Mundane Governance Conference: Exploring the Hardwiring, Disappearance & Politics of Everyday Government (22-24 Nov 2017)

Wed 22 Nov 2017, 9am – Fri 24 Nov 2017, 7pm, Australian National University

Our conference will be held in the Sir Roland Wilson Building. The opening will be held in the Theatrette (Room 2.02).

Confirmed speakers include

  • Professor Steve Woolgar, University of Oxford
  • Professor Andrew Dawson, University of Melbourne
  • Professor Deborah Lupton, University of Canberra
  • Professor Pat O’Malley, Australian National University
  • Dr Gavin J.D. Smith, Australian National University
  • Associate Professor Simone Dennis, Australian National University
  • Associate Professor David Bissell, University of Melbourne

Conference thematic:

In November this year, the Australian National University will host the inaugural conference on Mundane Governance. The concept of mundane governance permits scholars to explore the subtleties and intimacies of governance, as is beautifully demonstrated in Woolgar and Neyland’s foundational work, Mundane Governance (2013).

In this conference, we offer delegates the opportunity to expand and extend the concept past its case specificity, to critically engage the concept itself, from various disciplinary and analytic perspectives. In attending to the micro-dimensions of the concept itself, the conference offers the opportunity to think with and through some of the most pressing of contemporary concerns about how the everyday, the nation and the world is governed, and how mundanity both inflects and prosecutes the largest of political agendas – including the governance and regulation of migration and movement, the administration of healthcare and education, infrastructural design and delivery, the management of environments and risks, and the protection of personal and public security.

With these ideas in mind, papers will explore the core and dynamic of the concept in ways including, but not limited to:

  • The study of its sensory basis that can, for instance, permit governance of the air itself in smokefree legislation – something both prompted by and made manifest in the tell-tale odour of cigarette smoke;
  • The study of its effects on the ‘background’ atmospherics and elements of life, such as air, water, natural resources, built environs, and the consequences lived and political that their ‘foregrounding’ might have;
  • The study of the theoretical assumptions about governmentality that the concept of mundane governance questions, discards and retains, and their consequences for understandings of frameworks of government;
  • The study of the material, technological and environmental infrastructures in and through which mundane governance flows and operates and bears its effects on human actors and non-human agents, and how those infrastructures consequently come to matter as remade political sites;
  • The study of responses to sites of mundane governance and examples where techniques of mundane governance fail or create opposition, subversion and decay;
  • The study of relations between governments, objects and beings which may be interrogated in and through attention to mundane governance, including those pertaining to life in the contemporary labour force, especially including analyses of the unseen regulatory frameworks, structures or devices that govern existence in subtle ways but that often evade public consciousness;
  • The study of the dynamic nature of the everyday habits of governing and being governed, including the transformative and normative dimensions of practices/flows.

 

Day 1 Wednesday 22 November

 

9 45 – 10:00 VC’s opening address, Brian Schmidt
10:00-10:15 Introduction: Simone Dennis and Gavin Smith
10 15 – 10:45 Morning Tea
10:45 – 12:00 PANEL 1: Gender, Politics, Labour : Jenny Davis, Maria Hynes, Simon Theobald , Helen Keane
12:00-12:45 Feature paper by Deb Lupton +15 m discussion
12:45-1:30 Lunch
1:30– 2:45 PANEL 2: Informatics, Nudging and Gaming: Ashlin Lee, Sven Brodmerkel, Martin French, Timothy Graham & Robert Ackland
2:45-3:45 Exercise with Inger Mewburn & Jodie-Lee Trembath
3:45-4:00 Afternoon Tea
4:00 -5:00 PANEL 3: Medicalities: Julia Brown, Kathryn Henne, Matthew Wade
8 00 onwards The Wholesome Show: A live and podcast event featuring our conference, featuring interviews with some of our special guests.

 

Day Two Thursday 23 November

 

9 00-9 45 Feature paper by Andrew Dawson
9 45 -10:45 PANEL 4: Environments and Spaces: Ehsan Tavakoli-Nabavi, Simon Copland, Kylie Dolan
10:45-11:15 Morning Tea
11:15 -12:15 PANEL 5: Multicultures, Multispaces, Multispecies  (Papers * 3 + 15m discussion) Rebecca Williamson, Penelope Wilson, Diane Smith
12:15– 1:15 Lunch
1:15-2:00 PANEL 5: Multicultures, Multispaces, Multispecies  cont: Anna Tsalapatanis, Andrew Leary
2:45- 3:45 Exercise with Deborah Veness and Bernadette Wilsea-Smith
3:45-4:15 Afternoon Tea
4:15 – 5:00  Feature paper by David Bissell
6 00-7:30 Public Lecture by Steve Woolgar  SRWB Theatrette Room 2.02
8:00 onwards Conference Dinner, A. Baker

 

Day 3 Friday 24 November

 

9:45  – 10:45 PANEL 6: Assembling and Governing Habits (papers*2 + discussion) Tony Bennett and Gay Hawkins
10:45 – 11:15 Morning Tea
11:15 – 12:00 Feature paper by Gavin Smith
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch
1:00 – 2:00 Exercise On academic freedom with Jane O’Dwyer and Jacqui Hoepner
2:00 – 2:45 Feature paper by Simone Dennis
2:45 – 3:15 Afternoon tea
3:15 – 3:35 Conference summation by Pat O’Malley
3:35 – 4:00 Conference Close by Simone Dennis and Gavin Smith

 

This event is proudly supported by the ANU Research School of Humanities & the Arts, the ANU School of Sociology and the ANU School of Archaeology & Anthropology.

Register here at EventBrite.

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