[Bilimsel Haber] Conference on Mobility

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

ASSR/Universiteit van Amsterdam Conference on Mobility

In celebration of its 20th anniversary, the ASSR will hold a 
multidisciplinary
conference on "mobility" on 26th - 27th January 2007. This conference 
aims to
attract scholars from across the globe who are specialists in the 
disciplines
pursued at the ASSR; namely history, anthropology, sociology and political
science.

Throughout the past two decades, globalisation has been one of the most
prominent, or perhaps notorious, concepts to be used in not only academic
circles, but also in political and social life. So much so that the 
concept has
been simultaneously employed to draw attention to both 'the causes' and 'the
consequences' of almost all contemporary social processes. There have been
countless and contradictory attempts to clarify this elusive concept. It 
would,
therefore, be a formidable task to achieve a common understanding of the 
concept
of globalisation. However, 'the notion of increasing the mobility of almost
everything' can be easily agreed upon as one of the 'causes' and/or
'consequences' of globalisation, regardless of how it is conceptualised by
different disciplines or academics. It is for this reason that the ASSR has
chosen to organise this conference.

The conference aims to examine the notion of mobility from different
perspectives, while avoiding the compartmentalisation of this debate 
into the
distinct spaces of different academic disciplines. It thus seems 
desirable for
the notion of mobility to be deconstructed into three (or more) 
categories such
as the mobility of people, the mobility of goods and money and the 
mobility of
ideas, and, to focus on these categories instead of debating 'mobility' 
in its
entirety within discipline-based clusters. In this way, it should be 
possible to
bring together the different insights offered by distinct disciplines.

Although the purpose is to permeate the entire conference with this
interdisciplinary approach, a special emphasis will be placed on the 
analysis of
mobility from a truly historical perspective in order to be able to 
assess the
extent to which the past two decades may be considered as special in 
terms of
'increasing the mobility of everything'. Historians will thus be 
encouraged to
participate in the conference and provide a comparative analysis of the
present-day content and scope of mobility (of people, goods and money 
and ideas,
etc.) with the past.

The conference will last for two days and includes six 'theme based' panel
sessions during which the participants' papers will be 'briefly' 
presented and
'widely' discussed. Following the opening of the conference by a 
distinguished
academic, participants will be able to join these parallel sessions in
accordance with their own interests.

After the conference, selected papers will be chosen for a book on the
multidisciplinary analysis of mobility.

Preliminary Themes

I. Mobility of People
The past two decades can be considered as an era of tourism and 
immigration. The
expansion of these two different types of human mobility clearly indicates
contradictory aspects of the modern world. On the one hand, at least in some
parts of the world, having a good holiday in a remote foreign country 
ceased to
be the sole preserve and privilege of the wealthy as tourism began to 
emerge as
an industry, which could save the (third) world. In this process, images of
'exotic destinations' were extensively propagated by the media, while short
vacations to these exotic places became affordable to the middle class 
in the
developed world through a complex network of travel and tourism agencies. In
this way, almost anyone living in the developed world could take the dual
liberty of 'forgetting' their real world and 'ignoring' the problems of the
exotic holiday worlds.
On the other, for an increasing number of people, the idea of going 
elsewhere to
be able to live decently began to emerge as the only feasible 
life-project, as
poverty became natural feature of the landscape in some parts of the world.
Increasing opportunities for mobility were thus regarded as offering hope to
some people, while the same idea began to be perceived as menace by 
others, who
believe that their resources are being unjustly exploited by illegally 
mobile
aliens . Consequently, while the mobility of people has been promoted as the
engine for economic growth, it has almost simultaneously been 
discouraged given
that it is viewed as an impediment for the worsening economies of both 
host and
home localities.
The conference will explore this dual process in two different ways. 
Firstly it
will be able to tackle the question of how to theorise the causes and
consequences of human mobility in the modern world without excluding any 
of the
contradictory aspects of this concept. Secondly, it shall address the 
question
of how to study human mobility in its entirety on empirical level given the
practical difficulties involved, (particularly) with respect to the issue of
illegal mobility.

II. Mobility of Goods and Money
As the merits of an invincible free market economy were promoted 
worldwide and
advances in technology offered new opportunities for connecting demand with
supply (regardless of the distance in between these two), both money and 
goods
have started to move more quickly than anything else in the modern 
world. With
respect to goods, not only the conditions of their consumption but also the
locus of their production has started to shift. Interestingly, the fact that
many people are routinely able to consume almost any product, which has been
produced somewhere else in the world, in their own homes has been 
accompanied by
a subtle fear of unemployment due to the better production 
opportunities, which
have emerged in other places. The simultaneous mobility of production and
consumption of goods have thus engendered both the idea of belonging to 
a global
community and the fear of being isolated from it.
On the other hand, the movement of money across the world proved capable of
undermining consolidated financial systems. Companies not only had to act in
accordance with the trends in the product markets, but were also obliged 
to be
sensitive to fluctuations in the financial markets in order to be able to
satisfy their shareholders, who may indeed move their resources elsewhere if
dissatisfied by the companies' value. Yet attracting these mobile 
resources has
become the utmost priority for those countries that seek rapid development.
These developments ignited the fear of a new world in which capital may 
dictate
everything while the labour force is forced to submit without any 
resistance.
This conference will analyse the role of the mobility of (the production and
consumption of) goods in relation to people's identity and shall address the
question of whether the mobility of money has led (or may lead) to a 
world of
over-powerful capital and hopelessly weak labour.

III. Mobility of Ideas
Advances in technology and the increasing mobility of people have inevitably
paved the way for the rapid circulation of ideas around the world. Moreover,
global organisations have used their capabilities in order to promote 
certain
ideas (free market, peace, environment friendliness, fear of terrorism 
etc.) to
the extent that the same ideas started to be employed in order to refer 
to and
explain the developments, which occurred at remote locations. This 
situation may
be considered as evidence for the increasing unification of humankind 
throughout
the past two decades, at least with respect to a few basic issues. 
However, one
can also argue that the separation of ideas from the places and 
circumstances
that generated them may have created a fissure between reality and 
discourse: as
people attempt to comprehend reality with ideas, which have been generated
without any heed to local particularities, they may confuse the 
discourse with
reality and gradually replace the reality with discourse. In the course 
of this
process, what is important may be obscured by what is supposed to be 
important
and the priorities of 'here' may be determined by the dynamics of 
'there', while
the only connection between here and there remains an imagined one.
The conference may proceed in two different ways: on the one hand, the 
problem
of identifying and analysing the influence of globally circulating ideas on
remote localities can be addressed by case studies; on the other, the 
conditions
under which an idea may be globally circulated can be examined.

Preliminary Timetable

15th March 2006: Deadline for registration and abstracts (assr@pscw.uva.nl)

15th September 2006: Deadline for full papers (assr@pscw.uva.nl)

26th -27th January 2007: Conference on Mobility (20th anniversary of ASSR)

ASSR/Universiteit van Amsterdam
Kloveniersburgwal 48
1012 CX AMSTERDAM
The Netherlands

Phone: +31-20-5252262
Fax: +31-20-5252446
Email: assr@pscw.uva.nl