The goal of this conference is to explore, on the one hand, how Muslim majority societies have been transformed by the processes of globalization, and how, on the other hand, Muslims have conditioned and informed these processes by their participation in or contestation of its institutions. The conference is also informed by a view that conceives globalization as a world historical event without a unidirectional flow and with paradoxical consequences. The conference will explore the political economy of globalization, its cultural productions and their dissemination through new technologies of networking, not as a unidirectional transformative event from the West towards the Rest, but rather as reciprocal and paradoxical processes of social change and cultural transitions.

The aim of the conference is to bring together theorists from politics, law and philosophy to discuss how democracy should be viewed in international law and morality, and how the presence of democratic and other deliberative institutions should affect how States are assessed.

• Can the flow of information across borders be controlled? If so, how?
• Whose interests are going to be affected by flows of information across borders?
• Who will be empowered and who will lose influence and authority?
• What role can or should law play in securing freedoms, rights, and democratic accountability as individuals, groups, and nations struggle over control of information flows?
• What lessons can we learn about how to regulate information flow from past experience with other kinds of flow across borders – for example, flows of goods, services, people, and capital?

There is renewed urgency in questioning how to balance the rights of diverse minority and majority religious and ethnic groups (nations, so to speak) within a state, in a world where the nation-state is still a fictive norm in and around which institutions are built. What are the problems and strengths inherent in the concept of minority rights as distinct from individual rights? When is multi-culturalism the best approach? Or how far are its critics right that it tends to institutionalize, or even increase existing divisions, and give power within communities to leaders who are not necessarily representative?

In the wake of several recent controversial cinematic interpretations of biblical texts, and in the context of the current international political uses of scriptures from different traditions, this conference hopes to foster enlightened debate about what constitutes responsible interpretation. Are there moral imperatives for film makers and producers of popular media to promote inter-religious understanding? If all interpretations serve specific interests, are there nonetheless hermeneutical and moral guidelines that should constrain the representation of religion and religious differences in popular media? Academic papers addressing relevant issues from any discipline are welcome. Papers that touch on hermeneutical and ethical issues are especially welcome.

• Construction Processes of Argentine Identities: rituals as resources for the auto-inclusion in "Argentine" collectivities.
• Myths, Rituals and Collective Events in the Worlds of the Gaucho and Tango: the symbolic representation of the past through performative activities. Spaces of face-to-face sociability for the construction of social meanings and bonds.
• Veiling Metaphors and the Use of Lie within Argentine Society: the marginal origins of the symbols of gaucho and tango. Processes of social control within power relations and sources of protest and resistance of the counter-culture.
• The Integrative Power of Collective Symbols: cultural phenomena as symbolic constructions: "bridges" between individual and society/collectivity.

The conference intends to explore the philosophical implications of religious diversity, with special attention to the particularism/inclusivism debate.

• Inequalities through time
• Social inequalities
• Welfare state development
• Economic justice – global and domestic pursuits
• Transitions and institutions
• What is an institution?
• Institutional change and challenges
• States and societies in transition – regime change, rapid social change
• Identity, ideas and history
• Idea diffusion
• Re-thinking identity
• Use and mis-use of historical examples
• Conceptualizing boundaries

Equality, justice, and social change all have their roots in our perceptions of fairness, and the very ability to perceive fairness is itself rooted in the behavior of our animal ancestors. Understanding what drives those perceptions, and examining how issues of fairness have played out through history, is key to effecting lasting change. This conference brings scientists, policy makers, historians, philosophers, and economists together in a public forum, to explore research on perceptions of fairness and consider historical case studies in the context of that science.

The ASN Convention welcomes proposals on a wide range of topics related to national identity, nationalism, ethnic conflict, state-building and the study of empires in Central/Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Eurasia, and adjacent areas. Disciplines represented include political science, history, anthropology, sociology, economics, geography, socio-linguistics, and related fields.
The 2005 Convention will feature a section devoted to theoretical approaches to nationalism, from any of the disciplines listed above. We are welcoming theory-focused and comparative proposals, provided that the issues examined are relevant to a truly comparative understanding of nationalism-related issues.

