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Plenary Speaker:
Professor Paul McIlvenny, Aalborg
University
Title: Discourse Futures and Discourse-to-Come:
What Role Can Studies of Discourse and Interaction Play in Understanding
and Mediating Social Change and Transformation?
Abstract: This presentation will explore three
interconnected issues. First, the relationship between discourse, (inter)action
and practice. Second, the assumptions about ‘the future’ that are
commonly made in discourse studies. Third, the role that discourse studies
might play in democratic social change and transformation, with an
explicit focus on shaping a just and sustainable future. Work in
discourse studies will be compared and contrasted with contemporary
ideas about governmentality, mobility, infrastructure, social movements,
consumption practices, sociotechnical assemblages, and ‘the future’, in
order to develop a prefigurative discourse studies for social change
that is relevant to the turbulent twenty first century.
This exploration
of key issues is illustrated with three case studies: (a) reality TV
parenting programmes, (b) the “Earth Hour” global media campaign to
bring attention to anthropogenic climate change, and (c) the growing
‘transition town’ movement to build resilient local communities given
the scenario of future global resource scarcity. Further, a sketch is
attempted of the sorts of mediated actions, practices and discourses
that may be desirable for us to profile in future research. This
includes mapping the mediated discourses and social interactional
encounters that are interleaved with the heterogeneous nexus of
practices and powers of, for example, control, freedom, access,
mobility, cleanliness, comfort, convenience, consumption, waste, repair, recycling and reuse. The presentation concludes with a reflection on the
promise of a ‘discourse–to-come', a promise that is both an injunction
and yet unfulfillable.
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