11th GSA Conference 2012
Globalizing cultures and identities: Sport, lifestyle, heritage - July 5th–7th 2012
The conference will be held at Manchester Metropolitan University – where the GSA was first established in 2000 – in conjunction with the Department of Sociology.
The association has invited four keynote speakers who have an internationally recognized expertise in fields relating to our main theme. All have agreed to come. These are as follows:
- Professor Richard Giulianotti, The University of Loughborough
- Professor David Inglis, The University of Aberdeen
- Professor Sharon MacDonald, The University of Manchester
- The migration and /or cross fertilization of sport practices, institutions and celebrities across cultural and national boundaries and their wider socio-cultural impact.
- The diffusion, role and take-up of globalizing health practices and the mechanisms through which this occurs;
- How different kinds of skilled transnational migrants – working in the arts, film, TV, theatre, popular entertainment and music etc – are influenced by and in turn shape the dominant cultural, political and other forms evident in the host society;
- How poor economic migrants, who retain strong ties to their societies and cultures of birth, nevertheless forge multiple identities through engagements with migrants from societies different from their own or with members of the host society via participation in leisure activities and lifestyle activities;
- The borrowing, mixing and/or hybridization of genres, styles or practices across ethnic/national borders in any field of the arts, film, music, literature, theatre, dance etc – and the origins, vehicles and outcomes of such cultural mobilities;
- Becoming or being cosmopolitan through engaging in globalizing leisure or lifestyle practices;
- The significance of the heritage and tourism industries as ways of encountering the cultural other and of exploring and substantiating past and current identities;
- Global or globalizing lifestyles and identities and their possible links to the expression of varying forms of political protest.
In addition, Robert Holton, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Trinity College, Dublin, will hold a special session of “meet the author” in order to discuss his recent book on global finance.
We are also organizing panels led by other leading scholars in this area.
We have already found a publisher who has expressed a willingness to publish a volume of readings based on some of the most interesting papers given during the conference.
We invite scholars, postgraduates and other interested lay-persons to submit abstracts by March 31st 2012 at the latest. We are approaching a publisher with a view to producing at least one reader incorporating the most interesting papers from the conference.
Outline of themes.
Recent research and theory have expanded our understanding of global practices that increasingly shape the way we conduct our lives, construct our identities and affiliations and pursue our hopes and aspirations. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fields of leisure and the construction of our everyday personas and lifestyles. Here, innumerable fragments of other people’s cultures flow into our lives through the Internet, films, music, art genres, travel and holidays, health and sport practices, heritage experiences, TV, magazines and newspapers, advertising, branding and consumerism, fashion, foods and gastronomic repertoires – among others. Sometimes they empower individuals to seek other worlds and identities. At others, they generate resources with which to construct our preferred life biographies or alter communities. The possibilities not just for personal but also for social transformation resulting from these experiences are endless. Through globalizing cultures, too, some find ways to break free from their original embeddedness within particular ethnic/national boundaries and form global allegiances and lifestyles for which there is no precedent.
In contrast, the circumstances that engender indifference and/or resistance to globalizing cultures are equally valid as themes. Thus, we also welcome papers that explore the limits to, and possibilities for, developing a global consciousness or varieties of cosmopolitanism as outcomes of global cultural and lifestyle experiences and/or which critique concepts in this field. Although the primary emphasis here is on cultural experiences linked to the construction of leisure and lifestyles, we also welcome papers which explore how exposure to globalizing work, religious or political practices are changing people’s identities.
Possible directions and themes: guidelines
Please send your abstracts to Paul Kennedy: p.kennedy@mmu.ac.uk by March 31st 2012.
To register and pay for the conference visit MMU’s ‘On-line store’ and look for the GSA conference box. (This will be added soon and the address will be posted here )
