Second International
"Language - Communication - Culture "
CONFERENCE
Beja , Portugal, November 24 - 27, 2004
Announcement and
Call for Papers
An organisation of the staff, students and associates of the 'Culture and Society' Postgraduate Programme (University of Lisbon), of staff of the College for Technology and Management, Beja, and of Mundiconvenius.
The Conference Venue
This year the Second International ‘Language – Communication – Culture’ Conference will be held in Beja in November. As in 2002, when it convened in Evora, it remains in the Alentejo region but moves further south to Beja, where it will be hosted by the Polytechnic Higher Institute.
The decision to accept the Beja Polytechnic’s invitation for the Conference to take place there was made for two main reasons: one is that the town, with its remarkable castle and other monuments, combines the many pleasures of everyday life with a quiet atmosphere which favours the intellectual dialogues the Conference aims at; the other is that the town offers itself, looking forward as it does to the dramatic changes an international airport would bring, as an example of the complex development from an agricultural past to the tertiary present and the informational future.
The ‘Language – Communication – Culture’ Conference Mandate
The world we live in has been aptly characterised as a modernity of risk, deeply shaken by a ‘unholy trinity’ of uncertainty, insecurity and unsafety. It is marked by precariousness, wasted lives and corrosion of character: how is a future to be imagined without a grasp on the present? The transnational relations of power, with their ever-growing inequalities between rich and poor human beings and countries, make the phrase ‘the West and the Rest’ quaintly oldfashioned. Democratic rights, institutions and practices are being curtailed and dismantled, human lives are being made over as flexible, discardable tools for unregulated profit-seeking. The politics of fear replaces the politics of hope, new capitalism fulfils the wildest dreams of old capitalism.
What do intellectuals, and especially young intellectuals, in their practices of teaching, study and research, have to say to the world we live in? The Conference’s mandate is to bring together scholars from all disciplines and fields of the humanities and social sciences with contributions on language, communication, social and cultural themes that analyse the contemporary world, its vectors of crisis, its tensions and conflicts its, lines of development.
The Conference
The Conference will be structured round themed sessions, proposed by members of its organising committee, and panels proposed by participants. The organisers of sessions will soon issue their cfp, panels will be proposed with theme, brief description, names of participants and titles of papers. Both sessions and panels will welcome five 20-minute papers.
Visits to the town and its neighbourhood, an excursion, music events and a photography exhibition are being prepared.