Roger Malina, the Director of the ArtSciLab, has agreed to serve on the Editorial Board for the new journal On_Culture: Open Journal for the Study of Culture, published from the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) in Giessen, Germany.
On_Culture is an open access e-journal, with a focus on transparency and openness as well as reflexivity and processes of metaization in dealing with concepts in the study of culture.The “open” aspect of On_Culture refers to a particular publishing mode, but the goal of the journal will be to develop alternative visions of how culture can be understood, studied, and promoted using new research methodologies that draw on emerging sciences. The journal will host a wide range of formats and modes of presentation, including peer-reviewed scholarly articles and review essays as well as artistic and experimental contributions.
On_Culture is presenting a call for abstracts for the first issue, which will offer perspectives on Emergence/Emergency as concepts in the study of culture.
On Emergence/Emergency, from On_Culture:
Emergence is a key term in the study of culture. It is both a structuring principle of academic research and an object of study. It serves as a conceptual nucleus of knowledge cultures and academic approaches that call mono-causal, reductionist explanations and determinstic accounts of complex phenomena and practices into question. With its connotations of creative energies being set free through emergent processes and phenomena, emergence is a marker of novelty, unpredictability and irreducibility.
Emergency indicates a state, or degree of severity, requiring immediate attention and intervention. States of emergency are often emergent phenomena, and their roots can lie far into the historical, ecological, financial, social and cultural pasts. Many emerging topics in the study of culture (e.g., migration, climate change, demographic change, financial crisis, rightwing/left-wing politics, digitization, globalization, social injustice, precarious working conditions) address ‘emergent emergencies.’
We have paired the concepts of emergence/emergency to highlight the degree of urgency with which much research on the phenomenon of emergence and emergent phenomena is conducted. Both terms call for self-reflexivity and cautious intervention in the cultural analysis of processes of transformation. Instances of the interfacing of emergence and emergency are urgent tasks that scholars in the study of culture need to tackle with the help of new approaches.
Possible questions to be reflected upon:
– Why is a specific object of study an emergent phenomenon? How can it be
explained with the help of a particular theory, or theories, of emergence?
– How has emergence been theorized within a specific discipline and/or across
disciplines?
– How have concepts of emergence evolved over time? What cultural and
historical circumstances have affected their expression?
More details can be found on the On_Culture call for abstracts.
If you are interested in having a peer reviewed academic article featured in the pilot issue, please submit an abstract of 200 words with the article title and a short biographical note to content@on-culture.org no later than 30 September 2015 with the subject line “Abstract Submission.” You will be notified by 15 October 2015 whether your paper proposal has been accepted. The deadline for submitting the final paper is 15 January 2016.
Please note: On_Culture also features a section devoted to shorter, creative pieces pertaining to each issue topic. These can be interviews, essays, opinion pieces, reviews of exhibitions, analyses of cultural artifacts and events, photo galleries, videos, works of art, and more. These contributions are uploaded on a rolling basis.