Website Announcement: Social Interactionism, Sociology

A new website has been launched, dedicated to the life and work of Anselm Strauss, a key contributor to understandings of the concept of negotiation:

http://www.ucsf.edu/anselmstrauss/

"Sociologist Anselm Strauss was internationally known as a medical sociologist (especially for his pioneering attention to chronic illness and dying) and as the developer (with Barney Glaser) of grounded theory, an innovative method of qualitative analysis widely used in sociology, nursing, education, social work, and organizational studies. He also wrote extensively on Chicago sociology/symbolic interactionism, sociology of work, social worlds/arenas theory, social psychology and urban imagery. When he died he was Professor Emeritus of Sociology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco."

Article: Intellectual Property

by John Dvorak, PC Magazine

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1537393,00.asp

Here is the argument nobody wants to make and the reality nobody wants to face, especially those in the music business. As I write this, the Recording Industry Association of America is announcing another 532 John Doe lawsuits against peer-to-peer file sharers. The RIAA collects the IP addresses of alleged pirates, and with judicial approval, subpoenas ISPs to get the names and addresses of the defendants.

Copy protection schemes, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and lawsuits against file sharers are not going to save the music business. In fact, the opposite is true. I'm convinced that the shuttering of the original wide-open Napster almost four years ago was the beginning of the end for the recording industry. This is because Napster was not just an alternative distribution network; it was an alternative sampling system.

What I call the Napster peekaboo model no longer exists in any efficient form. Napster encouraged traders to centralize and make available their collections, so perusing someone else's music library became easy. This was its most important function.

On Napster, people were not just trading songs but engaging in mutual discovery. Nobody felt they were doing much wrong, because they tended to already own the music they were downloading. People downloaded files so that they could, for example, listen to them on the computer or burn personal compilations.

You'd begin downloading songs A B, and C-your favorite songs ever-and you'd see that one other trader had all three of these songs in his or her library. You could then peruse that person's entire collection. You'd notice that the two of you had very similar taste! But wait, you'd find some unknown bands in his or her collection, so you'd download a few new songs and discover another band you liked. The admitted tendency was then to follow up and buy the CD. That's what people said they were doing, and in fact they were. Sales figures for the time bear this out.

So when Napster was active, the music industry was growing. When it was shut down, the business went into a decline. People blame the decline on the economy and random piracy, but the record industry is generally resistant to short economic downturns, and piracy is not universal. The real reason for the decline is that people have no resource for helping them choose what to buy.

The music industry refuses to accept this reality. As one of the forum members at PCmag.com remarked: "The sales lost to piracy are represented by the formula P=W-R, where piracy (P) is calculated by subtracting real sales (R) from wished-for sales (W)."

The value for P is going to keep increasing, because people don't know what to buy in the first place. I know this is true for me. Napster was the last great hope. Radio doesn't do the job anymore. Few stations even back-announce the music, and the playlists are universally mediocre and seldom showcase smart new talent. College stations provide some relief, but inconsistently. Promotional efforts by record companies focus only on a very few big acts. Other methods of discovering new music, such as listening stations at stores, are inefficient and tedious.

The listen-before-you-buy phenomenon was common before 1960, when most music stores had listening booths. It slowly died off during the golden age of AM radio, when the singles business flourished, and AM radio stations competed with each other for the teenage dollar. EP, then albums, then CDs finally took over the industry, and AM radio mutated into talk and news. When the single was killed off, people were left without a music-sampling resource. This was exacerbated by safe, soft-rock programming on FM radio.

Now there is no way to discover new music except as a fluke or via limited word of mouth. Many bands resort to self marketing and zines-small, mostly crummy magazines-to get any promotion. When Napster appeared, the business was about to be saved.

During the rise of Napster, the industry was flourishing and sales were rising, but music-industry bigs focused on Napster-aided piracy. The belief was that sales would rise even faster if Napster were stopped. Nobody ever thought of using it as a market-research tool and promotional channel. Get rid of Napster and everything will be better, the RIAA folks thought. They did, and things got worse. Now it's too late. The scene is in free fall, and for-pay downloading and cheaper CD prices won't help. Napster provided that crucial marketing channel, but the industry blew it.

Call for Papers: Development Studies, Cultural Policy, Cultural Studies, Critical Pedagogy, Anthropology

"The Life and Death of Development"
Deadline for Submission: 10th May 2004

The recent World Social Forum in Mumbai, and other events like it, can be said to reflect a generalised crisis in neo-liberal corporate capitalism. The World Social Forum is creating a space, however ambivalent, in which to ask, and indeed answer, the increasingly crucial question: is another world possible? Situation Analysis proposes to refine this question, by posing two further, interrelated questions: what is the future of development as the discourse which aims to guide the world towards a certain vision of the future; and what role can education play within development and in imagining an alternative world? We therefore invite submissions which explore, separately or in combination, the following threads:

Development Thread

* Sustainable Development
* Post-Development
* Underdevelopment
* Personal testimonies of experiences of Development Projects
* Theories of Development
* Women and Development
* Development and Poverty
* Development and the Environment
* The Millennium Development Goals
* The future of Development Theories

Education Thread

* Education and Development
* Critiquing Human Capital Theory
* Transnational Literacy
* Citizenship Education
* Pedagogies of the North and the South
* Education and Resistance
* Critical Pedagogy
* Development Policy and National Curricula
* Learning to Unlearn

We invite academic, journalistic, and personal responses to these and related issues by no later than May 10th, 2004. Submissions should not normally exceed 5,000 words, be in English (unless otherwise arranged), and can initially be sent as email attachments to editorial@situationanalysis.com.

For more detailed information regarding submission, and the ethos and aims of the journal, please see the Situation Analysis website at: www.situationanalysis.com

Resource Announcement: Archiving

RESOURCE LIST ON AUDIOVISUAL ARCHIVING AND PRESERVATION NOW AVAILABLE

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections ha sput together a new resource, "Education and Training in Audiovisual Archiving and Preservation." The page, available on the ARSC website at http://www.arsc-audio.org/ETresources.html , lists classes, training
programs and courses on audiovisual archiving and preservation. In addition, it features links to discussion lists, organizations and websites of relevance to audiovisual archivists, engineers, librarians or anyone with an interest in or connection to audiovisual archiving and preservation.

News Story

http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=27547

Subpoenas alert universities

By Dmitri Pikman
DAILY BRUIN REPORTER
dpikman@media.ucla.edu

Students participating in anti-war demonstrations at university campuses across the country have had a tense two weeks. The federal government first issued then retracted a subpoena to Drake University in Iowa, requesting the university produce the names of students who took part in an anti-war conference held at the school.

The federal government withdrew its subpoena request Feb. 10, but some educational officials are worried it might signify more government intrusion into higher education in the future.

Sally Frank, a law professor at Drake University, said even with the government withdrawing their subpoena requests, the fact that they asked for information should send up a red flag for the education community.

"The other question that rises out of this is will other universities be subpoenaed in the future, especially since this subpoena could very easily not have become a public matter," Frank said.

She added that she notified the National Lawyers Guild, the organization which sponsored the anti-war conference, about the subpoena the same day she received a copy of it.

The next day a judge issued a gag order on the university, forbidding Drake officials to talk about the incident.

The subpoena, issued Feb. 4, was connected to a Nov. 15 peace forum on the Des Moines-based Drake campus. The following day, an anti-war demonstration was held in front of nearby Camp Dodge, which houses units of the Iowa Army National Guard.

During that demonstration, 12 activists were arrested for trespassing. Federal investigators said last week their investigation was related to the trespassing and that they had issued a separate subpoena calling for the protesters to appear before a grand jury.

Brooke Benschoter, a Drake spokeswoman, said though the federal government was not requesting specific student records, it was still requesting private student information, which the school was reluctant to release.

"They didn't request particular student records, only wanted information on who attended the meeting at Drake; but we knew there was a very good chance that there were students in it," Benschoter said.

Drake wasn't the only school to attract government interest in recent weeks.

On Feb. 9, two Army officers came to the University of Texas Law School where they requested information on a conference that had been held on campus Feb. 4, concerning Islam and the law. The agents requested a roster of attendees and sought to interview the organizer of the event.

The National Lawyers Guild issued a statement Feb. 17 condemning the actions of the federal government in both Iowa and Texas.

"It appears that the government is stepping up surveillance of innocent activity at academic institutions," the statement read.

"Peace movements in universities were investigated back in the '50s and '60s," Frank said. "But the actions in Iowa and Texas signify a renewed governmental interest in student movements."

James Lafferty, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild chapter in Los Angeles, also emphasized the possibility of the federal government investigating events at other universities.

"We expect to see it happen in other institutions around the country. If I were a large institution with political groups on campus, I might anticipate finding myself in the same position," Lafferty said.

"I should think that they might be knocking on UCLA's door as well, and I hope that the school will respond by fighting the subpoena," he added.

Joseph Mandel, vice chancellor for legal affairs at UCLA, said the university takes its students' First Amendment rights seriously but that the school also has a responsibility to aid the national government in protecting national security.

