Vol. 6, No. 1, December 2004

Announcements

The First International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry

The First International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry will take place at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, from May 5-7, 2005.

Half-day (morning and afternoon) pre-conference workshops (May 5), will precede the two-day Congress (May 6-7) which will consist of plenary, spotlight, regular, and poster sessions. There will also be an opening reception with hors d'oeuvres and cash bar, and a closing reception with cash bar and a barbecue-cookout.

POSSIBLE SPEAKERS AND WORKSHOP FACILITATORS INCLUDE:

Arthur Bochner * Liora Bresler * Nick Burbules * Kathy Charmaz * Clifford Christians * CL Cole * Norman Denzin * Carolyn Ellis * Alice Filmer * Stephen Hartnett * Rodney Hodson * Stafford Hood * Ernest House * Valerie Janesick * Patti Lather * Yvonna Lincoln * Ernest Lockridge * Cameron McCarthy * Kathy McKenzie * Luis Miron * Jan Morse * Susaan Nofke * Virginia Olesen * Cele Otnes * Larry Parker * Ron Pelias * Wanda Pillow * Laurel Richardson * Fazal Rizvi * Katherine Ryan * James Scheurich * Linda Tuhiwai Smith * Robert Stake * Bettie St. Pierre * Noreen Sugrue * Angharad Valdivia * Mary Weems

THEME

The theme of the First International Congress of Qualitative Research focuses on "Qualitative Inquiry in a Time of Global Uncertainty." We call on the international community of interpretive scholars to gather together in common purpose to address the implications of the recent attempts by federal governments and their agencies to define what is 'good science', and what constitutes 'good scholarship'. Around the globe governments are attempting to regulate interpretive inquiry by enforcing bio-medical, evidence-based models of research.

These regulatory activities raise basic philosophical, epistemological, political and pedagogical issues for scholarship and freedom of speech in the academy. Their effects are interdisciplinary. They cut across the fields of educational and policy research, thehumanities, communications, health and social science, social welfare, business and law.

In the United States, the evidence-based experimental science movement, with accompanying federal legislation (Leave No Child Behind), threatens to deny advances in critical qualitative inquiry, including rigorous criticisms of positivist research. This legislation marginalizes indigenous, border, feminist, race, queer, and ethnic studies. The international community of qualitative researchers must come together to debate and discuss the implications of these new developments.

The mission of the First International Congress is to provide a forum for these critical conversations, to build and expand the already robust tradition of Qualitative Inquiry. This congress gathers together vibrant strands of qualitative research to produce innovative futures. We seek to generate lively, critical debate, foster contacts and the exchange ideas, and draw inspiration from each other. We encourage international participation from different countries, disciplines and cultural backgrounds, as well as from a wide range of research areas, including the humanities, medical and health care scholars.

We invite your submission of paper and session proposals. To learn more about the First International Congress and how to participate, please visit our website .

Session and paper submissions will be accepted online only from October 1 until December 1, 2004. (There is a limit of two paper submissions per delegate)

It is assumed that the topics listed below will in one way or another be taken up in the sessions and in pre-conference workshops, but please feel free to nominate your own topic. (Please note that we are not soliciting workshop submissions)

Conference and workshop registration will begin Dec. 1, 2004.

Norman K. Denzin , Chair of the Organizing Committee

SUGGESTED CONFERENCESESSION TOPICS:

  • Autoethnography & Performance Studies
  • Critical Ethnography as Performance
  • Critical Pedagogy
  • Critical Race Theory & Moral Activism
  • Cultural Policy
  • Cultural Studies, Education & Pedagogy
  • Decolonizing Neo-colonial Methodologies
  • Decolonizing the Academy
  • Democratic Methodologies
  • Developments in Participatory Action Research
  • Discourse Analysis
  • Ethics, IRBs & Academic Freedom
  • Ethnicity & Race
  • Evaluating Inquiry
  • Feminist Qualitative Research in the new Century
  • Foucault's Methodologies
  • Funded Qualitative Research
  • Global Ethnography
  • Globalization & Transnationalism
  • Governmental Regimes of Truth
  • Grounded Theory & Social Justice Research
  • Human Rights
  • Human Subject Research
  • Indigenous Approaches to Creating Knowledge
  • Indigenous Policy Studies
  • Investigative Poetry
  • Mixed-methods designs & inquiry in Global Studies
  • Nationhood & Nationalism
  • New developments with focus groups
  • New Media & Information Technology
  • Participatory Action Inquiry
  • Postcolonial Methodologies
  • Qualitative Evaluation & Social Policy
  • Social Policy Formation
  • The Active Interview
  • The Audit Culture & Neoliberalism
  • The Global Consumer Culture
  • The Science Wars
  • Video, Dance & Performance Technologies
  • Working with Multi-cultural Populations