• Militarism and the Gendering of Empire
• Racism, Racialization, and Processes of Differentiation
• Narratives of Empire and Resistance: Memory, History, and Forgetting
• Neoliberalism, Globalization, and the Marketing of Democracy
• The Spatialization of Empire and Resistance
• Psychopathology of Imperialism
• Pedagogies of Empire
• Forms of Everyday Struggle
• Aesthetics of Empire and Resistance
• Identity and Affinity: Solidarity and the Politics of Affiliation
• The War at Home: Security, Policing, and Criminalization
• Possibilities and Problematics of Decolonization
• Exit and Exile
• Dis/continuities of Empire: The Historiography of Empire and Resistance
• Empire Building and Occupation
• Re-Imagining Democracy

• Consideration of the relevance of international human rights in developing a children’s rights movement in the United States, particularly in light of the perceived political strength of the religious right
• Explorations of areas of intersection, agreement or contradiction between human rights and children's rights as expressed in other legal cultures
• Examinations of how the Convention on the Rights of the Child has made a difference in the development of children's rights in countries where it has been implemented
• Descriptions of how culture, ethnicity, race, and class might complicate the internationalization of human rights concepts as applied to children
• The potential for feminist theory to contribute to the acceptance of children's rights as part of basic human rights
• The limitations of constitutional and other theoretical discourses with regard to children
• The limitations of the concept of "rights" with regard to children or the difference between children's "rights" versus "interests"
• The importance of developing ideas of responsibility for children beyond those applied to parents
• Comparative considerations of the influence (or lack thereof) of religions and religious mandates on the implementation of human rights and children's rights in democratic societies

• Conflict and Creativity
• Urbanism and life
• Fashion and society
• Film and modernity
• Money and exchange
• Religion and individuality

• Ancient Empire
• Myths and Memories of Empire
• The Collapse of Empire and the Rise of Nations
• The American Empire and Post-Imperialism
• Empire and Representation – Art and Image

The conference will examine the spatial dynamics of contemporary Europe, particularly the development of non- and trans-national spaces, the changing nature of European borders, and emergent forms of spatial governance, particularly those associated with cities, trans-border regions, pan-European networks, territorial cohesion, and polycentric development. We are particularly interested in the examination of the connection between spaces, borders and governance and the complex dynamics of Europeanization to which they give rise.

• Spectacles of violence
• Crime, banditry, riot
• Intimate, domestic and sexual violence
• Ethnic, communal and religious violence
• Combat
• Honour, feuding and duelling
• Peace-making and arbitration
• Repression, civility and state-building

• How have plural populations been managed by Muslim rulers, and how has pluralism been justified?
• How have Muslims justified or rejected non-Islamic rule?
• What is the intellectual basis of Islamic communism, and of Islamic nationalism?
• What explains the contemporary rise of Islamist ideas in the madrassahs?
• What have been the arguments for and against democracy, and the rule of the most popular? And for and against the rights of minorities, whether Muslim or non-Muslim?
• What is the difference, if any, between Islamic pluralism, or Civil Islam, and universal models of pluralism and civil society?
• What are the pressures of globalisation on pluralist as against normative models of political development?

The conference with leading Iranian scholars will attempt not only to identify the rich resources of Islamic culture, but especially to envisage creatively how these can be deployed in response to the emerging democratic aspirations of its peoples within, and to other political entities in the global context without. After clarifying the issues in the opening day, the conference will proceed in three main steps to study: first, God as the basis of human dignity and the political order, second the relation of religion to the political order, and third the responsibilities of the faiths for the role being played by religion in the world today.

• The socio-political, historical, analytical, psychoanalytical and/or feminist interpretations (impact, reasons, meaning, discourses, practices, liberation, assimilation, identificatory practice, oppression) of the phenomenon of the Muslim veil (burka, tchador, scarf) in society, literature, history
• The deconstruction of the veil's Western discourse (the recent French law), as univocal, rationalist expression of superiority (the evil veil) ignoring its own complicity in the matters of the veil
• The semiotic complexity of the veil (hymen, screen, libidinal tissue, surface, wrappings) as cultural, psychological, religious phenomena

• Ethics and International Politics
• USA: Multiculturalism, Violence and the Future of Democracy
• Labor, Capital and Leadership and Implications for Democracy in Central America, Central Europe and Africa
• Implications of Kinship and Cohorts for Democracy

• Symbolism in natural landscapes (forest, river, mountain, sky, rock, cloud, animal, beach, ocean, wilderness, earth, cave, etc)
• Symbolism in human landscapes (nation, mall, skyscraper, restaurant, garden, hell, heaven, stadium, school, cemetery, prison, temple, pyramid, television, etc)