"We have an obligation to disclose information, but we will not do so if we think it will violate FERPA or the Constitution," Mandel said, referring to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law protecting the privacy of student education records.

Advertisement
Drake University received an outpouring of support from many educational institutions nationwide following the subpoena requests.

"We have heard from lots of universities asking how we would handle it because it does impact the educational community," Benschoter said.

"The popular sentiment was that Drake should work hard to preserve the values of the free exchange of ideas and the discussion of issues, even if some of them might not be popular," she added.

Call for Papers/New Journal Announcement

Critical Studies in Improvisation/Etudes critiques en improvisation

CALL FOR PAPERS

Critical Studies in Improvisation/ Etudes critiques en improvisation is an open-access, peer-reviewed, academic journal on improvisation, community, andsocial practice housed at the University of Guelph. The editorial and advisory boards are made up of leading international scholars spanning diverse disciplines. Critical Studies in Improvisation/Etudes critiques en improvisation will be published twice yearly in December and May. An advance inaugural issue will be published in September 2004 and launched at the 2004 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium.

While improvisational music has historically been analyzed within specific musical disciplines, what distinguishes the research profiled in CSI/ECI is its emphasis on improvisation as a site for the analysis of social practice. We contend that improvisation demands shared responsibility for participation in community, an ability to negotiate differences, and a willingness to accept the challenges of risk and contingency. Yet improvisation is a contested term. Its cultural significance is in dispute both in the academy and in the broader public understanding. CSI/ECI seeks to reveal the complex structures of improvisational practices and to develop an enriched understanding of the social, political, and cultural functions those practices play.

We are particularly interested in articles that interrogate improvisation as a social and musical practice, and that assess how innovative performance practices play a role in developing new, socially responsive forms of community building across national, cultural, and artistic boundaries.

Contact Information and Submission Deadline: Articles can be submitted in English or French to CSI/ECI by email at jazzcoll@uoguelph.ca
Submission deadline for the inaugural issue is May 15, 2004.

I have quite a few problems with the foundational discourses of 'rights', but nevertheless ...

(Press Release)

Call for Papers: Linguistic Anthropology

Call for Abstracts: FEL VIII - Linguistic Rights

The Foundation for Endangered Languages: Eighth Conference in cooperation with INSTITUT D'ESTUDIS CATALANS (UNESCO CHAIR) Barcelona, 1-3 October 2004

ON THE MARGINS OF NATIONS: ENDANGERED LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTIC RIGHTS

The Foundation for Endangered Languages' annual meeting comes back to Europe this year, specifically to Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, on Spain's eastern seaboard. The topic will be "endangered languages and linguistic rights", addressed both through reports on actual experience, and through prescriptions for policy. All approaches will be welcome, but three aspects of this vast field are especially suggested for discussion:

1) The politics of language from the grass-roots activity to political institutions at all levels: how are linguistic rights acknowledged and, where necessary, enforced? How can communities act to defend them?
2) The interplay of the global and the local in linguistic rights - international, national and local: how are identities being
redefined in post-nationist discourses?
3) Endangered languages and linguistic rights crossing borders: what rights can be asserted and duties accepted in diaspora situations, in divided language communities and where languages are spoken by migrant groups?

Some view language politics and language policy simultaneously from the bottom up and the top down. Language communities' struggle for rights may take different forms and pursue different goals. What claims are the communities making? What are the goals of grass-roots action? To what extent can one language community take advantage of another's goals and methods? Can any effective language policies be developed top-down? How do such policies affect the acknowledgement and enforcement of linguistic rights, from bare toleration up to strong promotion of endangered languages? Is positive discrimination necessary in order to achieve equality among languages in a community? Where language revitalization programs are in progress, how are duties shared among speaker communities and political powers? Is there any way to assess language policies / language revitalization programmes and their effectiveness?

In a world with ever heightened communications, the interplay between the local and the global is increasingly complex. We need to analyse the status of endangered languages with respect to linguistic rights and politics, which now extend beyond the nation to supranational and global organizations. How relevant, for example, are international measures and recommendations, such as UNESCO's Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2002), Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage (1998) and proposal for a "Convention sur la diversité culturelle" (2003)?

Most endangered languages and communities are enclaves within the limits of a state. Others, however, spread across political and other boundaries. Borders may be considered as either barriers or opportunities. We shall focus on the causes and consequences of these situations:
How does this cross-border situation affect people's linguistic rights?
What kind of policies are favoured by governments towards such divided language communities?
What kind of international agreements have been / may be developed to manage the issue?
What happens when the linguistic situation is uneven across a community, with differing rates of language shift or language revitalization?

One social effect of globalization is an increase in migration. This poses other issues:
What are the rights of diaspora and migrant communities?
What are the rights and duties of immigrants in their host country?
What are the rights of nomadic people?

Abstract Submission

Abstracts should not exceed 500 words. They should be submitted in two ways: by electronic submission and also on paper. They will be accepted in English and Catalan.

1) Electronic submission: Electronic submission (by 19 March 2004) should be as attachment in Word or format in email message to Please fill in the subject domain as follows: FEL_Abstract

2) Paper abstracts: Three copies should be sent (by 19 March 2004) to:

Dr. Joan A. Argenter
C tedra UNESCO de LlengŸes i Educaci—
VIII FEL Conference
Institut d'Estudis Catalans
Carrer del Carme, 47
E-08001 Barcelona
Catalonia, Spain

This should have a clear short title, but should not bear anything to identify the author(s).

On a separate sheet, enclosed in an envelope, please include the following information:

NAME : Names of the author(s)
TITLE: Title of the paper
EMAIL: Email address of the first author, if any
ADDRESS: Postal address of the first author
TEL: Telephone number of the first author, if any
FAX: Fax number of the first author, if any

The name of the first author will be used in all correspondence. If possible, please also send an e-mail to Joan A. Argenter informing him of the hard copy submission. This is in case the hard copy does not reach its destination. This e-mail should contain the information specified in the above section.

Oral presentations will last twenty minutes each, with a further ten minutes for discussion. Plenary lectures will last forty-five minutes each. Authors will be expected to submit a written paper with the full version of the lecture for publication in the proceedings well in advance of the conference.

Important Dates

· Abstract submission deadline 19 March 2004
· Committee's decision 12 April 2004
· In case of acceptance, the full paper should be sent before 18 June 2004. (Further details on the format of text will be specified to the authors)
· Conference 1-3 October 2004

Conference Announcement

There is a Foucault conference taking place in French and English at the University of Montreal titled 'Foucault and Social Control' 8-10 May 2004. Details can be found at http://www.grasp.umontreal.ca/colloque.htm

I was just checking down through the Grey Tuesday support sites and came across:

http://injusticebusters.com/

If you ever wanted personal stories of 'enclosure' ....

I won't be joining the Grey Tuesday campaign as I don't have the facilities to, but they have my support.

Press Release: Intellectual Property

February 24, 2004 | For Immediate Release

U of Iowa Professor to Join Copyright Civil Disobedience Planned February 24th

Contact: Kembrew McLeod – kembrew@kembrew.com Phone – 319-621-4620

Also:
Downhill Battle (www.downhillbattle.org)
Holmes Wilson - hw@downhillbattle.org
Phone: 508-963-7832 / Fax: 775-878-0379
Grey Tuesday (www.greytuesday.org)

DOWNLOAD THE "GREY ALBUM" AT BOTTOM OF PAGE

DOWNHILL BATTLE (February 24, 2004) – In defiance of dozens of cease-and-desist letters already served, University of Iowa professor Kembrew McLeod will join a large coalition of websites in an online protest that will offer free downloads of a critically acclaimed album that is being censored by a lawsuit threat from
EMI Records. The action is an act of civil disobedience against a copyright regime that routinely suppresses musical innovation. The Grey Album, which remixes Jay-Z's Black Album and the Beatles' White Album, has been hailed as an innovative hip-hop triumph, but EMI sent cease-and-desist letters to any Web site that offers it for free.

This Tuesday, "Grey Tuesday," a coalition of hundreds of sites, including the non-UI-affiliated Kembrew.com -- http://kembrew.com -- will offer free downloads of the Grey Album, and turn their pages grey, to take a stand against a copyright regime that serves neither musicians nor the public interest. "Grey Tuesday will be the first protest of its kind," said Downhill Battle co-founder Holmes Wilson, "The major record labels have turned copyright law into a weapon, but participants in this action will be ignoring EMI's threats and insisting on the public's right to hear innovative new music."

"EMI isn't looking for compensation, they're trying to ban a work of art," said Downhill Battle's Rebecca Laurie. "The record industry has become a huge drag
on creativity and it's only getting worse -- it's time to take a stand." The Grey Album has been widely shared on filesharing networks such as Kazaa and
Soulseek, and has garnered critical acclaim in Rolling Stone (which called it "the ultimate remix record" and "an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly
ahead of its time"), the New Yorker, the Boston Globe (which called it the "most creatively captivating" album of the year), and other major news outlets.

"It's clear that this work devalues neither of the originals. There is no legitimate artistic or economic reason to ban this record, and this is just arbitrary exertion of control," said Nicholas Reville, Downhill Battle co-founder. "The framers of the constitution created copyright to promote innovation and creativity. A handful of corporations have radically perverted that purpose for their own narrow self interest, and now the public is fighting back."

