[Reader-list] CFP: Culture and Technology

[Greg Wise]

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Call for Papers

Culture and Technology in Global Contexts

I am seeking people who would be able and interested in writing
relatively short conceptual genealogies of the ideas of culture and
technology, and their relation, in particular cultural/national
contexts. I am particularly interested in hearing from scholars in Asia,
Africa, and South America in addition to Europe and North America. I am
currently approaching journals and presses, but am also seeking a
collective of scholars interested in the project. Right now I'm just
asking for short abstracts from those interested which I can then use to
approach additional journals and presses.

Let me explain the project a bit further. I have just completed a book
with a co-author, Jennifer Daryl Slack, which traces the constellation
of ideas which have been key reference points for discourse on the
relation of culture and technology in the North American context
(Culture and Technology: A Primer, 2005, Peter Lang). These ideas
include Progress, Convenience, Control, and Determinism. Building on the
assumption that concepts have particular histories and trajectories I am
interested now in seeing how ideas of culture and technology are
conceptualized in other cultural contexts and what other conceptual
constellations might accompany discourses of technology and culture. For
example, it has been argued that in India technology is articulated to
Nation, Development, and Science (see Prakash). In another example,
Tetsuo Najita argues that the view that Japanese technology and
production is an expression of Japanese culture (a view prevalent in
Japan but also picked up in the west as a form of techno-orientalism,
according to Morley and Robins), is a historical articulation of the
post-Second World War era. Prior to the Second World War, culture and
technology were thought distinct: technology coming to mean western
industrialization and culture thought to be a shrinking premodern site
for creativity and resistance to technology.

This project is to trace the trajectories of concepts of technology and
culture in various national and local cultural and historical contexts.
I will be looking for papers which explore what ideas like technology
and culture look like, and how they act and are mobilized and
articulated, in various cultural contexts.

If you are interested in contributing, send me a brief proposal (200-250
words) by November 15, 2006. Full papers would then be due later in 2007
once a press is lined up. Depending on the response to this call, I
would be proposing this collection as either a special issue of a
journal or approaching an academic press. If you have questions or would
like to discuss the project further, please do not hesitate to contact
me.

Dr. J. Macgregor Wise
Associate Professor
Department of Communication Studies
Arizona State University
4701 West Thunderbird Road
Glendale, AZ 85306-4908
(602) 543 6646
(602) 543 6612 (fax)
gregwise at asu.edu

REFERENCES
	Morley, D. & Robins, K. (1995). Techno-Orientalism: Japan Panic.
In Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural
Boundaries. New York: Routledge.
	Najita, T. (1989). On Culture and Technology in Postmodern
Japan. In Miyoshi and Harootunian (Eds.) Postmodernism and Japan.
Durham, NC: Duke.
	Prakash, G. (1999). Another Reason: Science and the Imagination
of Modern India. Princeton.
	Slack, J. & Wise, J.M. (2005). Culture and Technology: A Primer.
New York: Peter Lang.

Dr. J. Macgregor Wise
Associate Professor
Department of Communication Studies
Arizona State University
4701 West Thunderbird Road
Glendale, AZ 85306-4908
(602) 543 6646
(602) 543 6612 (fax)