Dear ODCeers -- please see below a message from Julie Cox and feel free to forward to anyone you may deem interested.
Andre
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ACSCOS 2012 – The 5th Australasian Caucus of the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism
10-12 December 2012 - Metropole Hotel and Conference Centre, Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia
Dear Colleagues,
It is with great pleasure that we warmly invite you to join us in Melbourne for the ACSCOS 2012 Conference. The theme is MEMORY and the call and website appear below. Full details are available at the website.
Important dates and information:
*Submission of abstracts by 31 July 2012.
*Acceptance by 15 August 2012.
* Early registration by 30 September 2012 = AU$280
* Full registration from 1 October 2012 = AU$350.
* Conference address: memoryconference@swin.edu.au
* The Conference website: http://www.swinburne.edu.au/business/ACSCOS
MEMORY
Call for Papers
We are pleased to announce that the 5th Australasian Caucus of the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (ACSCOS) will be held at Metropole Hotel Apartments and Conference Centre, Melbourne from 10 - 12 December, 2012. ACSCOS is a caucus of the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism (SCOS http://www.scos.org ) and we recognise SCOS' long and innovative contribution to critical and avant garde organizations studies. Similar to earlier conferences, this ACSCOS will be a meeting ground for those broadly interested in critical analysis of organization/s, management/s. We look forward to a stimulating, collegial, productive and supportive gathering of colleagues from Australasia and beyond wishing to join us in creating a memorable programme of events.
Theme
The theme of ACSCOS 2012 Conference is MEMORY and the way organizational discourse, practice, symbolism and narratives deal with it. Memory is posited on the juncture between past and future. The relationship between past and future has fascinated artists and writers for many centuries. Perhaps the most dramatic representation of memory is captured in Paul Klee's painting Angelus novum. Commenting on this painting Walter Benjamin (1974; see also Löw 2005) describes Klee's angel as the Angel of history who is forced by the events of the present to move away from the past. He describes it as a terrified angel starring into the catastrophes of the past surrounded by events, destruction, and wanting to help, but a wind from Paradise catches it by surprise and unable to close its wings the angel is pushed towards the future with its gaze turned towards the past. Others have represented memory as dissolution of time and its artefacts as in Dali's famous painting Persistence of memory. More recently, Deleuze (1988) has defined memory as "the real name of the relation to oneself, or the effect on self by self". He wrote these words in his book on Foucault who, himself, dedicated the last years of his work to the formation of subjectivity through technologies of the self, techniques, routines, and above all memory (Foucault, 1988). But memory is not something we should always trust. Paul Ricoeur (1955) once said that memory alone is fallible. Memory has represented a point of analysis for many other scholars such as Julia Kristeva (1982), Hannah Arendt (1958), Jacques Derrida (1996), Helen Cixous (1997) to name just a few. Memory can be conceptualised in many ways, it can evoke deeply contradicting associations, allow for various strategies to emerge, hunt or help us. Memory's nature is symbolized here by the lizard (our Australasian version of the SCOS dragon) which adapts and distracts and which also represents the animal that needs to be tamed in the organization and society. Hence, the idea behind this topic is that memory is placed between past and future while the present supposedly represents a neutral watershed dimension - and yet because the past cannot be changed and the future is uncertain only the present is fallible, and can trick us by making us remember in one way or the other. But perhaps the fallibility of memory (our present condition) could also depend on the methodology we use to recall events, issues, acts, facts, to tame feelings, to give them meaning and so forth - in other words: to symbolize organization. Thus, this Conference gives us the opportunity to investigate memory in conjunction with our methodologies for the sake of the betterment of our theories and understanding of organization. The event is well placed in SCOS's critical tradition: it revitalizes an aspect of organization that is often relegated to the psycho/scientific dimension opening up a critical reflective space. We intend to look at memory as something which is part of what we are (or are not). Memory is a powerful strategy that people use consciously or unconsciously to symbolize success, failure, power, or lack of power, habits of servitude, freedom, independence and ACSCOS 2012 is interested in finding out how through memory organization could be a struggle but also as a cunning creation of our selves.
