About the conference

Becoming Mobilized and Networked!

Technology, Gender, and Inter-Asia Popular Culture in the South

International Conference

Seminar Date: Oct. 29-30, 2010

Conference location: National Taiwan Normal University. (162, HePing East Road, Section 1, Taipei, Taiwan)

Organizer: The Graduate Institute of Mass Communication, College of Social Science, NTNU

Tel: 02-7734-5421

Email: mobnet2010@gmail.com

To mobilize is to get organized, make use of available resources, and take action. While the word is frequently used to refer to military and conventional political activities, new social movements and pop cultural undertakings also involve the mobilization of material, symbolic, and collective resources such as labor, products, even cultural industries. In this context, mobile technology and media have facilitated a rethinking of mobility as not just an option but also a right—to move between economic and geo-cultural locations. In this complex networking of resources, identity categories (e.g., gender, sexuality, youth) often become mobilized in the sense that people become open to new suggestions and comparable experiences during the self-definition. Underlying all forms of the word “mobilize” is the mob, which reminds us of popular culture’s history of exclusion and stigmatization, but also its genuine potential to reconstitute the “people.”

We cordially invite you to participate in this workshop, which is committed to mutual teaching and learning in the inter-Asia context. The workshop will be organized to facilitate discussion between researchers, graduate students, artists, and activists in variously-defined “southern” locations. Among our featured speakers are S.V. Srinivas (Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore), Ubonrat Siriyuvasak (Communication Arts, Chulalongkorn University), and Larissa Hjorth (Games and Digital Art, RMIT University, Melbourne). We are in the process of inviting locally based scholars and graduate researchers to join the workshop.