[URBANTH-L]Digital Youth Workshop, Call for Papers

[David Slater]

The Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies at
Temple University, Japan Campus
http://www.tuj.ac.jp/icjs

Call for papers
DIGITAL YOUTH IN EAST ASIA
www.tuj.ac.jp/digitalyouth

 A workshop exploring how young people are using new forms of mobile
technology to transform personal identity, social connection and
productive activity

 DATES:  June 21st and 22nd
VENUE:  Temple University, Japan Campus, Mita Hall, Tokyo
ORGANIZERS: Anne Allison (Department of Anthropology, Duke University)
Mizukoshi Shin (Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, Tokyo
University)
David Slater (Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University)
HOST: Kyle Cleveland (Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies,
Temple University, Japan Campus)

CALL FOR PAPERS: YOUTH ON YOUTH
This call for papers is to younger scholars, from undergraduates,
graduate students and post-docs, to make short presentations on
related research that is on-going or recently completed. The format
will be "pecha-kucha," a concise, very visual and exciting format that
will allow us to include a wider diversity of voices. (For more on the
format: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/)

 PROPOSALS: In less than 150 words, tell us what you would like to
present, why it is interesting and how it fits with our theme (as
outlined in the abstract below). Also, include a short cv.

 DEADLINE FOR PROPOSAL: May 1st 2008

 CONTACT: David Slater (d-slater at sophia.ac.jp)

 ABSTRACT:
Today, many of the institutions that once contributed stability and
meaning to childhood, adolescence and young people's entrance into
society—family, school and work—are transforming in uncertain ways. At
the same time, young people are the most imaginative and productive
group in employing new technologies to recreate social connection and
personal identity. They are networking outside of the older
institutional and face-to-face contexts in ways that are changing our
understanding of youth culture, and transforming the practice of
social relations, knowledge and qualifications, and value, capital and
person. Being connected, every day, all the time, is for many young
people a precondition of social participation, cultural citizenship,
and economic productivity. The results of these patterns of
connectivity are new forms of subjectivity and sociality, and greater
patterns of mobility and opportunity, but also new forms of control
and commodification. The young are being confronted with new
mechanisms of social control and market integration that entail as
much anxiety, coercion and compromise as autonomy, freedom and agency.

 This workshop attempts to situate contemporary Asia within the larger
patterns of digital technology innovation and neoliberal social shifts
in countries around the world. While these larger dynamics are
confronting youth the world over, we believe that the local culture,
politics and economy filters and shapes the adoption of technology,
leading to quite distinctive trajectories of development. We begin
with the premise that new technologies are always mediated—by the
economic patterns into which they fit; by the political structures and
uses to which they are put; and the cultural forms that embody and
give meaning to machines.

 We will bring together a multi-disciplinary group of scholars to
develop an analysis of young people's creativity and negotiation of
subjectivity, sociality and technology, within the larger context of
economic and political shifts we are seeing today.


David H. Slater
Faculty of Liberal Arts
Sophia University, Tokyo

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