Swoon…

So this is definitely one of the more cool things to happen in my life…

The kids done good! Ninja OpenIR theorists get mention in THE on open access publishing:

In an independent submission, Paul Kirby of the University of Sussex and Meera Sabaratnam of the University of Cambridge also list retired academics, independent scholars and non-governmental organisation researchers as among the academic “poor” who might suffer in a model where universities pay publishing costs.

via Times Higher Education – High price of gold: How early career researchers will suffer.

3 – 6 April 2013
ISA San Francisco

#Provisional title
It’s kicking off… everywhere? Diffusion, resistance and the post-political.

#Call for panel participants
With the global financial crisis now in its fourth year, a host of horizontally-organised antagonisms from the Indignad@s to #OccupyDataran have emerged to challenge the traditional institutions of world order. It is perhaps no wonder that scholars and commentators are debating the extent to which it is necessary or appropriate to identify lines of similarity and commonality among these struggles. Neither is it surprising that some may express reservations concerning these emerging analyses as risking the subsumption and universalization of that which might best be approached as singular. Yet these debates emerge simultaneous to events and uprisings, and the strategies and tactics of current struggles are still very much in development. In response to the ISA CfP, the panel will ask, indeed, how desirable is specificity and congruity in the diffusion of ideas? Who specifically are the agents involved in such movements, and what causal mechanisms carry out, as well as block diffusion? Furthermore, what are the predicted outcomes of the diffusion of ideas, energies, emotions, and desires emerging from the Occupy movement?

The ongoing rise of social struggle predicted by the Social Unrest Index in the International Labour Organisation’s 2012 World of Work Report means that governments have strong incentives to depoliticise issues of rapidly rising unemployment, austerity measures and cuts in public spending, pressures on immigration law, and the rise in punitive government sanctions and policing. How are specific strategies of depoliticisation emerging, and how can these be revealed as obstacles to diffusion amongst resistance movements? This panel, avoiding theoretical or disciplinary boundaries, will seek to examine recent movements in light of global pressures and the philosophical challenges arising from them. What exactly changed to bring forth new energies? To what degree can background conditions and experiences be claimed to be shared? To what extent have recent social movements sacrificed transformative potential, for inclusivity? Indeed, in a world where the sphere of political participation looks increasingly bulimic, to what extent does the strategic refusal of the movements (as yet) to pose themselves as a constituted or final subjectivity, represent a remedy or a hindrance in the increasingly formidable project of global democratic renewal?

The organizers of this panel wish to invite proposals for papers on any of the above questions or related themes.

#Submissions
Please submit a 200/250 word abstract to Nicholas Kiersey <kiersey@ohio.edu> and Phoebe Moore <P.Moore@salford.ac.uk> no later than Thursday, May 24. Should we receive a strong number of proposals, we will be happy to coordinate splitting the submissions over a number of panels.

#Dissemination
Please note that this CfP is being issued in the context of recent events and critical discussions associated with the #occupyirtheory movement, and in anticipation of further such discussions at ISA-BISA in Edinburgh and the Millennium Conference in London later this year. As such, our goal would be to evolve this proposal into a book length volume entitled (provisionally) ‘Occupy World Politics’.

If like me you are scratching your head over this sudden surge in KONY postings all over the social media sphere, you could do worse than check out the mighty Robin Cameron’s compilation of useful posts weighing up the various sides to the issue. This meme harms! Do be sure to check out the KONY Drinking Game link, too!

Exercise caution with KONY 2012 | This Blog Harms.

The Definitive ‘Kony 2012′ Drinking Game | Wronging Rights.

This looks a little similar to our JCGS issue, which will be out soon, but definitely a great opportunity to go into more detail on the #occupy movements in general…

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14742837.asp

We are producing a special edition on the recent Occupy… movement. Our aim is to publish around a dozen short papers in a ‘virtual issue’, made freely available (open access) on our journal website; around half of these papers will also be printed in the hard copy of the journal. Given the timeliness of Occupy… events, we intend to collate this edition quickly, for publication in summer 2012 (volume 11 issue 3). Continue reading →

Kafka, Huxley and Orwell used speculative work to highlight complex political issues which went unaddressed by standard genres. The best academic work in this field does this too, using non-traditional themes and issues as imaginative sources by which to open up fields of enquiry. Michael Shapiro, Cynthia Weber, Jutta Weldes, Iver Neumann, China Miéville and others focus on big, important issues: power and the production of knowledge; identity and representation; the blurriness of reality and fiction. In contrast, Drezner’s book serves up the same old stories, told by the same old theories. By the end of the book, I was not even sure how much he knew about zombies, at least not beyond the recent vogue for Anglo-American books and films on the subject.

via The Living Dead: On the Strange Persistence of Zombie International Relations « The Disorder Of Things.