I am writing a paper at the moment where I want to link the practice of home making to thge German notion of Heimat. The first version of this paper will be presented as a lecture at the next European Sociology Degree Summer School in Dresden (12-23 September 2010). The following is uis the abstract:

Being at home is often thought to be possible without having a home. Homeless people can feel at home somewhere too, but I want to argue that today that we should be less focused on being and more on having. This is because I want us to be mindful of the properties of being at home, which are not modalities of being but modalities of having. Moreover, I want to develop the claim that the English word for Eigen, which we tend to be the core of identity: das Eigene, which is “proper” ,has become linked with a notion of cleanliness “being proper” which is linked to developments in the 19th Century, during the confirmation of modern, western, European society. Furthermore,. focusing on the development of the Victorian household (see Ian Roderick’s contribution to the very first issue of Space and Culture on Flow), I want to point out the links between the development of the modern European subject, and an emergent scientific outlook on social ordering. Finally, I want to focus more closely on that dimension of ‘being at home’ that we often forget: the domestic; and argue that the propriety of the domestic , to show that the “becoming homely” of modern Europe has above all become a matter of gendering.

… Joost

CALL FOR PAPERS

The aim of this symposium is to take advantage of our Asia-Pacific location by raising questions about gender and reality TV from a comparative, cross-cultural perspective. We are particularly interested in critical investigations of the intersections between gender, culture and place as engineered by reality television. While papers addressing reality television and gender from an international perspective are most welcome, we hope to maintain a critical focus on cultural specificity and the social geographies of gender, including the expressions and negotiations of indigenous, minoritarian, national and transnational cultures.

We invite papers on any aspect of gender, culture and reality TV, including the following topics:

• Culturally and/or nationally specific articulations of masculine or feminine identity in Reality TV
• The reconfiguration of gender-focused international formats within non-Western cultural contexts
• Gender, Reality TV and transnational flows of capital, culture and consumption
• Gendered identities within colonial/post-colonial/settlement narratives or histories
• The place of gender within a multiple modernities approach to Reality TV
• Gender, Reality TV and multiculturalism/biculturalism/mixed cultures
• Intersections of gender, race and/or ethnicity in Reality TV
• The relations between gender and individualised selfhood on Reality TV
• Reality TV as a site of gender performance and/or transformation
• Family and gender politics within Reality TV
• Sexual cultures and gender on Reality TV
• Gender, Reality TV and cultures of fandom and celebrity
• (Anti) heteronormative practices in reality programming
• Reality TV, gender and hierarchies of cultural value

Please submit a 300-word abstract & short biographical note to:

a.west@auckland.ac.nz
&
m.kavka@auckland.ac.nz

by 29 July, 2011.

Successful applicants will be notified by 19 August, 2011.

Global Map of Male Circumcision Prevalence at Country Level

via