Issue 24 Fibreculture Journal: Entanglements- activism and technology
Abstract deadline: August 20 2014 (no late abstracts will be accepted)
Article deadline: November 3 2014
Publication aimed for: February 2015
all contributors and editors must read the guidelines at:
http://fibreculturejournal.org/policy-and-style/
before working with the Fibreculture Journal
Email correspondence for this issue: p.shea@qub.ac.uk
This themed issue explores the entanglements that arise due to frictions between the philosophies embedded within technologies and the philosophies embedded within activism. Straightforward solutions are rarely on offer as the bringing together of different philosophies requires the negotiation of acceptance, compromise, or submission (Tsing 2004). This friction can be disruptive, productive, or both, and it may contribute discord or harmony.
In this special issue, we seek submissions that respond to the idea that frictions between technologies and activists may ultimately enhance the ability of activists to take more control of their projects, create new ethical spaces and subvert technologies, just as it may also result in tension, conflict and hostility.
By dwelling in between and within these frictions and entanglements – through strategic and tactical media discourses as well as the very concept of an activist politics within technology – this special issue will elucidate the context-specific nature, constraints and possibilities of the digital environments that are co-habited by activists from proximate fields including social movements, human rights, ecological and green movements, international development, community arts and cultural development.
Past issues of the Fibreculture Journal have examined activist philosophies from angles such as social justice and networked organisational forms, communication rights and net neutrality debates, and the push back against precarious new media labour. Our issue extends this work by revealing the conflicting debates that surround activist philosophies of technology.
Submissions are sought that engage specifically with the ethics, rationales and methods adopted by activists to justify selecting, building, using, promoting or rejecting specific technologies. We also encourage work that considers the ways in which these negotiations speak to broader mythologies and tensions embedded within digital culture – between openness and control; political consistency and popular appeal; appropriateness, usability and availability.
We invite responses to these provocations from activists, practitioners and academics. Critiques, case studies, and multimedia proposals will be considered for inclusion. Submissions should explore both constraints and possibilities caused by activism and its digital technology entanglements through the following themes:
- Alternative technology versus appropriate technology
- Pragmatism and technology choice
- The philosophies and practices of hacking technologies
- Activist cultures and the proprietary web
- Digital privacy and security breaches and errors
- Uncovering and exposing technology vulnerabilities
- Technology and e-waste
- The philosophies of long/short term impact
- Authenticity and evidence
Initial submissions should comprise 300 word abstracts and 60 word biographies, emailed to p.shea@qub.ac.uk and t.notley@uws.edu.au
References:
Tsing, A. 2005 Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
The Fibreculture Journal (http://fibreculturejournal.org/) is a peer reviewed international journal, associated with Open Humanities Press (http://openhumanitiespress.org/), that explores critical and speculative interventions in the debate and discussions concerning information and communication technologies and their policy frameworks, network cultures and their informational logic, new media forms and their deployment, and the possibilities of socio-technical invention and sustainability.