Below we propose a list of possible sub-themes which could be clustered into conference sessions. Papers addressing the theme might consider the following topics, although the list is far from exhaustive:
Sub-theme 1: Work, People, Organization and Memory
• Organizational memory
• The people's memory
• Power and memory
• Slavery and memory
• Poverty and memory
• Passive memory
• Violent memory
• Stupid memory
Sub-theme 2: Feelings and Memory
• Memory and happiness
• Memory as fears
• Memory and pains
• Memory and regret
Sub-theme 3: Self and Memory
• Memory and remorse
• Memory and joy
• Memory as an attempt to forget
• Memory reproducing the past
Sub-theme 4: Environment and Memory
• Ecological memory
• Designed memory
• Pathological memory
• Manipulated memory
Sub-theme 5: Past Memory
• Sentimentality of memory
• Sense memory (scent, colour, sound, taste)
Sub-theme 6: Remembering
• Memory leaps
• Children's memory
• Constructed memory
• Minority memory
• Gender memory
Sub-theme 7: Technology and memory
• Digital memory
• Contingent memory
• Fractal memory
Sub-theme 8: Difficult Memory
• Ghostly memory
• Bad memory
• Wrong memory
Sub-theme 9: Forbidden Memory
• Animality and memory
• Crime and memory
• Dirty memory
Sub-theme 10: Science and Memory
• New memory
• Memory and the brain
• Memory and the heart
Sub-theme 11: Forgetting
• If I only could forget...
• Genealogy
Sub-theme 12: Open Stream
• Organization
• Organizational symbolism
• My research
Open stream
An open stream will facilitate discussions/presentations of research on organizational culture and symbolism that do not connect directly to the conference theme. Papers are therefore invited on any aspect of theory, methodology, fieldwork or practice that may be of interest to the ACSCOS community. If submitting to the open stream, please indicate this clearly on your abstract.
Conference sponsorship
ACSCOS 2012 is being sponsored by:
• Faculty of Business and Enterprise, Swinburne University of Technology
• Department of Management, Monash University
Prior to ACSCOS you may also be interested in attending the 26th Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management (ANZAM) Conference which will take place in Perth from 5-7 December 2012 (see http://www.anzam.org/conference )
After ACSCOS you may wish to attend the ABEN Conference from 12-14 December 2012. To be held at the Metropole Hotel and Conference Centre. For more information contact events-mm@deakin.edu.au .
On the topic memory there is currently a Special Issue for Organization entitled: Narratives and Memory in Organizations - Deadline: June 1, 2012 – which you might want to explore. For info contact one of the special editors: Albert Mills albert.mills@SMU.ca
References
Arendt, Hannah (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Benjamin, Walter (1974) Über den Begriff der Geschichte (On the Concept of History). Gesammelten Schriften I: 2. Suhrkamp Verlag. Frankfurt am Main, 1974.
Cixous, Hélene (1997) Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing: Routledge Deleuze, Gilles (1988) Foucault. London: Athlone.
Derrida, Jacques (1996) Archive Fever. Translated by E. Prenowitz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Foucault, Michel (1988) The Care of the Self. The History of Sexuality: 3. Allen Lane: London.
Kristeva, Julia (1982) Powers of Horror. New York: University Press.
Löw, Michael (2005) Fire alarm: reading Walter Benjamin's On the concept of history. London and New York: Verso.
Ricoeur, Paul (1955) History and Truth. Translated by C. A. Kelbley. Evanston: Northwestern University press. (2nd edition 1965).
Please disseminate and forward the Call to colleagues and students who might be interested in attending the ACSCOS 2012 Conference.
For any further info contact Michela Betta mbetta@swin.edu.au or Susan Mayson susan.mayson@monash.edu
Julie Wolfram Cox
Professor of Management (Organisation Studies)
Discipline Group Leader (Governance, Leadership and Organisations)
Department of Management
Monash University
Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East
Victoria 3145
AUSTRALIA
http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/about/staff/profile.php?cn=julie-wolfram-cox
( +61(0)3 9903 4586