Dear All,
I hope you all are doing great.
Kindly see the CfP for a workshop on Infrastructure Studies that we are
organising at Northwestern University in Qatar (NUQ) in February 2025.
The deadline
for submitting abstracts is 30th September 2024 using the provided Google
form link.
Call for Papers
Between Promises and Ruptures: Infrastructural Realities of our Built
World
This workshop is jointly organized by the Liberal Arts and Communication
Programs of Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q)
Location: Northwestern University in Qatar, Education City, Doha, Qatar
Dates: February 12-13, 2025
Subject Fields: Infrastructure Studies, Science and Technology Studies,
Environmental Studies, Digital Studies, Urban Studies
Submission Deadline: September 30, 2024
About
The human-built world abounds with infrastructures that dominate many
aspects of human lives (Hughes 2004). One of the most important insights
scholars have shared is that infrastructures are sociotechnical systems;
they are constitutive of the social and technical aspects of our world.
Steve J. Jackson et al. (2007) coined the phrase “infrastructural
imagination” to point to “a way of thinking and acting in the world
capable
of moving between the separate registers of technical and social action.”
The way political leaders, government bureaucrats, policy planners, and
technical experts imagine and shape the design and implementation of
infrastructures, provides glimpses of infrastructural imagination and
promises. However, the infrastructural imagination often undergoes
complicated processes (Anand et al. 2018), encounters disruptions,
ruptures, and fractures on the ground (e.g., Graham 2010), and fails to
live up to some of its promises (Davies 2023). The encounters between
top-down planning and development and everyday usage of infrastructures can
produce unexpected outcomes and disconnected realities. Uncertainties of
the environment can also produce unintended consequences. Additionally,
infrastructures also require retrofit, maintenance, and repair to stand and
hold to their promises (Howe et al. 2015, Henke and Sims 2009). Building on
the works of scholars who have examined the opportunities and limits of
infrastructures and how certain schemes to improve the human condition
failed (Scott 1999), we plan to hold a workshop that will examine how
infrastructures imagined for certain functions or put in place in society
have unintended effects, break their promises, do the opposite intended
effect, or even forbid the smooth functioning of society.
We are interested in paper abstracts that address the following questions.
They include, but not limited to:
What are the sociotechnical imaginaries of an infrastructure project being
examined and how might the infrastructure produce unanticipated outcomes
and unexpected consequences that were not imagined by the planners and
designers of the infrastructure?
When infrastructures fail or disrupt the smooth functioning of societies
what improvisations are being carried out to address the failures and
disruptions?
What infrastructural politics is at play when a certain infrastructure is
being conceived, designed, and built and who would the infrastructure
benefit most in reality? Relatedly, what sociopolitical role does a
particular infrastructure hold in the society in which it is being built?
How are the promises and imagined benefits of an infrastructure project
kept and how do these complicate the initial infrastructural imagination?
How are state-led and non-state-led infrastructure development projects
differ in their imaginations and implementations?
Submission of Abstracts
Paper abstracts should include a title, an abstract (250 words maximum),
and a short bio-note including institutional affiliation (max 100 words)
for submission by 30th September 2024. Please also include a statement
confirming that your proposed paper has not been published or committed
elsewhere and that you are willing to revise the version of your paper
presented at the workshop for potential inclusion in an edited volume or a
journal special issue. Please submit your paper abstract and other
requested details using the following Google Form link
.
Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by mid-October 2024. Invited
authors will have to submit a working paper (about 4,000-6,000 words) by
2nd January 2025. These drafts will be circulated to fellow invitees and
discussants in advance for peer review comments. This workshop will be
conducted in person. NUQ will provide invited participants full roundtrip
airfare, three nights of accommodation, and food during the workshop in
Doha.
Workshop Convenors
Anto Mohsin
Assistant Professor, Liberal Arts Program, Northwestern Qatar
Rajiv K. Mishra
Assistant Professor, Communication and Liberal Arts Program, Northwestern
Qatar
Contact Information
Virginia Naag
virginia.naag@northwestern.edu
--
Rajiv K. Mishra, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in Residence
Communication & Liberal Arts Programs
Northwestern University in Qatar
NU-Q Directory: https://shorturl.at/fizIJ
Digital Studies Group, Special Issue:
https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/stsa/25/3
The Collective for the Political Determinants of Health,
https://shorturl.at/fzAHT
Global Qualitative Sociology Network,
https://global-qualitative-sociology.net/
Transdisciplinary Research Cluster on Frugality Studies (TRCFS),
http://trcfrugal.in
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