The Borderpolitics of Whiteness

The Department of Critical & Cultural Studies and the Australian Critical Race & Whiteness Studies Association introduce the inaugural ACRAWSA conference from Macquarie University Sydney.
11-13 December 2006
Carlton Crest Hotel, Sydney

http://www.ccs.mq.edu.au/borderpolitics/index.html

In recent years, celebrative rhetoric about the 'the global village' and the erosion of national borders appears to have shifted. Borderpolitics has become an organisational principle not only at the level of governmental concerns or media debates, but in the practices of everyday life. This is because the securing of borders is not simply about national sovereignty, but about the reconfiguring of zones of inclusion, exclusion, and the in-between in relation to social, political, economic, and cultural practices. The practices and implications of borderpolitics open up a space for critical investigation especially in the area of Race, Ethnicity and Whiteness Studies. This field is concerned not merely with the politics of racial identities (although this is one of its concerns) but with the complex formation of colonial and racialised systems of knowledge. These knowledges permeate a range of disciplinary areas such as education, international relations, law, culture, geography, media, religion, management, tourism, terrorism, anthropology, sociology, politics, gender, sexuality, bodies, linguistics, philosophy, history, medicine, statistics, economics, biology and visual arts among others.

Convenors: Dr. Goldie Osuri, Macquarie University and Lara Palombo, Macquarie and Adelaide University
Contact: Elaine Laforteza: borderpolitics@scmp.mq.edu.au