October 25th 2024

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona (Spain). In Person.

Deadline: July 15, 2024

GAME group - Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Our conference proposal is grounded in the work of David Morley, emphasizing the importance of paying attention to the materialities and contexts of mobile communications in relation to our everyday, always situated life: "context is no 'optional extra' which we might study at the end of the analytic process but rather, is best seen as a 'starting point' which has determining effects on both production and consumption" (2017, 2). In a recent book, Morley, along with Annette Hill, Maren Hartmann, and Magnus Andersson, introduces the concept of "mobile socialities" as a generative concept to reclaim the anthropological tradition of cultural and media reception studies and incorporate them into mobilities, reflecting on people in motion and the role of mobile media in everyday life.

The paradigm of mobilities has opened up the field of social sciences to explore the role of movement in the constitution and functioning of institutions and social practices in recent decades (Urry, 2007): the constant flow of people, objects, money, communications, and ideas. These are physical or imaginary movements that also involve complex combinations of networks, relationships, technologies, and systems, not limited to fixed spaces.

This mobility paradigm is defined as a non-media-centric approach and suggests moving away from solely identifying communicative processes and practices with the phenomenon of media and technologies. From this perspective, mobile communications allow experiencing everyday life as a continuum that problematizes the fragmentation of the public and private, production and reproduction, as well as the division between spaces and territories. The relational aspect is crucial and necessary to emphasize in a current climate and migration crisis: what happens in one place affects another, and people's experiences of life, their relationship with ideas, imaginaries and objects are very different, intersectional, interdependent, changing and dynamic.

The aim of the conference is to contextualize mobilities and think about them in connection with socialities, representations, and discourses of popular culture, a central element of our contemporary societies, and the sense of belonging that these mobile communications enhance in communities, territories, cultures and traditions.

We invite participants to explore mobilities in relation to the following general themes:

• Socialities, Migrations, and Geographies of Mobility
  
• Imaginaries and Representations of Mobility
  
• Everyday Life and Mobile Communications
  
• Mobilities, Belonging and Identities
  
• Power and Mobility/Immobility
  
• Consumption, Mobilities and Domestication
  
• Media Industries, Regulation and Mobilities
  

Keynotes confirmed: 

• Dr. Annette Hill (Jönköping University)
  
• Dr. David Morley (Goldsmiths University)
  

We invite abstracts of 400-500 words, highlighting the paper's focus and contribution to the theme. Please, include a brief (100-word) author bio along with the abstract using these template. 

Anticipated timeline: 

Abstracts and bios due: July 15, 2024

Acceptance sent: Mid-August 2024

Contributions can be in Catalan/Spanish and English

Conference site: https://symposium.uoc.edu/112598/section/49126/2nd-cultural-studies-conference-mobilities-in-context-popular-culture-communications-and-socialitie.html

For inquiries, more information and submission of abstracts/bios please contact GAME at game@uoc.edu