number of
participants. Please contact the conveners of the workshop in case you need
funding.
As organizers we are aware that in current COVID-19 circumstances, the
planning of events and travel arrangements is uncertain and difficult.
However, maintaining a positive spirit, we intend to hold the workshop in
November in Vienna, while continuously evaluating the situation and keeping
alternative scenarios in mind, such as postponement or a virtual workshop.
References
Aradau, C. (2010). Security that matters: Critical infrastructure and objects
of protection. Security Dialogue, 41(5), 491–514.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010610382687
Grommé, F., & Ruppert, E. (2019). Population Geometries of Europe: The
Topologies of Data Cubes and Grids. Science Technology and Human Values,
1–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243919835302
Pelizza, A. (2019). Processing Alterity, Enacting Europe: Migrant Registration
and Identification as Co-construction of Individuals and Polities. Science
Technology and Human Values, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243919827927
Schipper, F., & Schot, J. (2011). Infrastructural Europeanism, or the project
of building Europe on infrastructures: An introduction. History and
Technology, 27(3), 245–264. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2011.604166
--
Dr. Nina Klimburg-Witjes
University Assistant (post doc)
University of Vienna / Dep. of Science and Technology Studies
Universitätsstrasse 7, 1010 Vienna
Austria
T +43-1-4277-49625
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