- News code: 16320
The International Association for Media and Communication Research invites submission of abstracts for its 2011 academic conference to be held at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, Turkey, from July 13 to 17, 2011. The general theme of the conference is 'Cities, Creativity, Connectivity .
'As the noted urban sociologist Robert Park once wrote, the city today is the world we created and are condemned to live in, while remaking ourselves in the process. Cities have always been experimental sites of connectivity through creativity. Cities and their interlocutors: artists, intellectuals, government officers, and activists, have attempted to overcome the historical and contemporary ruptures through creative acts and enactments.
Every corner, every stone in every city the world over bears the traces of ruptures in memory, identity and ways of living and imagining. The memories we excavate are reminders of pasts we long for, as in nostalgia, or events we would wish to forget, in moving ahead towards a more captivating future. The instruments we employ to communicate and connect these urban strands often come from the worlds of the Arts, whether displayed on the streets, in the historical houses of religion, in the old abandoned industrial premises, or in the newly built monumental art houses and museums .Networking, mobility and large scale flow of goods and ideas through the internet are the new and coveted phenomena of the 21st Century.
The creativity and connectivity find new lively representations beyond the conventional physical spaces. A variety of societal groups and citizens now enjoy access to a plethora of virtual worlds while conceptualizing, producing, sharing and exhibiting their creative works, ideas and dreams to the world. The globalized networks of culture and creative industries, mobilization of artworlds and international collaborations are now considered the engines of cosmopolitan urban experiences and transformation. Cities as distinct from each other as New York, London, Berlin, Beijing, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur and Istanbul invest their futures in economies of creativity and communication .
The conference aims to assess the present state of the city, interrogate the processes that generated the present, and evaluate the future(s) that lay ahead. As citizens, what are the rights, norms and standards we desire? What does global connectivity offer to the riches and uncertainties of urban everyday life? What are the aesthetics and economies of creativity in which we invest the future of the city? What are the communicative possibilities that cities afford and hinder? These and other questions await our scholarly responses and intellectual interventions. A wide-ranging set of issues, sub-themes and topics confront us for exploration and interrogation, including but not limited to the following:
Creative and cultural industries in a globalized economy
Global city, connectivity and communication
Art, culture and transnational communication
Cosmopolitanism as an ideal and practice
Economies of art, media and creativity
Media, democratization and urban life
Hybridities, identities, creativity
Migration: communication, connectivity and creativity
Local productions in a global city
Communication inequality: rural and urban trends
Social networks, connectivity and creativity
Digital artworlds and virtual connectivity
Social responsibility, personhood and communication
Communication, Rights and duties of citizens in the emerging global order
Communities, connectivity and marginalized groups
Economics and the cost of urban connectivities
Gender, culture and communication
Source : IAMCR
