New technologies of the self, mobilities and (co-)construction of identity :: Edited by: Fred Dervin & Yasmine Abbas :: Call for Abstracts :: Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by March 15, 2008. Full chapters will be expected to be submitted by September 1, 2008.

The new interpersonal spaces created by web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies seem to correspond to the technologies of the self that Michel Foucault (1988) has addressed in his lectures at the Collège de France at the beginning of the 1980s. These new technologies enable the individual’s self to emerge publicly and to be worked upon with its “disciples”: be they companions in Second Life, readers (for example on a blog) or listeners (Podcasts). With high speed Internet access and increasingly generous capacities of storage (mp3, USB keys, iPhone, portable computers…), the opportunities for staging the self have become unlimited.

The authors will explore aspects of the contributions of these new technologies to the expression and (co-)construction of identitie(s) of mobile individuals (physical and/or digital; short-term (expatriates, businessmen, trainees, exchange students…) and long-term (migrants, refugees, exiles…); inter-/intra- and/or transnational mobilities). Any of the following issues can be addressed:

- The specificities of (co-)constructions of the self through new technologies. How do they contribute to presenting the self?
- The potential differences between these technologies of the self and more « traditional » ones.
- What is said about the self? How? How is it constructed or staged? With whom? For whom? And why?
- Are there signs of manipulation of the self and identity collages?
- What myths related to identity seem to emerge?
- The position of the (real/fictive) interlocutor(s) and groups (cf. peg-communities, Z. Bauman) in these constructions.
- How is the other constructed?
- What do visitors, readers, spectators or listeners seem to gain in terms of reflections on their own identities?
- Problems in using but also researching the new technologies of the self (ethics, psychological effects, in terms of relationships, interculturality…).

Submission procedure: Researchers and practitioners (from linguistics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, education, IT…) are invited to submit a proposal (350 words) clearly explaining the mission, concerns of their proposed chapter as well as a short description of the corpus (if they plan on using one), the method of analysis and a basic bibliography by March 1, 2008 to freder [at] utu.fi & abbas.yasmine [at] gmail.com. The proposal can be in English or French.

The followings will also be provided with the proposal: Name(s), affiliation, a few lines about the author(s), and a list of major publications.

Image: Helmut Newton, Self-Portrait with Wife and Model, Vogue Studio, Paris, 1981. Gelatin silver print.