We are delighted to announce four travel and accommodation bursaries to support the attendance of PhD students or financially insecure post-docs at the Authority & Political Technologies 2014: Power in a World of Becoming, Entanglement & Attachment (University of Warwick June 2-3).

The deadline is Monday March 10th. Please include a CV and an abstract.

The exciting line up of confirmed speakers now include: Louise Amoore (Durham); William Connolly (Johns Hopkins); Christian Borch (CBS, Copenhagen); Costas Douzinas (Birkbeck); Amade M’charek (Amsterdam); Luciana Parisi (Goldsmiths); & AbdouMaliq Simone (Goldsmiths).

Call For Papers:
Recently, there have been various calls for a move beyond ‘post-structuralism’ (i.e. Foucault, Deleuze, cultural/critical theory), which had long been seen as the radical edge of the critical social sciences. Such calls are motivated in part by the sense that post-structuralist philosophies – which were forged against a backdrop of totalitarian rule and burgeoning welfare states in Europe – fail to offer moral or political purchase in the contemporary governmental landscape. Moreover, there is a sense that various concepts and theories have become reified and constraining – closing down the possibilities of critical thought. However, the issues that post-structuralist theory placed on the critical social science agenda have become more vital than ever – be that the concern for the complex and dispersed nature of power and agency; the imbrication of power and economics with knowledge and science; rethinking the relation between equality and difference; the political/contested/changing nature of embodiment, biology and ecology; or the efforts of states and others to establish and exercise power over life itself. We maintain that now is the time, not to reject post-structuralist perspectives, but to reinvigorate and transform those traditions through empirical and political work that is creatively engaged with current problems. The Authority & Political Technologies group at Warwick will host a series of annual events that bring together world leading, emerging and postgraduate scholars from across the social sciences whose work promises to renew post-structuralist critical thought through empirical scholarship. This year we invite papers on the theme ‘Power in a World of Becoming, Entanglement & Attachment’. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Biopolitics and Political Spirituality/Religion
• Materialism and the Political Meaning of Entanglement
• Authority, Sovereignty and Becoming in the (Post) Colony
• Process and New Forms of Society(ism), Association and Being in Common
• Necropolitics and Human Rights

Deadline for abstract submission March 10th 2014. For abstract submission, further info and updates see our website. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/rsw/authorityandpoliticaltechnologies/apt2014

Conference Organisers:
Claire Blencowe & Illan rua Wall – The Authority and Political Technologies IAS Network, Warwick

Sponsored by Warwick IAS, ESRC Doctoral Training Centre, Sociology, Law & the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies