--- Symposium Theme ---
Global capitalism and postmodern culture both in their own ways threaten, or at least challenge, democracy, citizenship, and civil society. Global capitalism not only shifts the locus of the formation of decisions far from persons most directly affected by them, it also undermines the importance of the institutional context that historically has been central to citizenship -- the nation state. Likewise, postmodern culture fragments identity and undermines the integrity of the person. Yet historically to act as a citizen has meant to act as a whole moral person in the public sphere. Further, postmodernity encourages the proliferation of a multiplicity of dissonant language games apparently at the expense of any lingua franca that might be the medium of civic discourse.
At the same time, global capitalism often breaks down autarkic economies and the despotisms and oligarchies that depend on them, and encourages the formation of larger middle classes that, since Aristotle, have been thought to be central to democratic cultures. Likewise, postmodern criticality provides a method of resistance against political and other totalisms, and implies a tolerance that could support more pluralistic public cultures.
Our emphasis will be on the interactions between postmodern culture and sensibility and the world political economic system, and their respective relations to democratic practice. There has been much academic research and public discussion on the global economy, but we know much less about the emerging culture that accompanies it. The post-industrial economy is global in scope, and it tends to commoditize, relativize, and fragment everything under its aegis, including both polities and personal identities. Essence and appearance, surface and depth, use value and exchange value, all come to be experienced on the same (anti)ontological "surface." Conversely, advanced capitalism can be seen as a system of signs, in production as well as exchange and consumption. But what is the exact character of this postmodern culture? and what are its precise relations to the emerging global political economy? What (to use modernist terms) are its origins, nature, and destiny? In a world where many of our problems are global, we need new forms of democratic action to address these issues in non-technicist, non-totalitarian ways. But what will be the shape of such democratic practices -- beyond both modernism and postmodernism -- and how might they be encouraged, especially by symbolic interactionists and other scholars?
--- Conference Format ---
Our format will be alternating plenary sessions and multiple parallel workshops with ample breaks between them for intellectual sociability. All accepted papers will be presented briefly in the workshops, and some will be presented in one of several plenary sessions. Advanced graduate student papers also are invited.
--- Location and Further Information ---
The College Park campus is located within easy access of Washington and Baltimore, and is a short drive from the Dulles, National, and BWI airports.
For further information, postings, and conversation, check the conference web site: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/CSS97/index.html.
Further information is also available by mail from:
Richard Harvey Brown
Couch-Stone Symposium
Department of Sociology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-1315