University of Heidelberg

Call for Papers

Interdisciplinary Conference on
"Trends on the Move: Transcultural Dimensions of Popular Flows"

Date: October 28th-30th 2011
Deadline for Abstracts: 15th April

Organized by the research project on: Rethinking Trends ­Transcultural Flows in Popular Spheres, Cluster of Excellence, University of Heidelberg, Germany

Trends embody visible manifestations of changes within and exchanges between popular cultures: Blue jeans were designed for workers in the United States during the gold rush in the mid-19th century but became a trendy and desirable object for young people in the 1950s. They regarded jeans as symbols of rebellion against the establishment. Today, street impressions and clothes shops all around the globe give evidence to the unprecedented success story of these trendy blue pairs of trousers. Celebrities’ nude and pregnant bodies are inevitable on international women’s lifestyle magazines ever since Demi Moore started the trend by revealing her pregnant belly on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991. Vampire stories, originating in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), have once more become globally popular with Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, which has conquered the USA, Europe and China. Green consumption no longer connects to the lifestyle of a “weird” group of people wearing woolen pullovers and “Birkenstock” shoes. Nowadays, the “eco movement” has developed into a huge trend that is being followed by consumers worldwide.

Trends – be they cultural flows of concepts, lifestyles or desirable objects – appear to be moving from the local to the global and vice versa. Consumer culture is constantly shaped and redefined by such worldwide trends. Trends, in turn, may be reconfigured by the specific local settings they encounter and have an impact on individual recipients as well as on society, politics and everyday life. This impact is no longer restricted by national or cultural boundaries or perspectives and therefore suggests an analysis from the perspective of transculturality.

Therefore, for an analysis of such transcultural trends, it is crucial to consider agents, travel routes and settings. In many cases, these settings are shaped by the laws of consumer culture. Moreover, they are determined by what we would call “public(s)”, a notion which attempts to blend the Habermasian concept of “public sphere” with Bourdieu's field theory, Appadurai’s “communities of sentiment” and Anderson’s “imagined communities”. We assume that publics are self-organized and self-creating (Warner) and serve as agents important to the proliferation (or non-proliferation) of a trend.

By situating research on trends within the discourse of the humanities, we seek to move beyond mere quantitative approaches. This conference aims at investigating trends in popular culture since the mid 19th century. The following questions underlie our attempt to understand transcultural dimensions of popular flows:

•       How can trends be traced through space and time?
•       How can trends be measured, quantitatively and qualitatively?
•       When and why do trends succeed or fail to travel?
•       How can we measure and describe a trend’s “tipping point”?
•       Does a trend’s proclivity to travel already point to its rising popularity?
•       How do publics (and which publics) influence trends and vice versa?
•       How do the settings / conditions of consumer society influence the development of specific trends?
•       Which role do (asymmetrical) power relations play in the formation and life span of a trend?
•       Which role do the media, and the question of mediality play in the proliferation of a trend?
•       How much agency do agents really command?
•       What might be the connection between the concept of longue durée and the evolution of a trend?

Our research project which is part of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows” invites papers that – guided by these or similar questions – critically interrogate the evolution of transcultural trends. Submissions from scholars in all disciplines, such as, for instance history, social and political sciences, (visual) anthropology, media studies, gender studies, consumer studies, literature, cultural studies etc. are welcome.
During the conference, participants will be given 20 minutes to present their work. Presentation papers should not exceed 4000-5000 words.
A selection of submitted papers may be considered for publication in an edited volume.

Please submit your abstracts of 300-500 words by April 15th, 2011 to
info-trends@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de
Acceptance of papers will be notified by May15th, 2011. Full papers should then be submitted by September 20th, 2011. All papers will be available (password-protected) on the conference website and will be sent to the panel commentators/discussants.
For more information on our project, please send your queries to info-trends@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de

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