CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO SARAI READER O6: TURBULENCE

I. Introducing the Sarai Reader

Sarai, (www.sarai.net) an interdisciplinary research and practice
programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies invites
contributions to Sarai Reader 06: Turbulence.

We also invite proposals to initiate and moderate discussions on the
themes  of the Sarai Reader 06 on the Reader List
(http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list) with a view to the
moderator(s) editing the transcripts of these discussions for
publication in Sarai Reader 06.

For an outline of the themes and concerns of Sarai Reader 06, see the
Concept Outline below (section II). To know about the format of the
articles that we invite, see 'Guidelines for Submissions' (sections III
and IV) below.

This year, the Sarai Reader has been invited to participate in the
'Journal of Journals' magazine project of Documenta 12. (see
http://www.documenta12.de/documenta12/english/magazine.htm).
Content from Sarai Reader 06 will be selected by the Sarai editorial
collective to be published online on the Documenta 12 Magazine webpage.

The Sarai Reader is an annual publication produced by Sarai/CSDS
(Delhi). The contents of the Sarai Readers are available for free
download from the Sarai website (http://www.sarai.net/journal/journal.htm)

Previous Readers have included: 'The Public Domain', 2001; 'The Cities
of Everyday Life', 2002; 'Shaping Technologies', 2003; 'Crisis/Media',
2004; and 'Bare Acts', 2005.

The Sarai Reader series aims at bringing together original, thoughtful,
critical, reflective, well-researched and provocative texts and essays
by theorists, practitioners and activists, grouped under a core theme
that expresses the interests of the Sarai in issues that relate media,
information and society in the contemporary world. The Sarai Readers
have a wide international readership.

Editorial Collective: Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Ravi Sundaram, Ravi
Vasudevan, Awadhendra Sharan, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, (Sarai-CSDS, Delhi)
+ Geert Lovink  (Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam)

II. Turbulence

The past decade has opened up a series of transformations that seem to
define (cumulatively) the contemporary, even as they themselves defy
definition by virtue of the speed and immediacy with which they have
made themselves manifest. Every mythic moment has begotten its Faustian
other; globalisation produced counter-globalisation, the crisis of the
US empire was exposed on September 11th and the quagmire in Iraq, the
world of Islam is torn apart by internal strife and humiliation, the
global West makes way for global China. Sovereignty, that old pillar of
the modern state, stands in ruins, along with all stable social theories
of the world, citizenship, the university and liberal doctrines of
rights. Property, the legal form of capital is under attack, not only
from labour but also from the mode of circulation and re-production. The
kingdom of Piracy threatens the kingdom of Property. Massacres, media
events, commodity fetishisms, security analysts and scam artists all
clog the airwaves and the internet. In this world of exhilaration, death
and survival, new practices have sought to define themselves, refusing
to fall within old redemptive modes.

We want to invite the practitioners of these new practices, some of whom
may be audacious even as others may be tentative, wherever in the world
they may be located, whether in the domains of theory, research,
contemporary art, media, information and software design, politics or
commentary to join us in  Sarai Reader 06. You are invited to contribute
through essays, dialogues, arguments, interviews, photographs,
image-text combinations, comics, art-works, diary entries, research
reports, commentaries and manifestos that can evoke the idea of
Turbulence in all its myriad dimensions.

The Sarai Reader 6 uses 'Turbulence' as a conceptual vantage point to
interrogate all that is in the throes of terminal crisis, and to invoke
all that is as yet unborn. The Reader seeks  to examine 'turbulence' as
a global phenomenon, unbounded by the lines that denote national and
state boundaries in a 'political' map of the world. We want to see areas
of low and high pressure in politics, economy and culture that transcend
borders; we want to investigate the flow of information and processes
between downstream and upstream sites in societies and cultures
globally; we want to witness surges and waves in ideas and practices as
they crash against the shorelines of many dispersed locations. We want
to inhabit moments of stillness and investigate the conditions that
determine stasis, in the middle of a tremendous surge of movement.

