November 8, 2007, 18h00-20h00
The 'Possibility space' of transnationalism
Leacock (Room 219), McGill University
This lecture will explore issues related to new transnational flows and connections - or, more accurately, what are now being perceived as new flows and connections. A particular focus will be on the significance of what we might now call global migrations for the way in which they are challenging old paradigms, by which I mean paradigms associated with the national imagination and mentality. What can we learn from new migrant practices? To what kinds of cultural, social and political possibilities might they point us?
Can we - how can we - identify a new possibility space in the processes of cultural complexification that we are now called to address?
Kevin Robins, Department of Sociology, City University, London
Kevin Robins has been involved in a number of research programs, including most recently ‘Negotiating Spaces,’ concerned with Turkish migration and media use in Europe; and an EU Framework project entitled ‘Changing City Spaces: New Challenges to Cultural Policy in Europe.’ He has also been working with the Council of Europe, particularly within its DG IV project on Cultural Policy and Cultural Diversity in Europe.
He is the author of a number of books on new technologies and new media, including Times of the Technoculture (Routledge, 1999) and The Virtual University? (Oxford, 2002), both with Frank Webster.
Kevin Robins was a visiting scholar with Media@McGill in November 2007.