[Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for Papers: 'London in a Time of Terror'

[Angharad Closs]

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CALL FOR PAPERS


LONDON IN A TIME OF TERROR: THE POLITICS OF RESPONSE


Birkbeck College, University of London, 7-8 December, 2006


http://londonresponse.blogspot.com/

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The 7 July bombings in London, on underground trains and a double-decker
bus, killed 56 (including the four bombers) and injured 700. Two weeks
later, four unexploded devices were discovered across the city's transport
network. In the hunt for the suspected bombers, Jean Charles de Menezes was
mistakenly shot seven times in the head at Stockwell station.

Despite intense media coverage, instances of public protest and a series of
formal reports, the events in London last summer have gone largely
unexamined in the discipline of Politics and International Relations
(broadly conceived). Our aim is to organise a two-day conference in order
to provide an opportunity for scholars to reflect critically on these
events and their aftermath. Whilst any attempt at such a reflection is
fraught with ethical, methodological and terminological difficulties, the
academic community has an important role to play in examining what
happened and the way it has been dealt with.

The conference will focus on the theme of the 'politics of response' to
July 7th, the 'failed bombings' on July 21st, and the shooting of Menezes.
We seek to examine the range of responses to the events of last summer but
also the events themselves as responses. This theme raises many provocative
questions:

* How do these events relate to London's position as a global
power, to the lingering effects of imperialism and colonialism and to
British foreign policy more generally?
* How might responses to events such as '7/7' (re)produce (unwittingly or
otherwise) the sort of disasters that they seek to overcome?
* What assumptions and/or interests are reflected in the civil contingency
arrangements in place to deal with large-scale disasters?
* How do certain discourses serve to reify particular notions and ends of
sovereign politics and community?
* What is at stake in the cultivation of a public culture in which 'good
citizens' are constantly on the look out for 'suspect bombers'?
* What practices of racism, dominance and violence have been unleashed as
a result?
* How have they related to class and gender oppressions?
* What risks are involved in adopting and defending an insistence on unity
such as that implied by the 'One London' campaign?
* How do responses to the events in London last summer compare to the
responses to similar events in Madrid, Casablanca and New York?
* And what about the politics of our own responses to these events as
academics?

We invite proposals for papers related to the conference theme. Proposals
should include a preliminary title, abstract (of no more than 300 words)
and details of the institutional affiliation of each participant.

To submit a proposal please e-mail Angharad Closs and Nick Vaughan-Williams
at london.response at yahoo.co.uk. The deadline for proposals is 1 August
2006. Successful applicants will be notified soon after.

All panel participants are responsible for covering travel and
accommodation costs.

For updates please visit: http://londonresponse.blogspot.com/


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