The reporters and news outlets that reviewed the Grey Album have obtained it illegally from filesharing networks. "If music reviewers have to break the law
to hear new, innovative music, then something has gone wrong with the law," said Laurie. "Remixes and pastiche are a defining aesthetic of our era. How
will artists continue to work if corporations can outlaw what they do?" said Reville. "Artists, writers, and musicians have always borrowed and built upon
each other's work -- now they have to answer to corporate legal teams." College and noncommercial radio stations will also be participating in Tuesday's action
by playing the Grey Album in its entirety (possibly along with the Jay-Z and Beatles sources).

###

Well, things just got more personal. Downhill Battle has received a cease and desist letter from EMI’s lawyers and we’ve heard from many of you who have
received something similar (probably identical). It 's a letter that's intended to scare us and it really illustrates why this protest is so important. We’ve spoken with lawyers about this situation and we want to share with you the response that we’ve sent to EMI’s lawyers. It explains how we
plan to proceed and why. Feel free to copy entirely or use portions of this letter in your response, if you choose to make one. You also may be interested
in reading more about your fair use rights at: http://www.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.html and more generally about the issue of censorship and cease and desist letters at: www.chillingeffects.org. Please let us know if your plans for tomorrow are changing (we completely understand if they are). - Nick, Holmes, and Rebecca

Mr. Jensen and EMI:

We have received your February 23 email concerning our plans to make the Grey Album available on our website.

Despite your letter, Downhill Battle will be posting the Grey Album on our website tomorrow. Your efforts to suppress this music stifle creativity and harm the public interest; we will not be intimidated into backing down. Downhill Battle has a fair-use right to post this music under current copyright law and the public has a fair-use right to hear it. Opposing EMI’s censorship campaign is precisely the purpose of Tuesday’s protest and we won’t waiver from that goal.

The current legal environment allows the five major record labels to dictate to musicians what kind of music they may and may not create and allows them to
prevent the public from hearing music that does not fall within their rules. For people to make an informed decision about whether the major record labels
and existing copyright law serve the interests of musicians and the public, they need to be able to hear the music that is being suppressed. The Grey
Tuesday protest is about ensuring that this music is widely available so that the public can make informed decisions. Copyright was created by Congress to
“promote the progress of science and the useful arts.” Your actions violate that purpose. Any lawsuit against us will bring more attention to both the
protest and the need for serious copyright reform, and we expect to win any case on fair-use grounds.

Our posting of the Grey Album on Downhill Battle is a political act with no commercial interest and fits well within fair use rights. Lawyers have advised us that we can ignore your demands number 2, 3, and 4 that are listed at the bottom of your letter. EMI has no legal right to make these demands and we will not comply with them. Furthermore, if EMI attempts to disrupt our protest by sending takedown letters to participating websites, ISPs of participating websites, or any upstream ISPs, we will file a counter-suit against you. We consider any attempts to stifle this protest to be an abuse under section 512F of the DMCA.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Reville
Holmes Wilson
Co-Founders
Downhill Battle (downhillbattle.org)

News Story: Intellectual Property

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/02/17/0725242.shtml

EU Poised to Attack P2P File-Sharers

Posted by timothy on Tuesday February 17, @03:04AM

from the all-fronts-engaged dept.

Robin Gross of IP Justice (http://www.ipjustice.org) writes "The EU is about to vote on a controversial piece of legislation
(http://www.ipjustice.org/code/021404.html) that targets P2P file-sharing and other non-commercial infringements. The EU Intellectual Property Rights Directive creates a 'nuclear weapons' of law enforcement tools for intellectual property holders. It combines the most extreme enforcement provisions found throughout Europe and imposes them collectively onto all of Europe, for example England's Anton Pillar orders that permit recording industry executives to raid and ransack the homes of alleged users of file-sharing software or it's Mareva injunctions that freeze a defendant's bank accounts without a hearing. The vote in the EU plenary will likely be March 11, 2004 - watch the CODE site (http://www.ipjustice.org/code) for developments."

Conference Announcement: Institutional Analysis, Common Property Studies

WOW3: The Third Pentannual WORKSHOP ON THE WORKSHOP
"Building Social Capital and Self-Governing Capabilities in Diverse Societies"

Conference and Reunion
June 2-6, 2004

Hosted by: Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis
Indiana University, Bloomington
Email: wow3@indiana.edu / Website: http://www.indiana.edu/~wow3

At five-year intervals, the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis holds a conference and reunion of faculty, students, and visiting scholars who share an interest in the study of institutions broadly construed. Over the last 30 years, scholars associated with the Workshop have applied institutional analysis to a wide range of policy areas. This conference is organized around working groups focused on the following topics:

? Challenges of Governance in Africa
? China in Transition
? The Evolution of East Asian Irrigation Institutions
? Historical Institutional Analysis on Robustness
of Social-Ecological Systems
? IFRI Writing Workshop
? Tocquevillian Analytics
? Urban Politics and Policy
? Voluntary Regimes of Self-Regulation
? Watershed Management Institutions

Meetings will be held on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University in the Indiana Memorial Union (IMU) and at the Workshop. The conference will include paper presentations, roundtables, and other research-related activities, as well as more informal gatherings for dinner and recreation.

Registration:
To register for WOW3, please visit http://www.indiana.edu/~wow3. In order to help support this conference, the following schedule of fees have been assigned:

Conference Fees:
Before March 30: Faculty/Professional ? $30.00, Student ? $15.00
After March 30: Faculty/Professional ? $60.00, Student ? $30.00

Event Fees: Welcome Dinner, Wednesday, June 2 ? $25.00
Banquet, Saturday, June 5 ? $25.00 Brunch, Sunday, June 6 ? free
Boat Excursion, June 6 ? free

For more information, go to the website listed above.

News Story: Intellectual Property, Folklore, Law

Traditional Knowledge 'In Peril'

Last Updated: Thursday, 19 February, 2004, 04:42 GMT
Traditional knowledge 'in peril'
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3496629.stm for the complete article.

Forest lore and knowledge passed down over generations by indigenous peoples is open for exploitation by anyone, the United Nations University believes.

It says a loophole in international law on intellectual property rights is an affront to traditional groups' culture.

As it stands, the law says indigenous peoples keen to protect their secrets have to put them in the public domain.

The UN researchers say the law amounts to a catch-22 trap, which allows the unscrupulous to exploit the knowledge.

They outline their concerns in a report, The Role Of Registers And Databases In The Protection Of Traditional Knowledge, which is being
launched at a meeting in Malaysia of the countries which support the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

Culture clash

The knowledge the report covers includes commercially valuable understanding, developed over centuries of the medicinal and other uses of plants.

The problem arises when regulators from national patent offices have to decide whether a new product which a company wants to patent really is new, or is based on traditional knowledge.

To do this, they require free access to the knowledge itself. But in many indigenous cultures it is highly guarded.

The knowledge is often passed down from one generation to the next through codes of conduct and customary law, frequently including initiation rights before the information is divulged.

Conference Announcement: Technology, Interactive Media, Cultural Studies

Cultures of Technology Virtual Conference

March and April 2004

FREE (registration required)

For more details please visit:

http://www.cyberdiva.org/techcluster/

Symposium Announcement: Visual Studies, Interactive Design, Media

THE NEW CREATIVE AUDIENCE STUDIES

A free symposium at Tate Britain, London
Wednesday 19th May 2004 (1.30 - 5.00)

The Centre for Creative Media Research is holding a symposium about new visual, creative research methods being used to understand the place of popular media in people's lives.

These qualitative research methods typically ask participants to *make* something (e.g. drawings, video, collage, photographs) as part of the exploration of their relationship with media culture.

Anyone interested is welcome to attend, to discuss or just to look and listen. The event is free, and tea/coffee will be provided.

If you will be coming, all we ask is that you send an email to David Gauntlett at dgauntlett@bournemouth.ac.uk so that we can monitor the expected numbers.

Further info about the event can be found at http://www.artlab.org.uk/tate.htm

There will be presentations from:

David Gauntlett -- Studied young people's relationship with media celebrities through drawings, and environmental beliefs through video-making. (Bournemouth Media School)

Sara Bragg -- Studied young people's feelings about sexual material in the media through scrapbook-making. (Institute of Education, London)

Geoff Leland -- Studied young people's media use and experience of popular film through drawings .(University of Waikato, New Zealand)

Merris Griffiths -- Studied children's attitudes to advertising through drawings. (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)

Ross Horsley -- Studied young masculinities through making covers for men's magazines. (University of Leeds)


The Centre for Creative Media Research is part of Bournemouth Media School, Bournemouth University, UK

Talk Announcement: Deaf Studies

Audism: What Is It? What Can We Do About It?

