Are we the species that plays—or are we better understood as the species that repeats?

Walter Benjamin suggests that, “For a child repetition is the soul of play.” Is play always at its core a form of re-play, an iteration of an earlier moment that resists a complete recurrence, yet is found in a series or sequence? We accept replication as a matter of course: Successful games and films always already have a sequel in the works, fashion is fueled by a recycling of its past, and images are increasingly manipulated to mimic the earlier eras of photographic technique. But what is the impact of these repeats, echoes, and continuations? And how do we understand the experience of play as a chain of sequels in the age of digital surrogates, cybernetic archives and networks of distributed storage?  Continue reading CFP – Extending Play: The Sequel →

Call for Papers – EuroSEAS conference, Vienna, 11-14 August, 2015

Panel title: What Role for Southeast Asia in the Field of Youth Studies?

Conveners:
Roy HUIJSMANS, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), the Hague, The Netherlands; r.b.huijsmans@gmail.com
Suzanne NAAFS, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia; s_naafs@hotmail.com

Panel description:
Whilst still predominated by research in the Global North, the field of youth studies is rapidly diversifying in geographical terms. One reason for this is the demographic presence of youth in the Global South due to a ‘youth bulge’ or demographic shift towards youth. Throughout the Global South, young people have taken on central and complex roles as political actors and media activists, as seen in their role in the Arab Spring and Occupy movement. In addition, the phenomenon of educated youth unemployment calls into question the links between education, employment and economic growth and challenges prominent theories about social reproduction and mobility. Finally, the apparent disinterest among youth in farming and rural futures raises questions about the place of the rural in the lives and aspirations for modernity among young Southeast Asians.

Southeast Asian research with/on youth stands out for its relative absence in any of these debates, despite it being a highly youthful region. Indeed, Southeast Asia is part of the Asia-Pacific region that is home to 60 per cent of the world’s youth population (aged 16-25). This panel invites contributions that address this apparent paradox and ultimately contribute to the question of what Southeast Asian research has to contribute to the wider and quickly evolving field of youth studies. Given the rapid socio-economic developments characterising much of Southeast Asia and the relative absence of large-scale youth protests the panel seeks to explore the unique contribution of Southeast Asian research on/with youth in a focus on everyday struggles of being young and growing up (instead of a focus on ‘spectacular youth’), rapidly changing inter-generational relations that reconfigure the social position of young people, social mobility through education and migration, and questions about gendered futures and desires for modernity among youth.

Panellists
Those wishing to contribute a paper to the panel are invited to submit an abstract of 350 words maximum and a summarised CV (1 page maximum) by Feb 15^th, 2015 to the convenors. Successful applicants will be notified in time for the early bird registration of the conference (which closes on Feb 28^th). Full papers are due on July 1^st, 2015. For further details on the 8th EuroSEAS Conference: http://www.euroseas.org/content/conference.