from Salford's Dr Moore-Carter:
The Future, and Praxis of Decent Work conference
14 – 15 February 2013
International Center for Development and Decent Work,
Kassel University, Germany
www.icdd.uni-kassel.de
COST Action IS0902: Systemic Risks, Financial Crises and Credit
http://www.worldfinancialcrisis.eu/British International
Studies Association, International Political Economy Group
http://www.bisa-ipeg.org/Call for papers.
The
Financial and Economic Crisis: A Decent Work Response report prepared by the
International Institute for Labour Studies and the Employment Sector and Policy
Integration and Statistics Department Geneva in 2009 indicates that the Decent
Work Agenda should provide a policy framework to stem crises by placing
employment and social protection at the heart of ‘extraordinary fiscal stimulus
measures’ which can both protect vulnerable people, and reactivate investment
and demand in economies.
The International Labour Organisation’s World of
Work Report 2012 forecasts a global unemployment rate of 6.1 per cent in 2012,
with total world unemployment rising from 196 million in 2011 to 202 million in
2012. In this context, and with the rise in austerity measures which cannot
guarantee growth but which have already triggered social disruption and harm,
this conference will explore the concept of decent work and search for a praxis
of decent work in all countries, all contexts, and for all people.
Guy
Ryder, an experienced trade unionist, was elected as the ILO’s new Director
General on 28th May 2012, to take office in September, and he has stated his
commitment to prioritise people and the world of work (Ryder, 2012). In June
2012, India, Brazil and South African signed a long term Declaration of Intent
in a number of areas including development and cooperation, and labour, which is
explicitly designed to further the Decent Work Agenda, aiming toward creating
jobs, guaranteeing rights at work, extending social protection and the promotion
of social dialogue, with gender equality as a core objective. These types of
initiatives indicate a continuation of the relevance of a concept that was
coined by Juan Somavia, Director General 1999 – September 2012,
but the global climate of strained governance continues to challenge the
possibilities for decent work in developed and developing countries
alike.
The ILO’s new Director General faces a Eurozone
crisis, rising unemployment, a spate of emergency crisis-driven labour policy
deregulation that has often not been passed with consent from relevant social
partners, and the dramatic rise in precarity and nonstandard
employment which impacts lives in all corners of the world. Several governments
across the European Union, including Portugal, Spain, Hungary, and the United
Kingdom, have recently passed emergency labour motions and reforms using the
rationale of austerity to decentralise collective
bargaining, disempower temporary workers, and increase working
time for less remuneration, in many cases via Memoranda of Understanding passed
in consultation and consent with the Troika (the European Commission, the
European Central Bank and the IMF) (Clauwaert and
Schomann, 2012). Nonetheless the ‘international consensus’ remains
committed to securing ongoing decent work, and labour law is expected to provide
the theatre for appropriate labour standards and rights despite labour law
modernisation (Faioli, 2010).
The conference invites papers
around these issues, which may involve questions around the workings and
structure of the International Labour Organisation, the world of work in the
current context of global recession, issues surrounding social unrest as linked
to rising unemployment, and the nature of international labour standards. The
concept of decent work is in crisis and this conference is a call for praxis
around these issues.
(Moore-Carter)Invited and confirmed
participants include delegates from the ICDD, the International Labour
Organisation, and the Global Labour Institute. Conference will take place at the
ICDD in Kassel.
Paper abstract deadline: 15 November 2012
Send 200
word abstracts, with complete affiliation details to:
decentworkconference@gmail.com
Notification/programme: early
December 2012
Paper deadline (if available): 1 February
2013
Organisers:
Dr Phoebe V Moore-Carter (Salford University, IPEG
Convenor)
Dr Charles Dannreuther (COST and University of
Leeds)
Christian Möllmann (ICDD Kassel University)
COST Action IS0902: Systemic Risks, Financial Crises and Credit
Popular music has always been affiliated with physical places, both literal and imaginary. It is one of the ways that the inhabitants of those locations define both their residence and themselves. To borrow the components of the title of Benedict Anderson’s widely read book, one of the most telling ways communities imagine themselves is acoustically. An indissoluble connection exists between musical expression and geography, both the landscape of actual locale and that conjured up by the mind. The persistent academic interest in the notion of scenes reflects this set of circumstances. So too does the research that examines how the state defines itself sonically and, in some cases, pursues its objectives with the assistance of acoustic apparatus, as in the torture of prisoners by a barrage of undesired sound. In addition, there are those composers, performers, compositions and performance practices that are thought to be quintessential expressions of states, peoples or defined populations.
This conference intends to examine this set of propositions across any possible array of musical forms, cultural practices, physical locations and imagined environments. It wishes to interrogate the ways in which geography and musicology can be affiliated.
This PhD
students-led initiative embarked on an intensive academic debate concerning the role
of media convergence in the democratisation of the globe. The conference papers
scrutinised the role of new media technologies and particularly those facilitated
by the Internet in empowering citizens to challenge dominant hegemony. The
conference critically examined the role of popular social media interactive
platforms which have permeated every aspect of everyday life and which are
credited with major political changes that have taken place in recent times. These are, for example The Arab Spring uprising and the Occupy Movements, which were replicated
in Nigeria, London and Wall Street. 
This
conference had presentations from panels of PhD researchers from all over the
world, showcasing their research and generating questions and answer
sessions. What emerged from all the papers was
the interest in the role of modern communication technologies in giving the
demos
(people) cratos
(power), in what the world calls democracy.
In the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government "of the people, by
the people, and for the people" (Young 1996).
Dr. Andrew Robinson is a critical theorist and activist
working on a range of topics around social movements, radical theory, oppressive
discourse, global power-structures and everyday life. He is co-author of
Power, Conflict and Resistance in the Contemporary World, which applies
Deleuzian theory to the analysis of social movement networks, reactive networks
and the world-system. He has two dozen published articles and papers including
“Symptoms of a New Politics: Networks, Minoritarianism and the Social Symptom in
Zizek, Deleuze and Guattari”, “Living in Smooth Space: Deleuze, Spivak and the
Subaltern”, and pieces on Gramsci, Zizek, Laclau, Virilio, Negri, Sartre,
post-left anarchy, global justice, the Zapatistas, anarchist theories of war,
social movements in Manipur, revolutionary subjectivity, US foreign policy, and
global exclusion.
Since Horton and Wohl’s recognition of the para-social
relationship, there has been an interest in understanding audiences beyond
commodification models. But while the relationship has long been named, little
is understood about the process from ‘inside’ the presenter experience: what
audiences mean to presenters, how the relationship is constructed and becomes
real in the absence of face-to-face contact and when, for the most part, the
presenter can only know the audience as an abstraction or a
projection.