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS (May 5, 2005)
1. Focus Groups: New Developments (TBA)
2. Case Study: Access and Intrusion (Robert Stake and Brinda Jegatheesan)
3. Performance Ethnography (Norman K Denzin)
4. Feminist Qualitative Research in the new Century(Virginia Olesen)
5. Foucault's Methodologies (James Scheurich and Kathryn Bell McKenzie)
6. Grounded Theory Methodologies for Social Justice Projects (Kathy Charmaz)
7. Ethics, Human Subject Review Board & Qualitative Inquiry (Clifford Christians)
8 . Interpreting. Writing Up & Evaluating Qualitative Materials (Robin Jarrett)
9. Investigative and Ethno-Poetics (Stephen Hartnett)
10. Autoethnography (Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner)
11. Democratic Evaluation (Ernest House and Katherine Ryan)

For more information contact info@QI2005.org

Visit our web site at http://www.QI2005.org

Call for Papers: Media and the Public Sphere, Richard Butsch, editor

I am seeking contributors for a volume tentatively entitled Media and the Public Sphere, which will explore how movies, radio, television and internet, or specific media genre do or do not constitute a public sphere, and how audiences do or do not respond to these as public sphere.

Since Habermas' classic study of the public sphere was translated into English in the early 1990s, it has revived the concept of public and stimulated scholarship concerning political participation and democracy across a broad spectrum of disciplines. During the same time, there has been a remarkable growth in scholarship on media industry, audiences and history. Given that news media traditionally have been associated with the public sphere, it is not surprising that these two developments would come together. Over the past two to three years there has emerged a broadening range of studies involving media and the public sphere. This work is growing rapidly and would benefit from a presentation that allows for comparisons across media and genres, and across approaches and issues.

It seems timely to bring this work together in one book in order to identify common threads and differences in scholarship on media and the public sphere. I am open to authors taking any positions, pro and con concerning the existence or significance of public spheres, so that as a whole the book constitutes not simply separate studies on a shared topic but a "conversation" among the studies that raises questions of substance and approach for future research.

Topics that would be valuable for the book include but are not limited to contemporary or historical approaches to:

  • How have legislative/regulatory environments sustained or undermined mediaís role as public sphere? Do public media such as BBC fill this function?
  • Do documentaries or dramatic films (e.g. Wag the Dog) constitute a public sphere discourse?
  • Are radio or television talk shows a public sphere? Is community radio a viable alternative public sphere?
  • Was television in the broadcast network era a public sphere? Do televisions in public spaces create a public sphere?
  • Is the internet a public sphere? Are the internet and globalization creating an international public sphere?
  • Do audiences for any media respond as consumers in a marketplace or citizens in a public sphere?
A new and innovative analysis of the history of newspapers as the prototypical public sphere medium might provide a background for the rest.

Send your proposal or inquiries to butsch@rider.edu.

—Richard Butsch,author of The Making of American Audiences and editor of For Fun and Profit.

Stay Free! is an independent magazine focused on American media and consumer culture. Published twice a year, it is sold in stores across the US and Canada. Or available by subscription from 390 Butler Street, Brooklyn NY 11217.

Contexts Magazine: The American Sociological Association has recently launched Contexts, a newmagazine under the leadership of Claude S. Fischer, Professor of Sociology at University of California at Berkeley The magazine is soliciting contributions for feature articles. Though Contexts is peer-reviewed, it operates like a magazine. Rather than reviewing full-length academic articles, the magazine solicits short proposals for review before asking authors to write full-length feature pieces. If you are interested in contributing a feature article to the magazine, please take a look at the guidelines for submission. .
Graduate student editors write "Discoveries," which are short summaries of just published or about-to-be published sociological work so if you have an article that you think might be a candidate for a Discovery, please contact Nalinia Kotamrju Contexts also presents original, provocative photographs and illustrations that enhance understanding of social life.