• The proposed constitution of the EU and the impact of federalist and/or democratic principles
• The opportunities and implications the EU expansion has had or will have on democracy, liberty and international cooperation
• The role or impact the expanded EU has or will have on relations with the United States
• A study on the issue of equal representation of all members of the EU
• The issue of sovereignty in the development of the EU
• Implications for European and state systems of educational institutions, political organizations, judicial organs, and social welfare
• The future process of state accession to the European Union

• biopolitics and potentiality
• sovereignty and states of exception
• constituent and constituted power
• labour mobility, political movements, and exodus
• creative labour and cognitive capitalism
• democracy and forms of life
• materiality and corporeality
• the politics of the voice
• biotechnology, genetics, and kinship
• modernity, multiple modernities and temporality
• metaphysics and post-metaphysical thought

• Indigenous knowledge and its intergenerational transmission
• Aboriginal cultural production and its impact on Canadian identity
• Indigenous perspectives on kinship
• Aboriginal approaches to sustainable development
• Indigenous ethics
• Debates about Aboriginal sovereignty, nationalism and self-determination
• The inclusion and exclusion of Indigenous perspectives in Canadian historiography, cultural theory, jurisprudence and political economy
• The impact of Aboriginal ideas on political and constitutional thought in Canada
• The influence of Indigenous perspectives on Canadian feminist thinking
• Reconciling Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal perspectives in practise

• Bringing the concept of hegemonic masculinities into the study of global politics
• The idea of global politics as a masculinised realm
• Capitalism, globalisation and masculinities
• Critical engagements with the concept of hegemonic masculinities within IR
• The relationship between studies of hegemony and hegemonic masculinity
• The relationship between feminist theorizing and the concept of hegemonic masculinities
• Sites and sightings of hegemonic masculinities in global politics
• Studies of 'masculinised' actors within global politics (militaries, global corporations, foreign policy makers and diplomats, international financial institutions)
• Global media/film/imagery and hegemonic masculine norms/values
• Nationalism and masculinity
• Men and political action in global politics
• Recognising and resisting hegemonic masculinities
• Alternative masculinities operating within global politics
• The contribution of queer theory in challenging hegemonic masculinities
• Feminities and resistances to hegemonic masculinities

• Gender and Conflict
• Gender and the Nation-State
• Intersections of Gender and Sexuality
• Gender and Labor
• Dialogues of Gender across Class and Race
• Gender and Literature
• Gender, Human Rights, and Development
• Influential Scholars of Gender
• Gender and Place
• Gender and Media
• Gender and the Environment

• Issues in Political Theory
• Inclusion, Exclusion and Representation
• Consensus, Agonism and Democracy
• Immigration, Ethnicity and Race
• Identity Politics and Mobilisation
• Modes of Subjectivity and Psychoanalysis

• Group Identities, Individual Differences and Human Rights
• Religious Identity, Difference and Human Rights
• Cultural Identity, Difference and Human Rights
• Identity, Difference and Universal Human Rights
• Globalization, Identity and Human Rights
• Dignity, Difference and Human Rights
• Women's Identity and Human Rights

• post-secondary education
• self-government
• ecological protection
• economic development
• urbanization
• cultural inheritance
• language contact

1. Kontext des Kongresses
• Sorbische (wendische) Siedlungsgebiete in der Lausitz: Minderheiten unter der Dominanz deutscher Sprache und Kultur
• Wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Besonderheiten der über einhundertjährigen Dominanz der Braunkohlenindustrie: Spreewald – Gespräche und Exkursionen in die Lausitz
2. Zur Phänomenologie der dominanten Kultur
• Dominante Kultur als Unkultur der Herrschaft?
• Dominante Kultur und Kapitalismus
• Dominante Kultur und Patriarchat
• Der Traum von Reinheit: Wer will das noch?
• Dominante Kultur und Information
• Dominante Kultur im Vergleich der Kulturen und Religionen
3. Zur Praxis der Interkulturalität
• Eine andere Philosophie ist möglich
• Folklore und kulturelles Selbstbewusstsein
• Interkulturalität und andine Welt
• Der Traum von Reinheit: Wer will das noch?
• Afrikanische und asiatische Kulturen
• Interkulturalität unter den Bedingungen der dominanten Kulturen
4. Provinz in Europa oder Interkulturalität als Chance für ein Europa des Gleichgewichts
• Dominante Kultur und Eurozentrismus
• Minderheiten in Europa
• Europäische Architektur
• Identität als Abgrenzung oder Ausgangspunkt für interkulturelle Kommunikation

• the politics of rule
• the developmental state
• disaster and the postcolonial state
• postcolonial leaders
• scandals of the state (corruption, fundamentalism etc)
• women and the state
• the role and function of civil society

Ziel des Symposiums ist es, der zum Teil sehr hitzig und polemisch geführten Diskussion um Ausländer und Deutsche, Islam, Christentum und Judentum, West und Ost entgegenzuwirken und ein Zeichen für ein friedliches Miteinander in der Gesellschaft zu setzen.

The question of the history of collective identities in colonial Latin America has long been framed by the language and logic of mestizaje in which groups were defined according to degrees of blood mixture. More recent historiography has revealed the importance of other criteria of collective identification – such as community ascriptions, lineage, calidad, or naturaleza – that point to more relational and situational forms of collective self-definition and interaction. The workshop will address three broad themes: the reconfiguration of collective identities across time; their conceptualization and institutionalization; and the social fields of identity formation.

• Technology, genetic engineering and human rights
• Technology and the changing views on privacy
• Technology and the individual
• Historical views on the relationship between techné and the nature of the person
• Transhumanism, Posthumanism and Humanism

A principal aim of the conference is to initiate dialogue between minority and majority feminist researchers as well as activists and policy-makers. We want to address the complexities surrounding contested issues such as »white« and »black«, »majority« and »minority«, human rights and freedom of religious beliefs from a feminist perspective.

Ziel der Konferenz ist es, erstens, Sartres kritischen Beitrag in seinen Diskussionen mit Zeitgenossen sowie den Repräsentanten der verschiedensten Strömungen wie Marxismus, Phänomenologie, Psychoanalyse und Strukturalismus zu erörtern, zweitens, die mannigfaltige Rezeption des sartreschen Werks nachzuvollziehen, und drittens, bestimmte Prämissen seines Denkens, die Lösungsansätze zu aktuellen philosophischen und sozialpolitischen Fragestellungen liefern könnten, sichtbar zu machen. Speziell berücksichtigt werden die axiologischen Aspekte seines Werks, wie z.B. die Thematisierung der Freiheit als Grundlage und Ziel der Ethik, das Problem der Anerkennung des Anderen, die Werteproblematik im Kontext der europäischen Erweiterung usw.

1. Diskursive Produktionsweisen von Erinnerung
• Ethik der Erinnerung
• Konstruierte Heimat
• Visuelle Erinnerungskulturen
2. Nationale und transnationale Erinnerungsräume
• Namibias Deutschland
• Reisende Erinnerungen
• Wahrheit und Geschichte

• Concepts and theories
• The ethical administrator: comparative and contemporary perspectives
• Integrity and ethics management
• New developments and the ethics of governance
• The dark side of ethics

• Religion and Ecology
• Human Rights and Social Justice
• Women and Religion
• Toward a Global Ethic
• Practice Across Traditions
• Catholic-Buddhist Relations
• Religious Responses to Violence
• Religion and Globalization

• The quality of life as the human realization of the conditions of justice and peace
• National and cultural identity as creative expressions of a people
• Globalization as the search for cooperation between civilizations

The workshop will explore how knowledge of religion has been constructed in colonial and post-colonial East and Southeast Asia. We will expand the ideas of post-colonial theory to include any relationship of center and periphery, and encourage topics from the 18th century to the present day.

• theoretical and conceptual questions
• political relations
• economic linkages
• social and cultural relations
• intra/inter ethnic interactions
• democratization and emerging trends

The conference is a forum of exchange for scholars engaged in the academic study of the religious traditions of India in both native and diasporic contexts. Committed to critical and creative inquiry, the conference is not an advocacy forum for the religions of India and does not endorse or proscribe a particular point of view. Only scholars with terminal degrees in religious studies or related academic disciplines (like Anthropology, Art, Ethnomusicology, History, Philosophy, Theology, Women Studies) researching and/or teaching in the area of religions of India are eligible to present, attend, and participate in the conference. Graduate students in advanced standing in any of these disciplines are also welcome to participate in the conference.

A symposium on the work of Jonathan Dancy, the main proponent of moral particularism, including his just published book "Ethics Without Principles" (Oxford University Press, 2004) is one topics; review of particularist criticism and the promise of positive particularism are another. An additional aim of this conference is assessing the prospect of extending particularist approach to other areas, such as aesthetics, epistemology and even metaphysics.

• What processes and factors are responsible for the formation of national, ethnic, cultural and religious groups and communities?
• How are these factors visible in the cultural practices of these groups?
• How do these groups and communities construct, negotiate, communicate and express their identities, and what is the relationship between dominant and minority identities within different artistic, linguistic, political, historical, cultural and geographical settings?
• What are the political, economic, cultural and psychological causes and consequences of migration, and how do individuals, communities, societies and nations respond to migration and cultural diversity?
• How are conceptions and practices of citizenship being reshaped under the pressures of globalisation, migration and multiculturalism?

The conference intends to examine issues of identity in Turkey, among the peoples in the lands of the former Ottoman empire, among the Euro-Turks (and Turkish-Americans, Australasian Turks, etc.), among the Turcophone peoples in countries and regions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Russian Federation) and those Turcophone minorities in such countries as Iran and China. We welcome proposals for papers that break new ground in generating theory, or constitute innovative critical or comparative work that would lead to theoretical formulations and methodology.

• political exclusion and violence
• cosmopolitanism and hospitality
• diversity and impossible community
• ontology of war
• race and the politics of identity
• becoming responsible
• justice and the rights of beings
• forms of life and the concept of the human
• technoscience and biopolitics
• politics and ethics of the posthuman
• immanence; human and animal
• temporality and the politics of being

• The origins and structure of the New World Group
• New World philosophy: The quest for epistemic sovereignty
• Theory of change: role of ideas in social change
• Political economy: the Plantation school and dependence. Questions of economic methodology
• New World and radical politics: Relationship to political movements and the experience of New World members in politics
• Doctor politics, crown colony political culture and constitutional reform
• New World and Marxism
• New World and literature: different ways of seeing and knowing
• New World and the Caribbean intellectual tradition
• Gender, political economy and change: Reflections on the era of New World
• New World and radical Caribbean journalism
• New World and the New World Order: The relevance of the New World Group in changing times
• New World and Black Power
• The role of women in New World
• The New World Group and University of the West Indies curricula (economics, politics, history and culture)
• The impact of New World on Caribbean Economic policy
• New World, Pan Caribbeanism and Caribbean Integration
• New World Thinking on Race and ethnicity: Bestian and Beckfordian perspectives

• National and international perspectives on human rights education
• Citizenship and human rights education
• Development and human rights
• Health, welfare and human rights
• Religion and human rights
• War and human rights
• Writing and human rights
• NGOs and human rights
• The United Nations and human rights
• Children's and parents' rights
• Education policy on children's rights in education
• Local and global perspectives on children's rights

• Los gobiernos locales
• Las voces de los pueblos originarios
• Normatividades, poder, autoridad, conflicto
• Identidad
• Simbolismo, cosmovisión
• Economía, ecología
• Historia/etnohistoria
• Género
• Los espacios urbanos
• Nuevas alternativas

• Healthy and Sustainable Maori and Indigenous Communities
• Social, Political and Economic Transformation
• New Frontiers of Knowledge

• political violence
• pornography
• cultural difference
• globalisation
• shock art
• celebrity privacy
• democracy in cyberspace
• the right to blog

• The inculturation of religion: contribution and difficulties
• The contribution of a diversity of cultures to universal religions
• The contribution of ontological and religious foundations to facing the expansion of Western notion of liberalism in the mode of globalization

• Cultura, nación y democracia
• La identidad latinoamericana ante la globalización
• Pluralismo jurídico ante los derechos de los pueblos
• Nuevas prácticas de la democracia en América Latina
• Universidad, educación y crítica de la globalización
• Arte, literatura y cultura frente a los derechos humanos en América Latina
• Género, mujer y democracia
• Filosofía política desde Zubiri y Ellacuría
• Integración económica y globalización en América Latina
• Pensamiento dominicano, cultura política y derechos humanos
• Hermenéutica y fundamentación filosófica de los derechos humanos
• Lonergan y los derechos humanos
• Pensamiento indígena y derechos humanos