The Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures at the University of Manchester will be hosting an intimate, one-day conference titled "Relationalities: A Response to 'Difference'" on Tuesday 18 May 2010. Postgraduate students, research fellows and academic staff are all invited to submit abstracts for consideration. Details are below. Please email Aliaa Remtilla and Rachel Wilde at relationalities@gmail.com with any further questions.


Relationalities: A Response to Difference

It is common for people to conceive of difference using categories that appear self-evident. Race, gender, sexuality, class, nationality and religion are all frequently used to signify both difference and similarities. It is not often, however, that people can cleanly fit into a clear set of such categorical delineations of identity. Difference also exists on many levels. Two people who fit into the same set of aforementioned categories may find that it is difficult for them to relate to one another. Simultaneously, people who are ‘different’ can also feel connected. This conference seeks to move past the use of ‘difference’ as a self-evident concept by focusing on intersubjective, human relationships that meander elusively through the aforementioned categories.

We are interested in exploring the ambivalence and contradictions inherent to these relationalities in order to better understand how differences can be negotiated and nullified, if only partially, through the building of new connections. Relationships are not always built despite difference but, frequently, common elements of differing experiences can enable people to reach out to one another. We believe that this focus on networks and relationships created as a result of shared social situations and common experiences will give us a framework of relationalities that are not binary and will therefore allow us to move beyond dyads of ‘self’ and ‘other’. We are calling for papers that ethnographically explore the messiness of relationalities on the ground. What choices do people make about whom they do and do not relate to? What are the varying degrees of closeness that relationalities can simultaneously espouse? What are the terms of engagement, and the expectations of these relationalities? In what ways can existing connections between people become altered by forces imposed on them from outside or from within?

The ‘Relationalities’ Conference will take place on Monday, 24 May 2010 from 9am to 6pm. This small conference will consist of no more than eight papers all of which must be rooted in and derived from ethnographic research. It is critical that papers are of a high enough standard to be published; the proceedings, including an introduction by Nina Glick Schiller, will be posted on the RICC working papers website and, thereafter, be submitted for peer review for a special issue of a journal. Abstracts must be between 500 and 600 words and emailed to relationalities@gmail.com no later than March 28th. Financial assistance for travel and lodging is possible upon application.