Call for Paper
Social Cohesion and Diversity: Muslims in Europe and Hui-Muslims in China
13-14 April 2015

Yunnan University, Kunming-China

The aim of this conference is to gather scholars who work on Hui people in China and Muslims in Europe to compare the similitudes and differences of their practices in a cohesive society. A lack of social cohesion among different ethnic and religious people was identified in recent years in Europe and China. The recent development and concerns linked with extremism associated with Muslims require more inquiries on relation between Muslims and non-Muslims in multicultural diverse societies.

Muslims in Europe are hardly featured in international media, domestic politics, and scholarly discussions. In contrast to Chinese case, multiculturalism, radicalisation, immigration, integration, forced marriage are discussed through the Muslim visibility and presence in Europe. Recent debates on integration and secularism are focused on the �Muslim question�. Europe has maintained and managed relatively well its racial and religious harmony facing with rapid social change. There are risks as well as benefits to our increasing ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. The core elements of a cohesive society which are a sense of belonging, participation, inclusion, recognition, trust and social integration are weakened by factors associated with social exclusion, discrimination and marginalization. Increasing the networks of relationship and trust between different social groups; tackling exclusion and marginalization, fighting against inequalities are some common denominators of a cohesive society. European states have different policies and relations vis-a-vis their Muslim population. The Muslim population in Europe present ethnic, cultural and ideological variety.
In contrast to the focus on Muslims in Europe, there is a notable lack of interest in Muslims in China with the exception of the Uyghur community. The Chinese government recognizes many ethnic and religious communities. The various ethnic nationalities form Chinese nationality. Hui are predominantly Chinese speaking Muslims in China�s vast territory. With a population of 10 million, they are also the most numerous recognized ethnic group in China. Among the 56 Chinese ethnic minorities, more than 10 of them are Muslims. The Chinese Muslim population has reached more than twenty million and Hui people represent the largest group among Muslims in China.

In this conference, we want to study the impact of ethnic-religious interactions, state integration positions and policies to grasp the increasing influence of religious-collective-national expression of Muslims in the public sphere. We would like to examine the new patterns of expression and visibility of the Muslims in Europe and China. This conference investigates how Muslims encounters, accommodates and negotiates into different socio political contexts in Europe and China.

Why do we need to be cohesive? Being cohesive what does it mean for Muslims living in Europe and in China? Is a cohesive society an illusion or a substantial requirement for a well being of society? What does it mean national identity? Does encouraging diversity foster a sense of belonging? How accommodate cultural-religious difference with national unity? How mobility of Muslim people and migration affect the national culture and identity? What effect do institutions such as schools, mosques have on pupils� sense of belonging to the wider society? How far do their activities shape their identity? Is there a localization of Islam? What kind of localized practices of Islam are developed by Muslims? What does it mean localization of Islam and Muslim in Europe and in China?

A comparison between China and Europe provides a guide for analysis of different models. The conference looks at the modes of organization of Muslims, their identity demands, social-cultural and religious dynamics of solidarity.

To examine Muslims� ethnic-religious identifications in contemporary China and Europe, and trace in which ways Muslims develop a sense of belonging to the wider society, this international conference will broadly focus (but also restrain the focus) on two topics: (1) the localization of Muslims and Islam in Europe and in China and (2) the interaction of Muslims with the local communities and the State.

• Localization of Muslims and Islam: This part looks at the Muslim way of life and their practices within different contexts to understand how Islam is localized in different contexts. In this regard, we want to analyze the circulation of narratives, translocal practices among Muslims in Europe and in China to seek whether they create new patterns-mixtures of their self-presentation and religious interpretation. As Muslims are not homogeneous groups both in Europe and China, ethnic-religious diversity enforces the diversification of Muslim identity and practices within various secular-national contexts. The aim is to observe the daily practices, narratives and strategies to figure out the dynamics through which Muslims formulate their self.
• Relations with other local ethnic-religious communities and with the State (exchange with different faith people, institutions, public authorities, citizenship models etc.) In this part, we want to understand the interaction of Muslims with non-Muslims, local communities and the state to adjust and to maintain their cultural-religious identity. The capacity of adjusting religious-political identity enables to study the citizenship rhetoric, community dynamics, and institutional structures. The different modes of dynamics between Muslims, non-Muslims and the State constitute the possible ways of pluralism and co-existence of differences. We examine the specific strategies and policies developed by Muslims and authorities to negotiate the citizenship and integration models.

The conference aims to provide a forum for the presentation, dissemination and discussion of the latest research findings on topics related to questions of localization, multiculturalism and cohesive society debates among Muslims living in Europe and in China. Researchers from all social science disciplines including are invited to share views and critical perspectives on social cohesion.

Tuition Fees: There is no tuition fee for participants in the conference programme. Yunnan University will provide accommodation for conference speakers and covers the meals in Kunming during the conference. However, presenters and participants are expected to pay the costs of their travel to and from Yunnan.

Outcome: A proceedings book of the conference will be printed and distributed in advance of the workshop itself.  Copyright of the papers accepted to the Conference will be vested in the GCIS.

Selection Criteria: The conference will accept up to 20 participants, each of whom must meet the following requirements:

• - have a professional and/or research background in related topics of the workshop;
• - be able to attend the entire programme.

