Call for Proposals for an Edited Collection
CfP: Internet Mutations: Resistance and Control
Editors: Erika Pearson (University of Otago, NZ)
Tessa Houghton (University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus)
Contacts: erika.pearson@otago.ac.nz
tessa.houghton@nottingham.edu.my
Dates: Chapter proposals (title + 300-word (max) abstract + brief CV of the author/s) are sought by 02/12 for consideration by the publisher (Springer).
The internet is contested: issues as diverse as censorship, connectivity, digital divides, hacking and hacktivism, grass-root resistance in virtual worlds and even what apps you can buy from an online store all affect how people as individuals, as consumers, and as citizens engage both with and on the internet. Utopian and dystopian ideals have now given way to an experience of the internet which has scope for everything from grassroots communication and social mobilization through to totalitarian regimes attempts to shutdown citizen access to these tools. Acts of resistance and acts of control utilize the same tools and sometimes even the same modes of communication and interaction, and often it is only a matter of perspective as to what is ‘resistance’ and what is ‘control.’
This book brings together multiple perspectives on the internet as a contested and contestable space, and in doing so, we highlight the complex interplay of social, technical, economic and political factors that construct the digital landscape of the twenty-first century. This book will focus its attentions on struggle: the ways the internet is used as a site of debate and tension, resistance and control, and is thus itself contested. Furthermore, this book will situate itself within the Asia-Pacific context as exemplifying the global contestations, and raise and explore issues of resistance and control that particularly impact internet users and online producers from the region as they extend out into cyberspace, and extend the internet into their everyday lives.
This call is seeking potential chapter submissions from any disciplinary area related to the themes of this book. Possible chapter topics include (but are not limited to):
• Censorship
• Copyright and intellectual property
• Online activism & political dissent
• Access & equity
• Grass-root resistance in virtual worlds & gaming
• Privacy & security
• The role of the state/private interests
• Changing paradigms of education and training
• Issues of transnational information flows
• Mobile technologies and nomadic access
