Call for Papers: The Distributed Work of War and Security: Technology, Expertise and Legitimation

A call for papers has been issued for two panels on "The Distributed Work of War and Security: Technology, Expertise and Legitimation," as part of the Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) conference, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, on September 24-25, 2020. Here's the call:

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The Distributed Work of War and Security: Technology, Expertise and Legitimation

as part of the Interdisciplinary PACS conference 2020

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 24 and 25 September 2020

Conveners: Tanja Aalberts (t.e.aalberts@vu.nl) and Marijn Hoijtink (m.hoijtink@vu.nl)

While contemporary warfare and practices of security are often said to be unmanned, automated or remote-controlled, a recent and empirically-grounded body of scholarship within science and technology studies, critical security studies and legal studies has emphasized how current military and security operations by Western states are labor-intensive, distributed across humans and humans and machines, and sustained by material and legal infrastructures as well as logics and practices that are deeply gendered and racialized. Following these contributions, this panel broadly focuses on the range of practices, actors and infrastructures that make contemporary war, security and particular forms of violence possible, actionable, and permissible.

We organize two panels at the PACS Conference 2020 for which we invite contributions from across the social sciences, international law and humanities. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• The role and enactment of technical or legal expertise in the conduct and legitimation of war or security;
• Empirical inquiries into human-machine relations interactions in contemporary warfare or security practices;
• Practices related to the design and development of technological warfare/security and the organization of violence;
• Technology, militarism and the everyday;
• The relationship between technology and secrecy, transparency and resistance.

We invite 200 words abstracts plus short biographical notes by 29 November 2019. Please send your proposal to t.e.aalberts@vu.nl and m.hoijtink@vu.nl.

There is no conference fee. Accommodation will be provided for paper givers.