Dirksen Bauman
Associate Professor
Department of ASL and Deaf Studies
Gallaudet University

Author, “Audism: Exploring the Metaphysics of Oppression,” (forthcoming) Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education

“Audism” is a relatively new term that refers to discrimination against persons based on their hearing status. Like other forms of oppression (i.e. racism, sexism, etc) audism takes place on both individual and institutional levels, and has a profound impact on identity development. This term has yet to appear in any dictionary, but it is becoming more widely used. Now is an important time to begin to thoroughly understand the dynamics of audism.

Monday, February 23, 2004, 12:00 Noon to 1:00 p.m.

Room 215, Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, 901 G Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.

THE ROOM IS EQUIPPED WITH AN ASSISTIVE LISTENING SYSTEM. SIGN LANGUAGE AND VOICE INTERPRETERS WILL BE PRESENT.

For more information, call Library Services to the Deaf Community at (202) 727-2145 TTY/Voice or send e-mail to library_deaf_dc@yahoo.com.

News Story
RIAA sued under gang laws

By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5161209.html

Story last modified February 18, 2004, 1:39 PM PST

It's probably not the first time that record company executives have been likened to Al Capone, but this time a judge might have to agree or disagree.

A New Jersey woman, one of the hundreds of people accused of copyright infringement by the Recording Industry Association of America, has countersued the big record labels, charging them with extortion and violations of the federal antiracketeering act.

Through her attorneys, Michele Scimeca contends that by suing file-swappers for copyright infringement, and then offering to settle instead of pursuing a case where liability could reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the RIAA is violating the same laws that are more typically applied to gangsters and organized crime.

"This scare tactic has caused a vast amount of settlements from individuals who feared fighting such a large institution and feel victim to these actions and felt forced to provide funds to settle these actions instead of fighting," Scimeca's attorney, Bart Lombardo, wrote in documents filed with a New Jersey federal court. "These types of scare tactics are not permissible and amount to extortion."

Scimeca is one of a growing number of people fighting the record industry's copyright infringement campaign against file-swappers, although few have
used such creative legal strategies.

According to the RIAA, which filed its latest round of lawsuits against 531 as-yet-anonymous individuals on Tuesday, it has settled with 381 people, including some who had not yet actually had suits filed against them yet. A total of nearly 1,500 people have been sued so far.

The industry group says that "a handful" of people have countersued, using a variety of claims.

"If someone prefers not to settle, they of course have the opportunity to raise their objections in court," an RIAA representative said. "We stand by our claims."

Few if any of the cases appear to have progressed far, however. The first RIAA lawsuits against individuals were filed more than five months ago, although the majority of people targeted have been part of the "John Doe" campaigns against anonymous individuals this year.

Several individuals and companies have started by fighting the RIAA attempts to identify music swappers though their Internet service providers (ISPs).

The most prominent, known by the alleged file-swapper's screen name "Nycfashiongirl," resulted in at least a temporary victory for the computer user. A Washington, D.C., court ruled in December that the RIAA's initial legal process for subpoenaing ISP subscriber identities before filing lawsuits was illegal. Because "Nycfashiongirl" had been targeted under this process, the RIAA dropped its request for her identity.

However, that may have provided only a temporary reprieve. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that is closely following the RIAA's campaign, the Internet address used by "Nycfashiongirl" was included in the batch of lawsuits filed on Tuesday against anonymous individuals, raising the likelihood that she will be drawn back into the courts.

Separate attempts to fight subpoenas are ongoing in North Carolina and St. Louis, where the American Civil Liberties Union and ISP Charter Communications are respectively challenging the RIAA's information requests.

In San Francisco, computer user Raymond Maalouf has taken the first steps toward fighting the RIAA's suits. His daughters were the ones that used Kazaa to download music, and one of them even wound up in last month's Super Bowl advertisement for Pepsi's iTunes promotion, which featured a handful of
teens caught in the RIAA dragnet. [See Below. BTC Ed.]

In documents filed with San Francisco courts, Maalouf's attorneys noted that downloading through Kazaa was openly discussed at Maalouf's daughter's
school by teachers, and they downloaded songs used in classes. That should be a protected fair use of the music, the attorneys said.

At a status conference held in San Francisco early in February, Maalouf's case was just one of five RIAA lawsuits moving through the courts together, attorney Ted Parker said. However, several of those others involved defendants who appeared close to settlement, he added.

Even RIAA critics look at Scimeca's racketeering-based countersuit as a long shot. But it's worth trying, they say.

"It is the first I've heard of anyone attempting that," said EFF legal director Cindy Cohn. "I guess that is a silver lining of the fact that the RIAA is suing so many people, that there are a lot of lawyers trying to figure out ways to protect folks."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/35633.html

Film makers join revulsion at Pepsi RIAA doublespeak
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 18/02/2004 at 00:15 GMT

Award-winning film maker and Apple user Brian Flemming has become the second artist to release his critique of the now notorious SuperBowl commercial, which promoted Apple's iTunes store.

Documentary film maker James Saldana posted his annotated parody version here.

Now director Flemming, who created the intriguing spoof documentary Nothing So Strange about reaction to the fictional assassination of Bill Gates has juxtaposed the idealism of Apple's 1984 Superbowl commercial with its Pepsi-sponsored, RIAA-blessed counterpart.

"I'm still a huge Apple fan, as I have been for years," explains Brian on his weblog. "Apple's products have had a huge, and positive, influence on my life. That's why I'm so let down by Apple's involvement in this propaganda. Pepsi sells slow poison to children - it's hardly surprising that they'd stoop to this. From Apple I expected better."

In Orwell's 1984, Flemming reminds us, "Television is a key device used by The Party to lie to citizens and keep them afraid and obedient? Facts that The Party finds contrary to its purpose are dropped down the Memory Hole, and new facts are manufactured to replace them."

Fast forward 20 years, and a few facts have dropped down:

"Despite Apple/Pepsi's wording, no target of the RIAA suits was charged with a crime ... However, many parents and kids watching this commercial are
likely unaware of the fact. Fear is a primary means used by The Party to maintain control over expression in 1984."

"Fear is also a potent weapon used by the RIAA to exert control over the behaviour of music fans," adds Flemming, noting the fraudulent use of
paramilitary tactics to bust a 4 foot 11 inch high Mexican parking lot attendant in Los Angeles before Christmas. (Although it doesn't seem to be working.)

News Story

p2pnet.net

RIAA sued under RICO Act:

p2pnet.net News:- A new Jersey woman has finally figured it out.


The RIAA is run by a bunch of crooks.


OK - you knew that all along. But unlike you, Michele Scimeca - among the hundreds of people victimized in the RIAA's (Recording Industry Association of America) on-going sue 'em all campaign - is doing something about it.


She's suing the Big Music 'trade' organ under the RICO (Racketeering Influenced & Corrupt Organizations) Act enacted in 1970 to prosecute organized crime and help victims seek compensation.


Scimeca, from Rockaway Township in New Jersey, was "targeted for her teenager's school research project," says a Star-Ledger story here.


However, the record labels are using "scare tactics (that) amount to extortion" in efforts to extract settlements, Scimeca alleges in legal papers sent to the US District Court in Newark.


"They're banding together to extort money, telling people they're guilty and they will have to pay big bucks to defend their cases if they don't pony up now. It is fundamentally not fair," Scimeca's lawyer, Bart Lombardo, is quoted as saying in the Star-Ledger report.


And Lombardo himself "occasionally downloads songs for personal use and sees nothing wrong with that," the story says, continuing:


"The counterclaim seeks unspecified damages from Sony Music Entertainment Inc., UMG Recordings Inc. and Motown Record Co. L.P. Their lawyers in Los Angeles referred requests for comment to the Recording Industry Association of America. 'We stand by our claims,' the RIAA said in a prepared statement."


Scimeca's case appears to be the first use of federal racketeering laws in the music copyright wars, Cindy Cohn, legal director for the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) says, and, "It strikes me as a very innovative use of the law," observes Gregory Mark, a law professor at the Rutgers School of Law-Newark. "Very innovative."


In December, the labels produced 41 pages of copyrighted songs from Pearl Jam, Korn, Godsmack and other artists, which they said were offered for illegal swapping over the KaZaA network by "DrEeMeR" - the screen name used by Scimeca's 13-year-old daughter, a high school freshman, for a school project," states the Star-Ledger, going on:


"But the family's Optimum Online Internet account was registered to the mother, whose name was handed over by Cablevision. An unrelated court ruling recently made such information harder for labels to obtain. So now they are filing John Doe lawsuits based on Internet addresses.


Scimeca said at the time that she and her husband couldn't afford copyright penalties of up to $150,000 per song.


"Ignorance of the law is not a defense," admonished the notice she got from the labels' lawyers, who added that Scimeca's liability was clear and she should consider settling.

(Wednesday 18th February 2004)

Travel Award Announcement

Deadline: March 1, 2004

The Eugene K. Wolf Travel Fund is a new fund established in memory of the late Eugene K. Wolf by his family and friends. The fund is intended to encourage and assist Ph.D. candidates in all fields of musical scholarship to travel to Europe to carry out the necessary work for their dissertation on a topic in European music. Primary source research in European institutions was the basis for both the training and the musicological products of Wolf's life. He always emphasized to his students the importance of seeing the sources, meeting the European musicologists and librarians, and making contact with even the local historians, church archivists, or town genealogists, making this travel fund a fitting memorial. Each year the fund will award one or more travel grants of between $500 and $1,000 to students attending North American universities who have completed all requirements except the dissertation for the Ph.D. in any field of musical scholarship and who need to undertake research in Europe toward the dissertation. The application should be in the form of a letter, about three pages in length, that describes the dissertation topic, research plan, projected itinerary, and institutions where research would occur and that provides a budget for travel and lodging. The application should be supplemented by letters of support from the dissertation advisor and one other scholar. All materials should be sent, in three copies, to the AMS office:

201 South 34th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6313

and must be received on or before 1 March.

The winner or winners will be selected by a committee of three scholars appointed by the President of the Society. Awards will be announced by 1 May.

Position Announcement

Research Assistant/Research Fellow
Work, Interaction and Technology Research Group
The Management Centre
King’s College London

The Management Centre is seeking a Research Fellow or Research Assistant to join the Work, Interaction and Technology Research Group for up to two and half years. The position is funded by grants from the UK research councils. The successful applicant will be expected to undertake video-based ethnographic studies concerned with the ways in which tools and technologies, object and artefacts, feature in conduct and social interaction. The research may include studies of museums and galleries and in particular of the ways in which people examine and discuss works of art and decorative art, or a workplace study, including, for example, research on auctions and auctioneering. An interest in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis is of relevance to the position. Applications from those with a background in the social sciences, computer sciences or the humanities will be considered, however applicants will be expected to have research experience and familiarity with research methods. Further information concerning the Work, Interaction and Technology Research Group can be found at: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/pse/mancen/witrg/
or concerning the post from Christian Heath (christian.heath@kcl.ac.uk).

Position Announcement

EARTHWATCH INSTITUTE
Program Director

Earthwatch Institute is an international, non-profit organization which engages people worldwide in scientific field research and education to promote the understanding and action necessary for a sustainable environment.

The Earthwatch Institute Program Director has primary responsibility for the recruitment of mission-relevant field research projects for Earthwatch Institute. Responsibilities include:

o strategic development of research support by Earthwatch,
o outreach to scientific community and development of a network of scientists,
o scientific proposal solicitation, and review of proposals
o lead and participate in conference sessions, workshops, events and lecture series
o develop analyses and external reporting in publications and conferences
o fund-raising for initiatives related to specific research program

The Program Director reports to the Director of Research and works closely with other members of the research Department, including two other Program Directors, 4 Field Directors, and work closely with corresponding staff in other departments.

The Program Director will have outstanding qualifications and field experience in international conservation science and sustainable development. Earthwatch is looking for someone with significant experience in field research in community-based resource management. The candidate must have strong administrative, analytical and interpersonal skills to effectively build and coordinate a diverse research program. A Ph.D. or equivalent degree or experience is required, as are demonstrated abilities to obtain funding, to manage interdisciplinary projects, and to effectively communicate and study complex conservation issues. Also required are leadership abilities and entrepreneurial spirit necessary to maintain an internationally, well-respected Program.

For a complete job description see http://www.earthwatch.org/offices/vacancies_us.html

Salary range: $45,000 - $55,000 commensurate with experience

Please submit cover letter and resume to hr@earthwatch.org; fax 978-897-0935; mail HR, Earthwatch Institute, P.O. Box 75, Maynard, MA 01754-0075.

News Item: Intellectual Property

RIAA Sues 531 More for Music Downloads
Associated Press

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

WASHINGTON — The recording industry sued 531 more computer users Tuesday it said were illegally distributing songs over the Internet in what has become a routine reminder reminder that college students, teenagers and others can face expensive lawsuits for swapping music online.

The Recording Industry Association of America (search) filed the latest complaints against "John Doe" defendants in lawsuits in Atlanta; Philadelphia; Orlando, Fla.; and Trenton, N.J. It said the defendants were customers of one of five Internet providers based in those cities.

Philadelphia is the headquarters for Comcast Cable Communications Inc. (CMCSA), the nation's largest cable company. Atlanta is headquarters for Earthlink Inc. (ELNK), another of the nation's biggest Internet providers.

Music industry lawyers identified the defendants only by their numeric Internet protocol addresses and expected to work through the courts to learn their names and where they live.

The RIAA's president, Cary Sherman, said illegal downloads continue hurting new, legitimate Internet services for selling music. "We are sending a clear message that downloading or 'sharing' music from a peer-to-peer network without authorization is illegal, it can have consequences and it undermines the creative future of music itself," Sherman said in a statement.

Last month, the recording group filed lawsuits against 532 computers users who were customers of Internet providers based in Washington and New York. The latest actions represent the largest number of complaints filed at one time since the trade group launched its legal campaign last summer to cripple Internet music piracy.

The recording group has said previously that after its lawyers discover the identity of each defendant, they will contact each person to negotiate a financial settlement before amending the lawsuit to formally name the defendant and, if necessary, transfer the case to the proper courthouse. Settlements in previous cases have averaged $3,000 each.

Position Announcement: Irish Language

The Boston College English Department and Irish Studies program seek to fill a one-year position for a visiting instructor or assistant professor specializing in
the Irish language. The position entails teaching first- and second-year Irish language classes, and one other course for the English department each semester. Teaching load is 3 courses per semester. Salary will depend on the qualifications of the individual. Boston College is an AA/EOE employer.
Applicants should send a letter and cv to: howesmb@bc.edu or: Marjorie Howes, codirector, Irish Studies, Connolly House, 300 Hammond St., Boston College, Chestnut Hill MA 02467

Conference: Cultural Studies, History, Anthropology, Sociology

PRINT CULTURE AND THE CITY
An interdisciplinary conference

March 26th-27th 2004
Department of Art History and Communications Studies
McGill University, Montréal

Conference Program (provisional) available at http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/ahcs/cultureofcities/printculturecity.html

Call for Papers: Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Theory, History, Geography

2nd INTERNATIONAL 'LANGUAGE-COMMUNICATION- CULTURE' CONFERENCE

Beja, Portugal, November 2004

Knowledge and Power: history, geography, representation, identity in post-colonial studies

In Orientalism, Edward Said selected these two great Baconian themes - Knowledge and Power - as dominant in the discourse of imperial authority. "Knowledge means rising above immediacy, beyond self, into the foreign and distant . To have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it". And, in Culture and Imperialism, he called for 'a different and innovative paradigm for humanistic research', 'a way of regarding our world as amenable to investigation and interrogation without magic keys, special jargons and instruments, curtained-off practices', a way through which 'the disenchantments, the disputations and systematically sceptical investigations in innovative work . submit these composite, hybrid identities [the caliphate, the state, the orthodox clerisy, the Establishment] to a negative dialectics which dissolves them into variously constructed components. What matters a great deal more than the stable
identity kept current in official discourse is the contestatory force of an interpretative method whose material is the disparate, but intertwined and interdependent, and above all overlapping streams of historical evidence.'

Both in method and content Said's books contributed to a new approach to post-colonial theory and practice. A year after his death we would like to address some of the issues he developed in his work. We, therefore, welcome papers (15 to 20 minutes reading) on the following subjects:

1. Histories of Empires and Colonies
2. Women and Empires
3. Old Empires and Indirect Colonialism
4. Post-colonial Theories in the 21st century
5. Said's works and their importance in post-colonial cultural criticism

Please send 150-word abstracts by 15 July 2004 to the following addresses:

Adelaide Meira Serras: aserras@mail.telepac.pt
Luísa Leal de Faria: lealfaria@yahoo.com
Teresa Malafaia: tvmalafaia@mail.telepac.pt

Call for Papers: Popular Music Studies, Ethnomusicology, Cultural Policy

Popular Music: Issues of Culture and State

IASPM UK and Ireland Conference 2004
Mary Immaculate College, Universityof Limerick, 12-13 July, 2004


The cultural field of popular music comprises a worldwide phenomenon that can be said to transcend national boundaries. At the same time, the ever-increasing interface between Anglo-American popular music forms and various traditions of ‘world music’ suggests a plurality of relatively distinct popular music cultures that have continuities with musical practices at local, national and international levels.


Given the interplay of these levels, and particularly in the light of the involvement of multi-national enterprises in domestic production and consumption, what are the potential relationships between popular music interests and statutory concerns? A key question here is the extent to which symbolic and material significance is afforded to popular music by nation states and/or regional authorities, and how this compares to policy and provision for other musical forms. This relates to dichotomous conceptions of popular music and traditional music, a conventional distinction that is problematic in the contexts of increased professionalisation, commodification and ‘mediaization’ in all vernacular music practices. At the same time, non-commodity forms of popular and traditional music-making continue to be adapted and/or maintained by local communities or by ‘communities of sound’. These less spectacular aspects of music production and consumption tend to be eclipsed by industry-oriented definitions of popular music and popular culture, an imbalance that is reflected in statutory policy and provision, and to some extent also in popular music scholarship.


