RC21 2019: Un/Doing Future: Anticipatory Practices, Aspirational Politics (P34)

Call for Papers for the upcoming RC21 Conference in Delhi, September 18-21, 2019 (Deadline January 20)

Un/Doing Future: Anticipatory Practices, Aspirational Politics (P34)

The concept of the future, its prognostications and applications, shapes present social worlds. Sketches and imaginaries of different futures drive cultural processes and social change. Inspired by the “hopeful futures” subtheme of the RC21 2019 conference, this panel seeks to interrogate the dynamics of futurity and future-making. From government policy to activists’ counter cultural interventions, architectural design, or sustainable technology development, imaginations of the future manifest in practices and take concrete form in cities and beyond. For example, Ghertner’s study of slum clearance in Delhi underlines the ruling aesthetics of an imagined future and its impacts on urban dispossession today (2015). As the repercussions of the future become ever more apparent, futurity itself demands further attention. In this panel session on “Un/Doing Future” we ask: How is the future invented, researched, and renounced? Which anticipatory practices and aspirational politics are at play in shaping urban life? What are the imaginative epistemologies at work in ethnographic research and what role does ethnography play in processes of un/doing the future? For this panel, we are seeking researchers who employ a variety of methods to study these questions, evaluate different future routes, and interrogate their consequences for our present.

To submit, please email an abstract (max 300 words) and clearly state the title of the paper, research questions, theoretical contribution and connection to the panel theme.

Author details about institutional affiliation must also be included.

The subject of the email should include Panel Number and Name (Un/Doing Future: Anticipatory Practices, Aspirational Politics P34).

Email your submission to both conveners [email protected] and [email protected] and cc: [email protected] at the latest by 20 January 2019.

Please see the https://rc21delhi2019.com/ for further details about the selection process.