<nettime-ann> Sensor-Census-Censor : Call for Abstracts

["Shuddhabrata Sengupta" <shuddha@sarai.net>]

.

SENSOR-CENSUS-CENSOR : Investigating Circuits of Information, 
Registering Changes of State
An International Colloquium on Information, Society, History and
Politics
New Delhi, 27, 28  & 29 November 2006

(Apologies for Cross Posting)


SENSOR-CENSUS-CENSOR : Investigating Circuits of Information, 
Registering Changes of State is an International Colloquium on 
Information, Society. Politics and History that will critically examine 
and investigate regimes and technologies of information harvesting, 
management, circulation and deployment as they have developed in India 
and Europe from early modernity till today.

The colloquium, organized by the Sarai Programme at CSDS, Delhi, in 
collaboration with the Waag Society, Amsterdam, under the rubric of the 
network titled 'Towards a Culture of Open Networks', invites scholars, 
theorists, researchers and practitioners working in the areas of 
history, political economy, political theory, philosophy, culture and 
technology studies as well as artists, writers and media practitioners 
based in India and/or Europe to submit proposals for papers and 
presentations that they would like to make at the colloquium.

SENSOR-CENSUS-CENSOR will take place in the last week of November 2006 
in Delhi. Please see below for a concept outline describing the themes 
and concerns animating the colloquium.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Information, Society, Politics, History

Information is a crucial axis of political, economic and social life. 
The nature of information practices in contemporary societies are marked

by a radical dispersal. This dispersal does not replace, earlier 
centralizing modes of gathering information, but stands alongside it. 
The basis of governance, in all its capillary forms and at all levels, 
from the level of the neighbourhood or the workplace to that of city, 
district, province, and the nation, and continuing even at the level of 
the relationship between persons (as citizens and non citizens) and 
different nations, and between nations themselves, can continue to be 
analysed in terms of the management of information. In fact, we can 
locate the analysis of information in society, history and politics 
along the lines of tension between centralization and dispersal.

At the core of this axial reality lies a conceptual and a categorical 
distinction between what is seen to be a member of a population - an 
entity that needs to be governed, and the far more valuable category of 
the citizen - a subject (with sentience and volition) who participates 
in that governance. The recognition of subjectivity (a sensory 
operation, involving an awareness of the change of state that involves 
the transition from a silent, or incoherent stati
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