Call for papers International Conference Cultural perceptions of safety

Theme description

Questions of safety are at the foreground of many societal and spatial issues. Nowadays as well as in the past, the longing for safety is an important driving force for people and political and religious regimes. Therefore, it is important to reflect on how we define, experience and represent safety. In our modern day and age, according to statistics on crime, hunger, illness or death most parts of the world appear to be safer than ever before. However, the information age we live in brings us daily news of ecological catastrophes, drug crimes, epidemics, terrorism and trade wars, which influences our sense of safety significantly. Feelings of safety are thus connected to much more than measurable numbers, such as our emotional experience. Consequently, changing experiences of safety are influenced by social, political, environmental and personal factors and need to be seen in a broader context to fully grasp its impact.

During this conference, cultural perceptions of safety will be placed at the foreground. As feelings of safety, and also unsafety, are subjective indications it is interesting to look into the cultural expressions of these emotions and see how and when these have been portrayed in literary works, philosophical lines of though, artworks, architecture, various media and historical sources. The aim of this two-day conference is to bring together scholars from various humanities disciplines to pursue fluctuations in feelings of safety over time as well as in the cultures of surveillance and safety practices. This in order to answer questions such as; When do feelings of safety and unsafety emerge? Where, in which physical space, is safety located in cultural expressions? Do modern expressions of safety and unsafety differ from that in earlier times, and how are these feelings expressed, explained, generated, used and portrayed? Looking at these and related questions from a urban and rural, western and non-western, national, global and geo-political perspective will help us comprehend the impact of cultural perceptions and discourses of safety and analyse how they have been implemented in policy making.

Keynotes

Prof. dr. Nils Büttner
Nils Büttner is a professor ordinarius of Art History at the State Academy of Arts Stuttgart and member of the Centrum Rubenianum vzw. He specialises in the visual culture of Germany and the Netherlands from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. He has published monographs on Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer, as well as a History of landscape painting and books on the history of drawings and prints. He has also written numerous catalogue essays and has served as a curator for several museum exhibitions.

Prof. dr. Eddo Evink
Eddo Evink is Professor in Philosophy at the Open University in the Netherlands and Assistant Professor in History of Modern Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His main areas of research contain phenomenology, hermeneutics, metaphysics, philosophy of the humanities and philosophy of art. He recently published Transcendence and Inscription. Jacques Derrida on Metaphysics, Ethics and Religion, Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz, 2019.

Prof. dr. Beatrice de Graaf (provisionally confirmed)
Beatrice de Graaf is professor of History of International Relations and Global Governance at the University of Utrecht. Her research focuses on how states and societies try to maintain high levels of security and how these attempts relate to core values and institutions (democracy, freedom, rule of law, constitutional and responsible government). She studies the emergence of and threats to such security arrangements from the 19th century until the present, including in times where both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of these arrangements were at risk. She currently leads the “Securing Europe” (SECURE) project, funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant.

Dr. Debra Benita Shaw
Debra Benita Shaw is a Reader in Cultural Theory at the University of East London where she teaches Architecture and Photography. She is a critical posthumanist concerned with issues of gender, social structures and the politics of space and has published widely in the fields of cultural and urban theory, science and technology studies and science fiction criticism. She is the author of Posthuman Urbanism: Mapping Bodies in Contemporary City Space (2018) and is the co-editor of Radical Space: Exploring Politics and Practice (2016). She is a founding member of the Centre for Cultural Studies Research at UEL and principal editor of the Radical Cultural Studies book series for Rowman & Littlefield International.

Paper submissions

We welcome abstracts for papers (20 minutes max. excluding discussion) focusing on modern and pre-modern cultural perceptions of safety. Contributions can address, but are by no means limited to the following themes:

• Spatial dimensions of safety; How does the representation and expression of safety differ between cities and rural areas? How was and is the ideal safe space portrayed? How does the architecture or the city planning of spaces influence our feeling of safety?
• Emotional dimensions of safety; How has the emotion of safety been perceived and portrayed over time? How are feelings of safety influenced by processes of in- and exclusion of specific social groups? How are feelings of safety and unsafety imagined and linked? How do different literary genres discuss (un)safety in relation to emotions? and How do art works perform (un)safety and how is this linked to affectivity?
• Theoretical and ethical reflections on safety; What is safety? How has safety been defined? What is the role of safety in society? Which philosophical and religious roots have influenced our perceptions of safety?
• Eco-anxiety and safety; How is the feeling of safety affected by the existential challenge of climate change? How does the phenomenon of eco-anxiety prevail in cultural expressions of safety? Is this form of anxiety a typical current societal discourse of safety or does it have its own history?
• Politics of safety; What is the meaning and value of safety in politics? How have feelings of safety and unsafety been used in policy making? What are the differences in cultural perspectives on safety in western and non-western countries and on national, global and geo-political level?

Note: all papers’ conclusions should include a statement on how safety discourses, representations and practices function in societies.

Abstracts of papers consist of approx. 250 words and should contain the title and the summary of the paper. In addition provide a short bio of max. 100 words including the name of the speaker, affiliation, full contact address and email.

Practical information

Deadline for abstracts is 1st of June, 2020.

A notification of acceptance was sent before the 1st of August, 2020.

Abstracts can be sent to Martje aan de Kerk via perceptionsofsafetyconference@ou.nl.

The conference takes place at the Academiegebouw in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Some of the papers will be selected for publishing in the conference proceedings. Please indicate in your abstract submission if you would be interested in being a part of this proceeding.

If you have any questions, please contact Martje aan de Kerk via martje.aandekerk@ou.nl.