A rough and ready list of questions and concepts that Sarai Reader 06
wants to take on could be as follows:

>  How do we anticipate, recover from and remember moments of sudden
> transformation? These moments could be anything from popular
> uprisings, natural disasters, to an unexpected turn in a football game.


>  Are there one, two, three, many globalizations?


>  Have the established categories of East and West, North and South
> been thrown into confusion in the contemporary?


>  The earlier histories of the resolution of the crisis of property are
> replete with violence. How does the current crisis of property, in the
> wake of copy culture, play itself out?


>  Does the return of epidemics and natural disasters into our
> consciousness imply the end of the grand modernist dream of immunity
> from nature?


>  How do cities deal with the accumulation of complex infrastructural
> uncertainty? What happens when urban chaos strikes back at urban
> planning?


>  What does it mean to know and experience the pull of undercurrents -
> in society, politics, the economy? How can we map the subterranean
> tectonic shifts and displacements that occur in culture and
> intellectual life?


>  What happens to the authority of the intellectual in the current
> context of turbulence? How is the intellectual's authority eroded, or
> sought to be shored up, when assailed by uncertainty, and the rise of
> new networks of the generation and circulation of knowledge?


>  What does it take from us to tell stories, enact performances, make
> images and record experiences in the wake of turbulence?


>  What are the histories of anxiety, exhilaration, dread, panic,
> ecstasy, disorientation and boredom like? How can we begin to narrate
> these histories?


>  How do we deal with the simultaneous pressures of knowing too much or
> the anxiety of knowing too little about the world?


>  What does the consciousness of changing geo-political and economic
> scenarios mean at the level of the street; how do we account for the
> rise of 'Global China'?


As in all Sarai readers we will feel free to innovate thematically. It
is an invitation to an unconventional world of knowledge, and to
unconventional producers of ideas. It is an invitation to be agile,
mobile, versatile and flexible in forms of thought and creativity to
navigate the tumult of the present moment.

III. Guidelines for Submissions

Word Limit: 1500 - 4000 words

1. Submissions may be scholarly, journalistic, or literary - or a mix of
these, in the form of essays, papers, interviews, online discussions or
diary entries. They could also be only image or image-text essays. All
submissions, unless specifically solicited, must be in English.

2. Submissions must be sent by email as txt, or rtf, or MS Word document
or Open Office attachments. Articles may be accompanied by black and
white photographs or drawings submitted in the tif format.

3. We urge writers to follow the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) in terms
of footnotes, annotations and references. For more details about the CMS
and an updated list of Frequently Asked Questions, see
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq/cmosfaq.html

For a 'Quick Reference Guide to the Chicago Manual of Style' especially
relevant for citation style, see
http://www.library.wwu.edu/ref/Refhome/chicago.html

4. All contributions should be accompanied by a three/four line text
introducing the author, as well as an email address.

5. All submissions will be read by the Editorial Collective before the
final selection is made. The editorial collective reserves the right not
to publish any material sent to it on stylistic or editorial grounds.
All contributors will be informed of the final decisions of the
editorial collective.

6. Copyright for all accepted contributions will remain with the
authors, but Sarai reserves indefinitely the right to place any of the
material accepted for publication on the public domain in print or
electronic forms, and on the internet.

7. Accepted submissions will not be paid for, but authors are guaranteed
a wide international readership. The Reader will be published in print,
distributed in India and internationally, and will also be uploaded in a
pdf form on to the Sarai website. All contributors whose work has been
accepted for publication will receive two copies of the Reader.

IV. Where and When to send your Contributions

Last date for submission: December 31st 2005. [Please write and send as
soon as possible, preferably, latest by the 15th of November, 2005,  a
brief outline/abstract, not more than one page, of what you want to
write about; this helps in designing the content of the Reader]. We
expect to have the reader published by the end of February 2006.

Please send in your outlines and abstracts, and images/graphic material to:

1. For articles to Shuddhabrata Sengupta ([log in to unmask])

2. For proposals to moderate online discussions on the Reader List to
Monica Narula ([log in to unmask])

3. For images and/or graphic material to Monica Narula ([log in to unmask])
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