Dear Colleagues, I would like to bring to your attention the following event and call for papers: KCTOS: Knowledge, Creativity, and Transformation of Societies Vienna, Austria, 6 to 9 December 2007 Call for Papers for the section: Indigenous Peoples Knowledge Society: Transformations and Challenges / Indigene in der Wissensgesellschaft: Transformationen und Herausforderungen http://www.inst.at/kctos/sektionen_a-f/fiser_budka.htm Abstract: Of the more than 300 Million Indigenous Peoples recognized by the United Nations, a growing minority is actively shaping indigenous visions of a knowledge-based society. These visions are not simply indigenous responses to global mainstream debates over post-industrial development or techno-scientific culture, etc. More importantly, they articulate the actual deployment of new media and information communications technologies (ICTs) by indigenous communities to forward their own policies and practices. They frame how indigenous communities are mobilizing over the internet and on the Web to communicate their lived experiences and extend their local networks to global audiences, including and especially, a global indigenous audience. For academics in the field, online indigenous communities are opening up spaces of inquiry beyond the digital divide by actively co-creating virtual communities and transforming their cultural experience through ICTs (i.e., real life in cyberspace). Questions about resources, knowledge/power and access continue to be important, but they have become more complicated by issues of networking and social life, virtual reproduction, and information policy. These new social, political, and cultural forms of indigeneity will be discussed within this section. Details on Submission: You are invited to submit abstracts (250 words, English) till the 24th of August 2007. Please include your contact details (name, affiliation, email, and a brief bio). Successful candidates will be notified by the end of August. Full paper submissions should be about 4.000 words long, formatted according to the APA guidelines (e.g. http://www-distance.syr.edu/apa5th.html), and submitted by the 16th of November. Accepted papers will be published in TRANS – Internet Journal for Cultural Sciences (http://www.inst.at/trans/index.htm) and included in a book project (full text on CD-ROM, more info at: http://www.inst.at/kctos/publikationen_en.htm). Please note that the conference organizers are unable to fund travel or hotel costs for conference attendees. Please send abstracts to the section leads Adam Fiser (University of Toronto) adam.fiser@gmail.com and Philipp Budka (University of Vienna) ph.budka@philbu.net Abstracts should address one or more themes reflected in the following research questions: • How can/should social sciences describe and explain local indigenous knowledge production in a potentially global knowledge system? What are the socio-cultural and political inter-linkages between local and global? • How do indigenous communities integrate new media practices and ICTs into processes of local media production and networking to participate in socio-cultural life, political movements, economic development, healthcare, education, and so forth? • How might indigenous communities’ uses of new media and ICTs reflect challenges for diversity, conflict, global ethics, pluralism, gender, youth and heritage? • What best practices have indigenous organizations developed around the inter-linkages of knowledge production, new media, ICTs, and local/global community networks (that could inform practitioners and scholars)? All the best, Philipp -- Philipp Budka philbu@gmx.net Dreyhausenstraße 18/7 A-1140 Wien, Austria http://www.philbu.net -- Psssst! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört? Der kanns mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger