[URBANTH-L]CFP: Cosmopolitics and Grassroots (Toronto)

[Angela Jancius]

CALL FOR PAPERS AT AES (Toronto May 8-12)

We're soliciting papers on making sense of democracy and
democratization (see abstract below) for a proposed panel at the
upcoming AES meeting (May 8-12 Toronto).  The theme of the meeting is
"Indigeneities and Cosmopolitans" with more information at
http://www.aesonline.org/

Please contact Ellen Moodie at emoodie at uiuc.edu if you are interested
in participating.


COSMOPOLITICS AND GRASSROOTS: Democracy in the new millennium

The post-Cold War political order has provoked a powerful global synthesis of
democracy and free-market economics. As the 2002 U.S. National Security
Strategy puts it, echoing the World Bank and hegemonic institutions, there is
now but one "sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and
free enterprise." The definition denies any indigenous agency, refuses
grassroots efforts. What does it mean when one global model of democratic
governance is imported into/imposed upon dramatically contrasting contexts?
In this panel we will examine different aspects of "cosmopolitics"-the creation
of a "global civil society." Papers will focus on how different groups-whether
ordinary citizens, political activists, national elites or transnational
cosmopolitans-have made sense of large-scale processes of "democratization"
and the neoliberal policies that have come to characterize dominant political
forms today.

Kimberley Coles
Assistant Professor, Cultural Anthropology
Department of Sociology & Anthropology
University of Redlands

1200 East Colton Avenue
Redlands, CA  92373

+1 909 748 8715
kimberley_coles at redlands.edu