CFP - Cultural Histories of Sociability, Spaces and Mobility (York U, UK; 9-11 July 2009) Deadline: 28 Nov 2008

University of York Department of History Cultural History Conference 2009
Cultural Histories of Sociability, Spaces and Mobility
9-11 July 2009

Deadline 28 November 2008

Spatial mobility has moved to the centre of lively debates in a number of key areas of social inquiry. Terms such as `travel', `mobility', `displacement', `diaspora', `frontier', `transience', `dislocation', `fluidity' and `permeability' are central to thinking about the nature of subjectivity and hence the formation of identity on any number of geographical scales and social dimensions. In particular, some scholars argue that the contemporary meaning and practice of what it is to belong is changing as new technologies of transport, along with communications, help to reduce the power of traditional places to define personal and communal identities. Some commentators even suggest that unparalleled
levels of mobility are shaping a `post-societal' world of extreme individualization in which nation-states and civil societies are being replaced by global `citizens' moving endlessly through worldwide `networks and flows'. Critics argue that this assumption of unbounded movement and geographically fluid identities is unwarranted, and that what matters is understanding how inequalities of mobility arise and with what consequences for social equity and ecological sustainability. But without a sure grasp of the historical precedents to these scenarios, it is all too easy to misconstrue the significance of the changes that are taking place.

>> FOR MORE CONFERENCE INFORMATION, the full Call for Papers is HERE.