The aims of the conference are to examine critically the potential relationships between and among popular (vernacular) music practices and forms, conceptions and articulations of culture at both macro and micro levels, and the agency of industry interests and statutory and/or regional authorities. The conference organisers are interested both in general theoretical reflections and in grounded empirical studies that explore the themes concerned. It is envisaged that papers will fall into one of the three categories below:

1 Statutory policy and provision for popular music

How is popular music valued by the (nation) state? Which policies and infrastructures exist to support a) domestic or ‘indigenous’ music industries b) conceptions of popular music as local/national culture c) popular music in formal education?

2 Popular music as vernacular music

What is the interface between popular music practices and traditional music practices in contemporary contexts of production, consumption and distribution? Is folksong really ‘fakesong’? How are non-commodity popular forms appraised in cultural terms?

3 Interpreting popular music practices


A particular focus of the conference will be on ethnographic approaches to the study of popular music. How are local traditions or scenes created, maintained and developed? What is the relationship between producers and consumers in local communities or in ‘communities of sound’? What is the interplay between local traditions/scenes and the wider world of popular music culture?

Proposals not fitting into the above categories but which break new ground are also welcome.

Form of papers
The standard format is a twenty-minute paper. However, proposals for panel discussions, workshops, and poster presentations are also
welcome.


Deadline for proposals

Proposals for individual presentations, of not more than 300 words, and for group activities, of not more than 500 words, should be submitted to John O’Flynn by 8 March 2004. Please include full contact details with your proposal, which should be sent by e-mail, to John.Oflynn@mic.ul.ie (attachments should be sent in RTF, Word or some other generic format). If e-mail is not possible, the postal address is:

John O’Flynn
Music Department
Mary Immaculate College
University of Limerick
South Circular Road
Limerick,Ireland

Further details including registration procedures will be available in a dedicated conference website early in 2004.

Summer Fellowship Call for Projects

Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular

The Institute for Multimedia Literacy (IML) at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Communication is pleased to announce a Fellowship program for summer 2004 to foster innovative research for its new electronic publishing venture, Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular.

Vectors is a new, international electronic journal dedicated to expanding the potentials of academic publication via emergent and transitional media. Vectors brings together visionary scholars with cutting-edge designers and technologists to propose a thorough rethinking of the dynamic relationship of form to content in academic research, focusing on the ways technology shapes, transforms and reconfigures social and cultural relations.

Vectors will adhere to the highest standards of quality in a strenuously reviewed format. The journal is edited by Tara McPherson and Steve Anderson and guided by the collective knowledge of a prestigious international board.

About the Fellowships

· Vectors Fellowships will be awarded to up to six individuals or teams of collaborators in the early to mid- stages of development of a scholarly multimedia project related to the themes of Evidence or Mobility. Completed projects will be included in the first two issues of the journal beginning in fall 2004. Vectors will feature next-generation multimedia work, moving far beyond the ‘text with image’ format of most online scholarly publications.

Fall 2004: Evidence

· The first issue of the journal will be devoted to a broad reconsideration of the notion of Evidence and its multiple transformations in contemporary scholarship and digital culture.

Spring 2005: Mobility

· The second issue will be devoted to exploring the shifting concepts and practices of Mobility in contemporary culture, creatively limning the possibilities and limits of such a concept for understanding 21st century life.

About the Awards

All fellowship recipients will participate in a one-week residency June 21-25, 2004 at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy in Los Angeles, where they will have access to the IML’s state of the art, Mac-based production facilities. Fellows will have continuing access to work in collaboration with world-class designers and the IML’s technical support and programming team throughout the project’s development.

The residency will include colloquia and working sessions where participants will have the chance to develop project foundations and collectively engage relevant issues in scholarly multimedia. Applicants need not be proficient with new media authoring; however, evidence of successful collaboration and scholarly innovation is desirable. Fellowship awards will include an honorarium of $2000 for each participant or team of collaborators, in addition to travel and accommodation expenses.

About the Proposals

We are seeking project proposals that creatively address issues related to the first two themes of Evidence and Mobility. While the format of the journal is meant to explore innovative forms of multimedia scholarship, we are not necessarily looking for projects that are about new media. Rather, we are interested in the various ways that new media suggest a transformation of scholarship, art and communication practices and their relevance to everyday life in an unevenly mediated world.

Applicants are encouraged to think beyond the computer screen to consider possibilities created by the proliferation of wireless technology, handheld devices, alternative exhibition venues, etc. Fellows will also have the possibility to imagine scholarly applications for newly developing technologies through productive collaborations with scientists and engineers. Projects may translate existing scholarly work or be entirely conceived for new media. We are particularly interested
in work that re-imagines the role of the user and seeks to reach broader publics while creatively exploring the value of collaboration and interactivity.

Proposals should include the following:

· Title of project and a one-sentence description
· A 3-5 page description of the project concept, goals and outcome (this description should address questions of audience, innovative uses of interactivity, address and form, as well the project’s contribution to the field of multimedia scholarship and to contemporary scholarship more generally)
· Brief biography of each applicant, including relevant qualifications and experience for this fellowship
· Full CV for each applicant
· Anticipated required resources (design, technical, hardware, software, exhibition, etc.)
· Projected timeline
· Sample media if available (CD, DVD, VHS (any standard), or NTSC Mini-DV); for electronic submissions, URLs are preferred but still images may be sent as e-mail attachments if necessary)

Please submit to:

Vectors Summer Fellowships
Institute for Multimedia Literacy
746 W. Adams Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90089
e-mail: vectors@annenberg.edu

Priority will be given to applications received by March 12, 2004.
Fellowship recipients will be notified in mid-April.

Additional Information

For additional information about the Vectors Summer Fellowship Program, please consult our informational website at
http://www.iml.annenberg.edu/vectors . Questions may be directed to Associate Editor Steve Anderson, sanderson@annenberg.edu .

Info: Singing/Ethnomusicology/Folklore/Irish Studies

There's a discussion with Connemara singer Meaití Joe Shéamuis on Wisconsin Public Radio on the web at:

http://clipcast.wpr.org:8080/ramgen/wpr/hoe/hoe040207k.rm

There's a bit of a spiel about the radio program first, but if you forward to 4mins and 30 seconds you can miss most of it. You will still, however, learn that Meaití Joe "reeks authenticity", which is a rather curious phrase ...

Book Announcement

(press release)

DISRUPTING PRECONCEPTIONS: Postcolonialism and Education
Edited by Anne Hickling-Hudson, Julie Matthews and Annette Woods
(ISBN 1 876682 56 6)

Disrupting Preconceptions: Postcolonialism and Education is a highly recommended text within the fields of education, sociology, postcolonial
studies and cultural studies. The text presents an innovative collection of papers dealing with education and challenges to the pervasive impact of colonial legacies within a range of contexts.

Contents:
Education, postcolonialism and disruptions, Anne Hickling-Hudson, Julie Matthews & Annette Woods;
Indigenous knowledge and the cultural interface: Underlying issues at the intersection of knowledge and information systems, Martin Nakata;
The challenge to deculturalisation: Discourses of ethnicity in the schooling of indigenous children in Australia and the USA, Anne Hickling-Hudson & Roberta Ahlquist;
The role of multicultural literature as a counter-force to the literary canon, Thomas W. Bean;
Transforming the study of visual culture: Postcolonial theory and the ethically reflexive student, Christopher Crouch, Dean Chan & Nicola Kaye;
Tensions in the decolonisation process: Disrupting preconceptions of postcolonial education in the Lao People's democratic republic, Christine Fox;
Globalisation and education in Sub-Saharan Africa: A postcolonial analysis, Leon Tikly;
Reforming education structures in the postcolonial world: The case of South Africa, Pam Christie;
The benev(i)olence of imperial education, Helen Tiffin;
The Singapore education system: Postcolonial encounter of the Singaporean kind, Aaron Koh;
Perverse hybridisations, queering postcolonial pedagogies, Vicki Crowley;
Racism, racialisation and settler colonialism, Julie Matthews & Lucinda Aberdeen;
Offshore Australian higher education: A case study of pedagogic work in Indonesia, Parlo Singh;
The political context of English language teaching in East Timor, Roslyn Appleby;
On postcolonial education and beyond: An afterword, Allan Luke

Recommendations from leading scholars:
"Finally a collection that brings the needed scope, focus and diversity to postcolonial studies in education. The welcomed volume offers a rare globally distributed set of perspectives that establish the currency of postcolonial perspectives as both critically productive and forward-looking ways of knowing." John Willinsky

"This is a fine collection of papers, from leading educational scholars. They argue that the contemporary corporatised policies of education such as international education limit the possibilities of transformative practice. This book is highly recommended." Fazal Rizvi

For further details or to purchase this 2004 text, email netsteve@bigpond.net.au. or visit www.postpressed.com.au.

News Item: Folklore, Postcolonialism


The American Folklore Society Executive Board has sent a letter to the 21 members of the US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, expressing appreciation for the renewal of Title VI funding for Area Studies Centers within the Higher Education Act, and advocating for important changes to HR 3077, the International Studies in Higher Education Act. To read this letter, please go to
http://www.afsnet.org/aboutAFS/positionstatement.cfm

Call for Papers: Modern Languages, History, Comparative Literature, European Studies, Art History, Foreign Language Education, Sociology, Political Science, Philosophy, Linguistics, Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, Folklore

The graduate students of the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin invite graduate students and other colleagues in Modern Languages, History, Comparative Literature, European Studies, Art History, Foreign Language Education, Sociology, Political Science, Philosophy, Linguistics and related disciplines to submit abstracts for our eighth annual graduate symposium, to be held on the UT campus in Austin, Texas on Friday, April 9, 2004.

Call for Papers:

"Survival, Transformations, and Adaptations: Identities in the History and Culture of Central and Northern Europe"

Keynote Speaker: Dieter Haller, Cultural Anthropologist and Visiting Professor at the Department of Germanic Studies, University of Texas at Austin

The complexity of one's identity is a topic that has intrigued scholars for years. A growing body of research continues to explore, among other things, how identity evolves, how it is shaped by outside forces, and how it emerges after moments of social unrest. Questions surrounding past and present (mis)representations of Jewish identity in Central Europe, for example, continue to generate discourse among social scientists, while the more recent phenomenon of "Ostalgie" exemplifies the dynamic of a re- emerging GDR identity largely absent following German reunification.

This one day event is intended to provide an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of issues pertaining to national, group, and individual identities. Proposals from all periods are welcome.

Topics can include:

Nation and Identity
Family and Family Relations
"Ostalgie"
Discourses of Gender: Representations of Masculinity and Femininity in Literature, the Arts, and Popular Culture
Visual Culture/Media Representation of ethnic, political, and social Minorities
The German Homeland and Borderlands
Jewish and German Identity
Intellectuals and the State
Narratives of Migration and Travel
Guerillas, Freedom Fighters and Terrorists
Approaches to Teaching Cultures within Cultures
Open Topic

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words by Friday, February 20, 2004. Include your name, the title of your paper, your university and department affiliation, your address, telephone number, e-mail address, and any equipment requirements. Presentations will be 20 minutes each (8- 10 pages).

You may send your abstracts by mail OR as an attachment in e-mail. Abstracts in hard copy should be mailed to:

Jason Williamson and Clair Mealy
Dept. of Germanic Studies
University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station C3300
Austin, TX 788712-0304

Abstracts per e-mail should be sent to one or both of the following:
jaskwilliamson@mail.utexas.edu
chmealy@mail.utexas.edu

Website

The Irish Social Care Gateway: the Irish directory of information for social care practitioners, students, academics and those interested in care issues. The Gateway is maintained by the social care programme at the Institute of Technology, Sligo, on behalf of the Irish Association of Social Care Educators.

http://staffweb.itsligo.ie/gateway/

Pari Center for New Learning Newsletter, February 2004

This newsletter contains
a) Information about audio and video now available on
the Pari Center Website
b) Courses and Conferences
c) Dialogues in Religion and Science

Audio

The Pari Center website now contains a series of audio clips taken from historic interviews with leading scientists including Heisenberg, Dirac, Rosenfeld, Uhlenbeck, Prigogine, Bohm, Wheeler, Salam and Penrose. Additional interviews will be added over the coming months. An index of these audio clips can be accessed from the homepage at http://www.paricenter.com

Video

Video had been added to the website. These include clips from an interview with David Peat plus a visit to the village of Pari and its Sagra (September festival). In addition, a number of interviews are available in Italian. Additional material will be added over the coming months. An index of these video clips can also be accessed from the homepage.

Courses

New Science/New Paradigms runs from 4-11 May. The course will be presented by David Peat. Information on this course can be found at http://www.paricenter.com/programs/courses/newscience.php

Synchronicity: The Bridge between Matter and Mind runs from 17-24 June. In addition to David Peat, presenters will include Veronica Goodchild
(author of Chaos and Eros), Arnold Smith and Shantena Sabbadini (who has produced a new translation of the I Ching). Information on the course
can be found at http://www.paricenter.com/programs/courses/synchronicity.php

A new course, New Paradigms for Business and Leadership, is to be offered this year. Presenters include staff of "reinvention", an Australian business consultant company, Arthur Cordell (advisor to the Canadian Government on the future of work and the social implications of new technologies), Arnold Smith (complex adaptive systems) and David Peat. Information can be obtained at http://www.paricenter.com/programs/courses/buss.php

Art, Science and the Sacred.

This new course which integrates many of the threads that have been explored at the Pari Center. In addition to David Peat as presenter we are discussing with
other presenters who would speak on such topics as the sacred in theatre, music and art. Information, which will be updated over the next months can be found at http://www.paricenter.com/programs/courses/artscisacred.php

An additional new course (on the I Ching in Italian) will be given in June by Shantena Sabbadini. Information on this course will be posted on the website during the next month. While the course this year will be in Italian Dr. Sabbadini will be giving a course in English, on Dreaming and the I Ching, during 2005. Information will be given in subsequent newsletters.

Conference

The Roundtable conference "The Next Horizon: Re-examining Deep Values in Religion & Science" will take place September 10-14, 2004. A description of the meeting and participants can be found at http://www.paricenter.com/conferences/Srel/religionscience.php. Note: In order to create a focused atmosphere numbers attending the meeting are strictly limited. Anyone who would like to attend should write to info@paricenter.com

Dialogues in Religion and Science

Thanks to a grant and a special award from the Metanexus Institute the Pari Center continues its dialogues in religion and science. These are
generally held monthly and consist of a public talk (in Italian) on a Saturday afternoon often followed by a round table discussion (in Italian or English) on the following day. Talks this year will be on Hinduism, Buddhism and the science of the mind, Islam and knowledge, "God, Logic and Language", the nature of belief and knowledge of the divine. Additional talks are now being arranged.

Call for Papers: Popular Music Studies/Ethnomusicology/Anthropology/Cultural Studies

MAKING MUSIC, MAKING MEANING

13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM)
July 18-23, 2005 Rome, Italy

The Program Committee of IASPM invites individual or panel proposals on the general theme of “Making Music, Making Meaning” for the July 2005 conference to be held in Rome. While focusing on meaning as a shared initial concept, the conference will be organized by five parallel streams, as follows:
• Mapping Meaning (convenor Geoff Stahl) [geoffs@cam.org]
• Reading Meaning (convenor Claire Levy) [levy@musicart.imbm.bas.bg]
• Voicing Meaning (convenor Franco Fabbri) [prof.fabbri@fastwebnet.it]
• Visualizing Meaning (convenor Marion Leonard) [marionl@liverpool.ac.uk]
• Mediating Meaning (convenor Shuhei Hosokawa) [hosokawa@valdes.titech.ac.jp]

Proposals should be sent by email to:

They should include author’s name, institutional affiliation (if any), post and email addresses, paper or panel title, and abstract of no more than 300 words suitable for publication on the conference website if accepted. Please also specify the intended stream and attach your submissions as files with the title “authorsname.rtf”.

Deadline for submissions is July 1, 2004; authors will be notified of the Program Committee’s decisions by January 1, 2005.

MAKING MUSIC, MAKING MEANING: CONFERENCE STREAMS

Mapping Meaning (convenor Geoff Stahl) [geoffs@cam.org]

This stream invites individual paper and panel proposals that investigate issues related to specific popular music meanings emerging in different geographical regions. The production, distribution and consumption of popular music across the globe has meant that attachments to place, national/regional, are important aspects of musicmaking. Discussions focusing on regions around the Mediterranean, the Balkans, Latin America, Africa and Asia, and also on music which
reflects inter-ethnic, inter-regional and inter-cultural perspectives are especially encouraged. We welcome as well papers that address issues relating the intersections and mediations of identity, locality and spatiality. Local scenes and global trends, musical hybridity and cross-pollination are phenomena worthy of more discussion. Considerations of transnational dimensions of past and present musicmaking are also welcome.


Reading Meaning (convenor Claire Levy) [levy@musicart.imbm.bas.bg]

Since its beginnings, popular music studies has insisted on the priority of meaning. Following the understanding that popular music means different things to different people, theoretical orientations pursued methods ranging from the realm of semiotic or interpretive frameworks to theories of social and cultural homology. While ever challenged by the very nature of popular music and the way it functions, much scholarly work has recently developed methods of textual, contextual and intertextual analysis, or focused on issues in relation to different aspects of the complex relations between intra- and para-musical structures. How are these orientations advancing? Why and how do they borrow theoretical perspectives from neighbouring disciplines? What is, after all, so specific about popular music theory in its attempts to make sense of particular developments in music? How does it contribute to modern understanding of culture and society? Does this understanding produce a further fragmentation of contemporary knowledge in humanities or does it tend to conceptualize a more holistic view on cultural movements? Following from this, how does such knowledge find its way to class rooms? This stream invites individual paper and panel proposals that involve, re-conceptualize and/or further develop theoretical approaches in analysing, studying and also teaching the meaning of popular music. Textual, intertextual and interdisciplinary perspectives are especially encouraged.

