Fundación Ciudad Política: liderar el desarrollo de la
ciencia política para mejorar la sociedad global.

nterpreting Authoritarianism: Politics, Practices, Meanings

Dates: 20-21 September 2010
Call for Proposals Deadline: 15 July 2010
Location: Exeter, UK
Description: Interpreting Authoritarianism: Politics, Practices,
Meanings

Interdisciplinary workshop to be held at University of Exeter, UK.

Social scientists describe many countries across the world as
'authoritarian', yet only rarely do they inquire how local actors
understand and experience the states in which they live.
Authoritarianism is typically conceptualized as the tight hand of the
state which restrains and constricts the liberties available to society.
But this fails to recognise that authoritarian structures are not only
material and institutional, but also symbolic and semiotic, embodied and
enacted. Everyday understandings, grassroots encounters and routine
performances maintain authoritarianism on a day-to-day basis just as
much (if not more) than the best-laid plans of state elites.

This workshop will explore what interpretive approaches can tell us
about the discourses, practices and politics of authoritarianism that
other approaches cannot. How do local actors resist, negotiate and
acquiesce to authoritarianism? In what forms, structures and spaces can
'authoritarianism' be found? What does 'authoritarianism' mean in daily
life - and what do these meanings imply for our sense of how
authoritarianism is reproduced or transformed over time?

The workshop provides an opportunity for interpretive researchers on
authoritarianism in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the
Americas to engage explicitly with the conceptual issues which inform
their work. Although varied in style and procedure, interpretive methods
share a common concern that questions of meaning, reflexivity and
language should be placed at the heart of social inquiry. While such
approaches are increasingly valued in empirical research across the
social sciences, they sometimes lose sight of the potential
commonalities between disparate cases and different disciplines.

The workshop therefore invites papers from across the social and human
sciences (including political science, sociology, history, anthropology,
geography, area studies, international relations, and related fields)
which address theoretical, methodological, empirical or disciplinary
issues related to the theme of 'interpreting authoritarianism'.
Empirical studies of particular cases are welcome (whether from the
developing, developed, or over-developed worlds) but should also engage
with questions of broader conceptual relevance.

Issues and approaches of particular interest include:

* The utility of 'authoritarianism' as an analytical category;
local understandings and discourses

* Action and inaction, political mobilization and
demobilization, the production of apathy, resisting and reproducing
authoritarianism, hegemony, governmentality

* Ethnographic approaches: everyday meanings, grassroots
practices, social networks, informal politics

* Historicizing authoritarianism: genealogies, conceptual
histories, textual ethnographies, archive stories

* The semiotics of space, human mobility and the built
environment

* Interpretive post-positivist approaches (post-structuralism,
post-colonialism, post-modernism, feminism, critical theory)

* Reflexivity in researching authoritarianism: problems of
access, ethics, generating data, navigating identity

* Interpreting the (Authoritarian) State: issues in
epistemology, ontology, methodology

Abstracts of 400 words or fewer should be submitted by 15 July 2010. The
programme will be finalised by 20 July. Papers of 8-9,000 words should
be submitted by 10 September 2010, to give discussants opportunity to
prepare comments prior to the workshop. The aim will be for papers
presented to be considered for publication in an edited volume or
special edition of a major academic journal.

The workshop will be held on 20-21 September 2010 at the University of
Exeter, UK. Travel and accommodation will be covered by the conference
organisers.

Abstracts should be sent to Daniel Neep, Department of Politics,
University of Exeter, UK: d.neep@exeter.ac.uk