Mapping Technologies, Making Worlds: Facing and Interfacing Challenges
Annual RINGS Conference 24-26 October 2024
Call for papers
With the advent of capitalism, always gendered and racialised, as a mode of production, profound changes have taken place in the ways in which various societies, human relations and ecosystems have evolved (Moore, 2016, Kaplan 2009). Technological development has always been integral to the directions and configurations of capitalism, as it has evolved over the last three centuries. Further, the globalisation of capitalism, with the imperialist phase of European expansionism, followed by US-American expansionism as well as later, in the emergence of Chinese state capitalism, has brought technology to the front and centre of social, economic and political relations at every level (Lewis, 2022). These include individual interpersonal relations (e.g., through labour relations, social media), international relations (e.g., in the terms and conditions for technology transfer from the global North to the global South), and putatively ecological reasons (‘clean energy’, carbon footprint). One of the aims of this conference will be to explore and critically analyse the impact of technology as the gendered carrier of global capital across time and space.
However, alongside the more common understanding of technology as the tangible, practical tools that ostensibly facilitate human ‘well-being’, we understand technology to include the (gendered) technologies of rule and governance (Scott, 2011, Kelan 2009, Haraway 1991, de Lauretis 1987, Foucault, 1975;). These include a wide range of macro and micro systems, theories and practices of enumeration, classification (gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion), categorisation, coercion and surveillance; bureaucratic mechanisms that regulate economic flows, the extent of access (or not) to which sustains, reproduces and develops these practices; and the ideological and epistemological configurations that are invoked to rationalise, popularise and justify them (Agrawal, 2005). Together, they constitute the panoptical state and corporate apparatuses that enhance ways of controlling populations as well as the distribution of facilities, goods and services to the populations in question.
These mechanisms inflect the infinite micro practices of the self that are in turn institutionally ordained within and by the family, the community, the market, and the state (Althusser, 1971). In both cases, discourses of ‘well-being’ may be mobilised. This is evident in issues of war, conflict, displacement, migration and marginalisation (physical, emotional and economic) which are also products of global capital and technology. The ethical issues become multiple and pressing in the context of the industrialisation and professionalisation of war and conflict.
An important contemporary focus is the impact on human lives of the digital world, including recent developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality technologies, as well as of Reproductive Technologies. Issues of livelihood, personhood, autonomy, freedom and the very survival of the human species, have been raised in these contexts, around questions of truth, knowledge, epistemology, language loss and the nature of power (Suleyman 2023, Tegmark, 2017). Interestingly, some of these anxieties are caused by the many digital mechanisms that assist in building solidarities – specifically community-based solidarities, cultures of care, contesting avowed truths and truth claims, disclosing classified information and so on. Cryptocurrency has opened up an entirely new set of ramifying issues.
Objectives of the Conference
This conference aims to bring scholars from different disciplines to assess and deliberate on the impact of technology globally, regionally and in the dynamics between them, especially in the context of the pressing socio-economic, ethical and cultural concerns of a predominantly capitalist world. A significant question here is the extent to which technology works, and can work, to erase as much as identify and enable the gendered angularities of the many systems and institutions that uniquely grid our societies. The conference also aims to look at the way the Global South has adapted and responded to the challenges of global capital and its multifarious technologies, in specifically gendered terms. The project of the conference, in this sense, is to explore the gendered impact of technology/ies, under various forms of capitalism, on societies globally; as well as, conversely, to explore the ways in which extant processes of gendering also shape the reception and reproduction of technology/ies in those societies.
Possible Themes
Some of the themes that may be explored could be:
1. the development of new identities in the global world – the global citizen on the one hand, and the rise of parochialism as a reaction to it on the other – and the facilitation of both by technology;
2. technologies of the State such as surveillance, the management and control of populations, the regulation of ideas, the guarding of national borders and so on;
3. the uses of technology to surveil, categorise, marginalise and even incarcerate certain sections of its population;
4. the Military Industrial complex, Technology and the State;
5. the growth, significance and impact of ARTs;
6. the significance of cybernetic and other human-interface sectors (e.g., the Neuralink programme);
7. the use of social media technologies to reshape political spaces, public spheres and the gendered and racialised languages of their denizenship;
8. the impact of technology on forms, mechanisms and modes of articulating and organising feminist and other kinds of resistance;
9. technology and modes of narrating memory, history and (gendered) selves, in their relations to and locations in global capitalist sites of publication – as voice, script, image or digital code – e.g., the regulation of platforms like X (Twitter), Instagram;
10. the relations between technology and the use of dis- and mis- information to paralyse action, often through surfeit of it;
11. the anthropomorphisation, and especially the sexualisation, of technology, in all its senses, for commercial as well as regulatory intents;
12. technologies of care: exploring the gendered professionalisation of care-giving and the relations of such professionalisation with the emergence of new technological forms such as AI – witness the phenomenon of AI psychological counsellors, for instance;
13. AI and global and local labour markets.
These (and/or other relevant) themes may be explored individually, as well as in their intersections with each other, through individual paper presentations, panel discussions, posters, lecture-demonstrations (or lec-dems), or any other format, the proposal for which may be discussed with the conference organisers. Since the conference proposes to be both virtual and in-person, proposals must bear in mind the advantages and limitations of the format they choose, in the medium they specify.
This call is directed to RINGS members, but non-members may also submit abstracts. However, member organisations are encouraged to invite others towards extending membership, with particular emphasis on strengthening the participation of those from countries in the Global South. RINGS, the International Research Association of Institutions of Advanced Gender Studies (ringsgender.org) is a global association of centres of advanced gender studies. The participating centres span Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas.
The following RINGS assembly meetings and conferences have been held since the inauguration of RINGS in October 2014 at Örebro University: Prague (2015); Cape Town (2016); Reykjavik (2017); Lisbon (2018); Tallinn (2019); Budapest (2021); Durban (2022); Paderborn (2023).
Practicalities
1. Host: The Centre for Gender, Culture and Social Processes (CGCSP), St Stephen’s College, Delhi University, India
2. Venue: St Stephen’s College, Delhi University
3. Registration fee:
Participants from India: Rs. 1000/- for a faculty participant, Rs. 500/- for research scholars, and free for students, variable by location.
Global Participants: 100 Euros. The fee will support the RINGS Solidarity Fund. The RINGS Solidarity Fund is a limited fund to assist scholars from the Global South in particular. Those in need of financial assistance to participate in the conference may apply to the Solidarity Fund. Assistance from the solidarity fund is subject to sufficient availability of funds. Please contact (ringsconf2024@ststephens.edu) for possible assistance.
4. Accommodation and travel: Accommodation and travel costs are to be covered by the participants. The hosts will suggest accommodation options.
5. Deadlines and important dates:
Abstracts for all proposals (whether paper presentations or other formats) should be sent on the link provided immediately below by 15th May 2024, 11:59 PM IST. Please fill in the required details carefully. The abstract should be between 250-300 words. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe_H7oHf1JogDD_Ir2U1SdTyNbMao2txHjG3WCo4n_44jYtUw/viewform?usp=sf_link
6. Acceptance of proposals will be notified by 28th May 2024.
7. Details for registration will be notified shortly on the St. Stephen’s College website.
8. Requests for financial assistance from the solidarity fund should ideally be submitted at the latest by the beginning of July.
9. The organisers intend to publish the papers and other distributable material for circulation before the conference to facilitate better discussion and feedback. Soft copies of drafts of the same may be submitted by 15 September 2024.
10. Contact for inquiries: Centre for Gender, Culture and Social Processes, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India. Email ID: ringsconf2024@ststephens.edu
11. Specifications for Individual Presentations:
The presentation time for individual presentations will be twenty minutes. This will be followed by discussion.
12. Conference Committee:
Local Organising Committee:
• Karen Gabriel, Department of English and Director, Centre for Gender, Culture and Social Processes, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi
• Pia David, Department of Political Science, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi
• Sudipto Basu, Department of History, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi
• Apoorva Dimri, Department of English, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi
• Jeena Jacob, Department of History, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi
• Abhinav Bhardwaj, Department of English, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi
• Vaibhav Dwivedi, Department of English, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi
• Alia Zaman, Department of Political Science, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi
• Sabina Kazmi, Department of History, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi
• Alphy Geever, Department of Philosophy, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi
International Advisory Committee:
• Karen Gabriel, Director, Centre for Gender, Culture and Social Processes (CGCSP), St Stephen’s College, Delhi University
• Deevia Bhana, Professor, University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa
• Jeff Hearn, Senior Professor, Hanken School of Economics, Finland
• Tamara Shefer, Professor of Women and Gender Studies, University of the Western Cape
• Kathrin Thiele, Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
References
• Agrawal, Arun (2005) Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects.
Durham: Duke University Press. Also available online at
https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/3896/environmentality-
technologies-of-government-and-the-making-of-subjects.pdf?
• Althusser, Louis (1971) ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)’, in Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press
• De Lauretis, Teresa. (1987) Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
• Foucault, Michel (1995 [1977]) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage
• Haraway, Donna (1991) "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York; Routledge.
• Kaplan, David M. (2009), “Technology and Capitalism”, A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology, (eds.) J. K. B. Olsen, S. A. Pedersen and V. F. Hendricks, Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
• Kelan, Elisabeth K. (2009) “The Politics of Gender and Technology”, A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology, (eds.) J. K. B. Olsen, S. A. Pedersen and V. F. Hendricks, Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
• Lewis, Colin M. (2022) ‘Capitalism, Imperialism and the Emergence of an Industrialized Global Economy’, in Catherine Casson and Philipp Robinson Rössner, eds. Evolutions of Capitalism: Historical Perspectives, 1200–2000. Bristol: Bristol University Press
• Moore, Jason W. (2016) Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso
• Scott, Bruce R. (2011) Capitalism: Its Origins and Evolution as a System of Governance. New York: Springer
• Suleyman, Mustafa (2023), The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma, London: Random House.
• Tegmark, Max (2017) Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf