weekly INCITE

The Physique of the Public

May 25th, 2008 kat

I am really looking forward to this upcoming seminar hosted by CSISP at Goldsmiths. Although the topic in general is relevant to my work I am particularly excited to hear Albena Yaneva speak. Her ethnographic analysis of the role and importance of visual representations and practices in architecture has been very inspiring to me. If you haven’t already read it – Scaling Up and Down: Extraction Trials in Architectural Design, Social Studies of Science, 35/6(December 2005) 867–894

Friday 6 June | Room 137a, Richard Hoggart Building

Speakers:
Jane Bennett | Political Science, Johns Hopkins University
Matthew Fuller | Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths
Javier Lezaun | James Martin Institute, Oxford University
David Oswell | Sociology, Goldsmiths
Albena Yaneva | Architecture, Manchester University
Claire Waterton | Sociology, Lancaster University
Sarah Whatmore | Geography, Oxford University
Brian Wynne | Sociology, Lancaster University

Discussants:
Andrew Barry | Geography, Oxford University
Gail Davies | Geography, UCL
Kate Nash | Sociology, Goldsmiths

This one-day workshop will bring together social researchers and theorists who bring an interest in publicity and citizenship to the study of material and physical practices.

In fields like science and technology studies, it has long been acknowledged that non-human entities play an important role in the (un)making of social connections. However, everyday dealings with things, technologies, and nature are also increasingly recognized, and explicitly formatted, as occasions for ethical and political involvement. In engaging with these developments, authors in political theory, sociology and geography have begun to explore whether and how everyday practices may be understood as sites for the organisation of publics by socio-material means. This workshop aims to further explore this ‘object’ or material turn in the study of publics and citizenship. It is meant to provide a space for more detailed consideration of the kinds of practices, events and devices that this turn brings into view, from flood management to the art of sowing seeds. Within this context, the workshop will also engage broader conceptual questions about the type of politics, morality or ethics that a socio-material perspective on the public opens up. Thus, it will consider the implications of attempts to bring ‘democracy’ within the realm of embodied experience, including for the types of agency that are enabled and disabled by the repositioning of citizenship, and public involvement, as relations of material and physical entanglement.

Entry Filed under: Conferences,visual research