CfP: All that glitters is not gold: Critiques of Globalization in New Zealand and the Pacific

With the 2008 Financial Crisis and austerity, protest over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the refugee crisis in Europe and the spotlight on Australia’s inhuman treatment of asylum seekers, the rise of ISIS, the concerted turn to nationalism in the EU, scholarship and public discourse around globalization is increasingly turning away from celebration of global flows, interconnectivity, the transnational citizen and the transcultural happy hybrid.

While  the internet, social media, and  global networks and cultures  have transformed the marketplace, enabled new forms of  cultural and individual identity construction and new types of movement, settlement and citizenship, the long term benefits are not always as visible or productive as the short term gains. In this transformative era (2008-2016) the impact of globalization upon every sphere of life calls out for revaluation.

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to interrogate and criticize conceptions and constructions of globalization. We welcome scholars from across the social sciences and humanities, with a particular focus on artistic and cultural expressions from the Pacific region, including Pacific Rim nations.

Possible topics include but are not restricted to:

• NZ and the Pacific:  a home in World Literature?

• US/NZ/Pacific cultural production and the global marketplace

• The commercialization of Indigeneity

• US/NZ/Pacific ‘Glocal’ : modes of production, distribution and lifestyle

• NZ/Pacific history from the age of Empire to neoliberal New Imperialism

• Globalization and the new regionalism in NZ and the Pacific

• Rogernomics and Neoliberalism in NZ and the Pacific 30 years on

• Nuclear Imperialism in the Pacific and  global protest-

• The Trans-Pacific Partnership and ‘free’ trade

• Migration, dislocation, expatriatism and Pacific diaspora communities

• Rich and poor:  Social and economic inequalities

• Religious fundamentalism and renewal of the church’s role

• Ancestral voices: the Polynesian cultural heritage and Tangata Pasifika

• Tourism, travel  and the translocal in ‘the Sea of Islands’

• Multiculturalism,   globalization , and  the ‘politics of place’

• Oceanic languages and cultures in a global era

• New media,  the digital revolution and cultural politics

• Identities, ethnicities and nationalities in the global Pacific

Extended deadline for abstracts (200-300 words) of proposals for 20 minute papers to allthatglittersnzpacific@gmail.com by Friday 15 April 2016. Expressions of interest and queries may be addressed to the organisers, Melissa Kennedy (melissa.kennedy@univie.ac.at) or Janet Wilson (janet.wilson@northampton.ac.uk).