Syllabi and Teaching Resources for Teaching the Sociology of Consumption: Compiled and Edited by: George Ritzer, University of Maryland; Todd Stillman, University of Maryland; Meghan E. Rich, American Sociological Association .

A brand new set of teaching materials related to consumers, commodities, and consumption, which includes an essay on teaching about consumption by George Ritzer, 21 syllabi from the most prominent scholars in the field, assignments, essays, and exams, and essential reading lists. Topics include: Marketing and Consumer Culture; Sociology of Popular Culture; McDonaldization; Social Theories of Consumption; Shopping Mall Society; Consumer Culture in Modern Europe; Urban Leisure, Consumption and Culture; International Consumer Policy, and Consumer Behavior. 216 pp., 2002. $16.00 for members and $20.00 for nonmembers. All orders must be prepaid by either check or credit card. Send orders to: ASA Customer Service Department, 1307 New York Ave. NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005. To order with a Visa or Mastercard, call (202) 383-9005 X389; You may also order with a credit card online at www.asanet.org.

Cultural Studies<->Critical Methodologies, a new interdisciplinary journal by Sage Publications invites manuscript submissions.

CS<->CM is an interdisciplinary quarterly publication drawing from those scholarly traditions in the social sciences and the humanities which are premised on a critical, performance-based cultural studies agenda. Preference is given to experimental, risk-taking manuscripts which are at the intersection of interpretive theory, critical methodology, culture, media, history, biography and social structure.

The journal publishes peer- reviewed research articles, critical analyses of contemporary media representations, autoethnography, poetry, and creative non-fiction. It provides an explicit forum for the intersections of cultural studies, critical interpretive research methodologies, and cultural critique. .

For details on submitting manuscripts, contact Norman K. Denzin, Institute of Communications Research, 228 Gregory Hall 810 South Wright Street, University of Illinois, Urbana, Il 61801-3645; tel: 1-217- 333-0795; fax: 1-217-244-9580 e-mail: n-denzin@uiuc.edu. .

Journal of Consumer Culture (Sage). Editors: George Ritzer, University of Maryland; Don Slater, Goldsmiths College, University of London. The Journal of Consumer Culture is a major new journal designed to support and promote the dynamic expansion in interdisciplinary research on consumption and consumer culture. Global in perspective and drawing on both theory and empirical research, the journal reflects the need to engage critically with modern consumer culture and to understand its central role in contemporary social processes.

Five copies of the manuscript should be submitted, typed, double-spaced on one side of page only. This should be accompanied by a disk with the file in Word or WordPerfect. The length should not normally exceed 8000 words. Each submission will be reviewed anonymously by at least two referees. The Journal uses the Harvard system of referencing with the author's name and date in the text and a full bibliography in alphabetical order at the end of the article.

Contributions should be sent to: George Ritzer, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland-College Park, College Park, MD 20742 USA; email: ritzer@socy.umd.edu; or Don Slater, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE; Tel: +44 (020) 7849 4653; Fax: +44 (020) 7955 7405; d.slater@lse.ac.uk.

Sage Publications Ltd., 6 Bonhill Street, London, EC2A 4PU, UK; email: Subscription@sagepub.co.uk; Tel: +44 (0) 171 330 1266; Fax: +44 (0) 171 374 8741. www.sagepub.co.uk.

Consumption, Markets and Culture (CMC) invites articles on a variety of topics on consumption and markets from different perspectives. We publish theoretical, and empirical papers as well as essays, poems, and photographs that deal with the subject matter critically and thoughtfully. Our editorial review board is comprised of scholars from various social science disciplines, humanities and management. Previous contributors to our journal similarly represent different disciplines. If you have papers that have not been fully developed, you can submit them for informal review and comments so they will not go through an unnecessarily painful review process. Upon receiving our comments, you may submit the completed papers for a more formal review. Interested authors may contact either of us, Editors-in-Chief: Alladi Venkatesh, 3200 Berkeley Place, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697; avenke@uci.edu; A. Fuat Firat, Arizona State University West, School of Management, 4701 West Thunderbird Road, Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100; fuat.firat@asu.edu .

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