Dear Colleagues, The Cultural Matters Group at the Department of Sociology, Uppsala University on Sept. 27-28 organizes a symposium called Dis / Connection: Conflicts, Activism and Reciprocity Online and Beyond and we look forward to receiving your papers! Deadline for submissions is June 18, 2018. The symposium focuses on a fundamental aspect of social relationships, namely the idea of connection. We invite abstract submissions on the possibilities of connectivity, but also the problems and promises of the act of disconnection. Digital networks embedded in everyday lives have transformed virtually every aspect of social life – from intimate relations with family and friends to the collective acts of digital activism. Digital relations and connections are our starting point for a broader discussion of notions of connectivity and how they are developing, failing, or simply being reproduced. Therefore, we also focus on the idea of disconnection as a voluntary act to take control over one’s use of digital technologies, as an act of resistance and of saying no to the opaque structures of power and control in the networked society. The goal is to further the discussion on the gains, costs and possibilities of ethical life in the culture of hyperconnectivity. The symposium also aims to address destructive functions of connected living, such as surveillance, trolls, selfies, fake news, fake news accusations, sexual harassment, click baiting, commercialism, terrorism, viruses, spam, and the colonization of private life. In other words, we are interested in how connectivity and disconnectivity can give rise to and facilitate social inclusion and democratic processes, as well as exclusion, isolation and conflict. Confirmed keynote speaker Adam Fish is a cultural anthropologist and senior Lecturer at the Sociology Department at Lancaster University. He will give a talk entitled “Anthropology, Atmosphere, Anthropocene: Drones, Disruptive Justice, and the Disruption of the Earth.” The talk will include insights from his latest research on the use of drones in various contexts: surveillance, environmental protection, and war. Fish is the author of Technoliberalism and the end of participatory culture in the United States (2017, Palgrave) and After the internet (2017, Polity), together with Ramesh Srinivasan, and is currently working on a book called Hacker States. Further speakers to be announced. Mako Ishizuka, Japanese artist based in Paris, will conduct a performance art piece in parallel with the talks and paper sessions. She has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions internationally, including France, Japan and the Netherlands. For more info see: http://makois.com<http://makois.com/> Papers could address but are not limited to the following themes: * What is ‘connectivity’ and how can we analyze it? * Sexism, peer pressure and online harassment * Digital activism / hacktivism * Bad connection – communication networks gone awry * The digital underclass – outsourced journalists, click farm and troll factory workers, and networking refugees * “Someone is very wrong on the internet” – risk, edgework, and the rise of the internet as a polarized political space * Digital afterlives and post-humanism * Digital intimacies * Online radicalization and extremism * Epistemic enclosures (so called “Google Bubbles”) and the future of representative democracy * The colonization of attention and attention economy * The self promotion video as a technique of the self * 1337 h4x0rz * Politicians’ tweets, dick picks, inappropriate tagging and other downsides of being connected * Analog relationships offline – embodied relationships between humans (and other animals) as a way to opt out of the digital * Voluntary disconnection Abstract submission and fees: The symposium will be free of charge, including coffee and a dinner in the evening of the 27th September. The number of participants is limited. Please submit your abstract to disconnection@soc.uu.se<mailto:disconnection@soc.uu.se> together with your name, affiliation and contact details. Use the same address for queries, and if you want to attend the conference without presenting a paper. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words. You will be notified concerning your participation in the beginning of July. Deadline for submissions is June 18, 2018. We’ re looking forward to receiving your papers! On behalf of the Cultural Matters Group, /Magdalena Kania-Lundholm, M., Torres, S. (forthcoming). “Ideology, power and inclusion: using the critical perspective to study how older ICT users make sense of digitization”, Media, Culture & Society --------- Magdalena Kania-Lundholm, PhD Department of Sociology Uppsala University Box 624, SE- 751 26 Uppsala, Sweden +46 18-471 7681 +46 (0)70 970 49 58 magdalena.kania@soc.uu.se<mailto:magdalena.kania@soc.uu.se>