Voicing Meaning (convenor Franco Fabbri) [prof.fabbri@fastwebnet.it]

Most popular music is song, making popular music means (to a large extent) to sing, and a great part of the meaning created while (or by) making popular music is associated with the human voice, then with the body, with complex relations involving the act of singing and an individual personality (‘le grain de la voix’), with intonation (in the paralinguistic sense), with dialects and languages, with texts (‘lyrics’), with the technology of performance and sound reproduction.
While all of these themes and concepts are more or less familiar to academic musicologists and ethnomusicologists (being related to such topics as plainchant, madrigal, opera, Lied, the usage of the human voice in different ethnic contexts, etc.), they appear to be vital to address important issues in popular music studies as well. Just think of the meaning of the search for ‘a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel’ (Sam Phillips, may he rest in peace), not a marginal question in popular music history. What does it mean to have that (vocal) sound and feel? And what about the ‘voz affillà’ in flamenco, ‘bahha’ inArabic song (and its derivatives in many styles of Eastern Mediterranean - mostly female - singing, with ‘that’ typical opaque, ‘tired’ vocal timbre), the deep voice of French chansonniers and Italian cantautori? How are song lyrics pronounced? And are singer-songwriters’ lyrics ‘poetry’? How are social meanings mediated
through the voice? How are local accents (Southern, Liverpudlian) creating meanings? How are foreign languages received and made meaningful? How do languages create barriers to the understanding and dissemination of popular music? Papers addressed to this stream may cover all topics related to the human voice, to language, to song, to all interactions between verbal and musical meanings. Papers covering historical aspects of these relations, and/or focusing on
national/local popular genres (as opposed to transnational/mainstream/anglocentric ones) will be warmly welcome.


Visualizing Meaning (convenor Marion Leonard) [marionl@liverpool.ac.uk]

This stream of the conference invites paper and panel proposals related to sound and vision. This connection is broadly conceived from the analysis and contexts of audio-visual texts to the connection between music and the visionary. In relation to the first of these connections, papers may look at any aspect of meaning making related to music use within documentaries, films, television, video games or music videos. Such considerations may touch on concepts and themes including stardom, genre, mood, mythology and representation. Papers may explore industrial or historical dimensions of this theme, considering for
instance the licencing of music within film soundtracks and advertisements, cross-promotional strategies or the historical link between sound and vision. The stream also encourages papers which explore the concept of the visionary, related to the ties between music styles and religious practice, folk and cultural customs, and rituals and myths. Alternatively, presentations may wish to explore how music has been used to evoke utopian, dystopian and political visions of the future.


Mediating Meaning (convenor Shuhei Hosokawa) [hosokawa@valdes.titech.ac.jp]

In the study of popular music, the role and function of mediation has hardly been neglected. From Adorno’s pioneering work to recent research on record labels, recording work, television, MP3 and other sites and technologies, the significance of mediation in the production, reproduction and consumption of popular music has been studied extensively. We know that media in a broad sense not only transmit the sound from the atelier of the composer to the recording studio and the living room and head phone, but also condition the mode of existence of sound itself, the way of conceiving and interpreting music, and the pleasure and displeasure of music. Our musical life depends on various types of mediation, but at the same time these intermediary agencies depend on music. What do we experience in our “media-saturated” world? Is it different from what one used to experience in pre-industrial society? How have these mediations been shaped in today’s world? In this stream, we will revisit this concept of mediation in order to look back and ahead at popular music studies. This stream welcomes paper and panel proposals on recording and entertainment industry, technology, journalism, advertisement, agency, space/place, and other related issues.

Call for Chapters: Feminism, Cyberstudies, Pedagogy, Cultural Studies

Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice: Communities, Pedagogies, and Social Action

Kristine Blair, Bowling Green State University,
kblair@bgnet.bgsu.edu,

Radhika Gajjala, Bowling Green State University,
radhik@bgnet.bgsu.edu,

Christine Tulley, University of Findlay,
tulley@findlay.edu

Although current manifestations of cyberfeminism are visible in various digital, computer-mediated environments, some of these seem to imply that the only concern for cyberfeminists should be the setting up of a feminist counterculture in the form of spaces merely in opposition to the presumed masculinist hegemony online. Yet if cyberfeminist agendas are indeed to produce subversive countercultures that are empowering to women and men of lesser material and socio-cultural privilege the world over, it is important for us to examine how individuals and communities are situated within the complex global and local contexts mediated by unequal relations of power.

To address these issues, Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice: Communities, Pedagogies, and Social Action, will feature an interdisciplinary collection of voices that address both the possibilities and constraints of female and feminist identity, community, and social/educational transformation in cyberspace. Contributors are encouraged to submit abstracts to the appropriate section editor for a 20-25 page chapter. Our proposed text is organized into three sections:

Section I. The Everyday Life of Borderwork (Section Editor, Christine Tulley)

What do female web spaces look like when they operate in opposition to or distinctly from standard borders/communities (for example, classroom and community spaces, political arenas, or cultural centers)? What happens to women who design cyberspaces that dont necessarily fall under the category of feminist? Some potential areas to investigate for this category might include:

The practice of shopping for women in cyberspace
Communities with a traditionally feminine focus
Cybercommunities for moms
Websites for women devoted to specific feminist interest
Dating websites or profiles

We are open to other areas for investigation as well, especially those projects that examine practices of women using the net that cannot be easily labeled or operate on or beyond borders previously established by other fields of study.

Section II. Classroom and Community Networks (Section Editor, Kristine Blair)

Essays in this section will focus on the role of technology in fostering feminist teaching and learning communities, including community action and service learning projects and the gender and power dynamics that evolve as more and more women enroll in distance education or seek access to communication networks as part of their academic, professional, and social lives. Possible questions to guide the section include:

In what ways do feminist theory and critical cultural pedagogies intersect with classroom and community e-space to foster reciprocity, dialogue, and social activism?

How do women, as educators and activists, construct and sustain virtual spaces that potentially subvert cultural views of technology as male?

Rather than align ourselves with uncritical views of technology as liberator, contributors should theorize the role of technology in classroom practice and social action projects, acknowledging the possibilities and constraints of virtual spaces in subverting traditional intersections among gender, power, and identity to foster social and political transformation both locally and globally.

Section III. Building Cyberfeminist Webs (Section Editor, Radhika Gajjala)

For this section of the book, the authors solicit essays that develop and analyze strategies and tactics for building cyberfeminist webs. Even as women are displayed visibly in relation to various technological contexts, the complex gendered, raced, classed, embodied - in short the socio-cultural and economically situated nature of technological design and practices - are not acknowledged often enough; thus we seek engagement with the following questions:

What are women allowed to use these technologies for and why?
Which women are allowed, and under what conditions?
Where and how can we locate agency in relation to these spaces and practices?

At the same time there exists a mediated visibility of gender in relation to computers and cyberspace, much discourse surrounding new technologies implicitly assumes the transparency of these technologies. Thus this section will include various critical theoretical perspectives that practically form the necessary collaborations to design and produce dialogic electronic networks.

Deadlines:

500-Word Abstracts: April 15, 2004
Selection of Abstracts: June 15, 2004
First Version of Manuscripts: September 15, 2004
Feedback to Authors: November 15, 2004
Final Versions: January 15, 2005

Call for papers: Cultural Studies/Anthropology

Papers are invited for publication online and in hard-copy in a collected volume, Cultures of Atlantic Europe and the New Partnership, edited by Steven Totosy de Zepetnek http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/totosycv.html; and Marcus Jurij Vogt. The papers are to appear

1) as a thematic issue of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu, a peer-reviewed, full-text, and public-access journal published by Purdue
University Press and

2) in a hard-copy collected volume in the Purdue University Press series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies
http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/compstudies.asp; &
http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/ccs-purdue.html;. The publications are a project following a conference held at the University of Halle-Wittenberg 5 February 2004 "Atlantic Europe or a Partnership Apart? / Europa in Atlantica: Partnerschaft im Kontinentaldrift?" http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/library/atlanticeuropeconference04.html

Thematics:

Historically, the process of European unification has been supported and furthered in large measures by the USA since the 1950s and Germany, in particular, has been a beneficiary in this process. The US-American support of European unification and its process allowed for and often aided the transformation of long-established historical reservations into new and working partnerships between cultures and countries within Europe and between Europe and the USA. About Iraq, the USA on the one hand and France and Germany on the other hand demonstrated differences in opinion and action. The question presents itself as to whether and in what measure Europe would need US-American support and involvement in its process of unification, including such within the context of international and global affairs. Papers selected represent multi- and inter-disciplinary analysis and discussion of transatlantic cooperation and partnership between countries and cultures of the European Union and the USA in order to respond to issues of current import constructively. The length of a paper is 5000 words, in the MLA: Modern Language Association of America format with parenthetical sources and a works cited (but no footnotes or end notes): for CLCWeb's style guide link to http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/proced2.html, for the CCS-Purdue series style guide link to http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/ccs-purdue.html; when quoting text other than English, quotes are presented in English translation with the text of the source language following the English translation. A 200-word abstract of the paper and a biographical abstract are also required: please see examples of papers for the format of the abstract and the biographical abstract in CLCWeb. Submission of papers is electronically only, in word by attachment to clcweb@purdue.edu or totosy@medienkomm.uni-halle.de by 31 December 2004.