media, information, the contemporary
Feature

Call for Abstracts – Lives of Information Workshop

Over the past decade, information culture and technologies of identification have become part of popular discourse, with regimes across the world rolling out large modernisation projects aimed at populations and existing structures of governance. A growing body of scholars have turned their attention to the study of information culture and its history. Information infrastructure offers a material site to connect different bodies of scholarship across the disciplines.

We are interested in connecting colonial strategies of identification, writing, and storage with recent debates; questions around information ecologies of paper, film, and digital media systems; colonial information theories and contemporary arguments for electronic governance; analog and digital technologies of writing, file notings, and algorithms of statecraft; research on information practices before and after the ‘Web 2.0’ culture in India.

Workshop themes include:

  • Media archaeologies
  • Technologies of writing and inscription
  • Materiality of the historical archive
  • Paper-based and digital databases
  • Laws and regulations governing media use and contestations
  • Geographies of old and new media
  • Social media and new political mobilisations
  • Biopolitics and governance of affect
  • Informationalisation of finance
  • Networks of media(tised) labour and shifting practices in creative industries, etc.

Abstracts should not exceed 300 words, and should be sent to dak@sarai.net by December 20, 2013, with the subject heading of ‘Proposal for Information Workshop.’

Authors of the selected abstracts will be notified by January 5, 2014.

The Lives of Information Workshop will be held on February 21-22, 2014, at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.

The Sarai Programme will cover three days of accommodation for outstation participants. In addition, participants from India will get travel support.