Since the Conference expects to address a broad range of topics while the number of participants has to be limited, writers submitting abstracts are requested to bear in mind the need to ensure that their language is technical only where it is absolutely necessary and the language should be intelligible to non-specialists and specialists in disciplines other than their own; and present clear, coherent arguments in a rational way and in accordance with the usual standards and format for publishable work.

Timetable:

• - Abstracts (300�500 words maximum) and CVs (maximum 1 page) to be received by 10 January 2015.
• - Abstracts to be short-listed by the Editorial Board and papers invited by 15 January 2015.
• - Papers (3,000 words minimum � 5,500 words maximum, excluding bibliography) to be received by 2nd March 2015.
• - Papers reviewed by the Editorial Board and classed as: Accepted � No Recommendations; Accepted � See Recommendations; Conditional Acceptance � See Recommendations; Not Accepted, by 16th March 2015.
• - Final papers to be received by 30th March 2015.

The international conference is organized by KU Leuven G�len Chair for Intercultural Studies and Research Center for Studies of Chinese Southwest�s Borderland Ethnic Minorities of Yunnan University. It will be conducted in English and will be hosted by Yunnan University in Kunming.

Papers and abstract should be sent to Erkan Toguslu: erkan.toguslu@soc.kuleuven.be

For more information plz contact:
Erkan Toguslu
KU Leuven G�len Chair for Intercultural Studies
Parkstraat 45 – box 3615
3000 Leuven

The post Call for Paper: Social Cohesion and Diversity: Muslims in Europe and Hui-Muslims in China appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.

Call for Paper: Social Networking in Cyber Spaces: European Muslim’s Participation in (New) Media

28-29 May 2015

Keynote Speakers:

• V�t �isler – Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague, Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture, Managing Editor of CyberOrient, a peer reviewed journal of the virtual Middle East.
• Heidi Campbell – Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and an Affiliate Faculty in the Religious Studies Interdisciplinary Program at Texas A&M University. She studies religion and new media and the influence of digital and mobile technologies on religious communities.[5] Her work has covered a range of topics from the rise of religious community online, religious blogging and religious mobile culture within Christianity, Judaism and Islam, to exploring technology practice and fandom as implicit religion and religious framings within in digital games.

The increasing growth of the Internet is reshaping Islamic communities worldwide. Non-conventional media and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are becoming more popular among the Muslim youth as among all parts of the society. The new channels of information and news attract new Muslim publics in Europe. The profile of the people using these networks range from college students to Islamic intellectual authorities. Such an easy and speedy way of connecting to millions of people across the globe also attracts the attention of social movements, which utilize these networks to spread their message to a wider public. Many Muslim networks and social movements, political leaders, Islamic institutions and authorities use these new media spaces to address wider Muslim and also non-Muslim communities, it is not uncommon that they also address and reach certain so-called radical groups.

Much attention also has been given to the use of social media technologies and their ability to spark massive social change. Some commentators have remarked that these connection technologies, ranging from smartphones to Facebook, can cause revolutionary digital disruptions, while others have even gone so far as to suggest that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter may have incited the Arab Spring. During the Arab Spring or Revolutions, the role of social media as an important and effective tool that had a political force to mobilize people, has been commonly acknowledged. Zeynep T�fek�i of the University of North Carolina quotes that, “Social media in general, and Facebook in particular, provided new sources of information the regime could not easily control and were crucial in shaping how citizens made individual decisions about participating in protests, the logistics of protest, and the likelihood of success.” However, many scholars argue today that the reason of the revolutions were not social media, they also commonly agree that information dispersion, whether by text or image, was pre-dominantly managed through social media. Hence similar arguments were made in part of the Gezi Protests that took place in Turkey, in the late spring of 2013, where the protesters declared themselves journalists as they spread images and information through social media; such information they claim was censored by the mainstream media.

While many researches have focused primarily on the Internet that has played a role in Muslim radicalization, there is less emphasis on the Internet that is also being utilized to encourage Muslims to advocate for gender equality, citizenship and human rights within an Islamic framework, more generally. The social, political and cultural participation of Muslims via Internet open new discussions topics and research areas on Muslims living in Europe. Discussions groups, Facebook communities and all other cyber activism are interlinked with the debates on public sphere and citizenship. The never ending space of cyber activism transform the old debates on Islamic knowledge, authority, citizenship, Muslim communities and networks. The way that this transformation comes out is that young Muslims who are familiar with online platforms, use these spaces to enter debates and get a be-it informal space to present and represent their identities, ideologies, aspirations and even solutions. These platforms can offer the periphery voices to raise their experiences with stereotypes and marginalization. According to some scholars, bloggers and internet forums challenge the traditional media landscape by contributing to public constructions of Islam. The cyber space not only offers internet-natives platforms to argue about social problems but it also allows them to ask questions and find immediate and updated answers to problems concerning their own religious obligations and ethical concerns. Social media provides information accessible to Muslims all over the world, who can connect. It also provides them spaces to argue about belonging to a minority religion of a country they are a citizen of, and how to balance their cultural-religious sensibilities with their citizenship duties.

During this workshop we want to address the politics of identity construction and representations of Muslims in Europe through having a look at the updated mediascape based on but not limited by following headlines:

1. Muslim networks and movements in Western Europe : Formation of transnational communities
   There are current debates about the links Muslims in Europe have with Muslims around the globe, and whether these links create a separate global Muslim identity in contrast to an integrated European identity. There is also the debate as to whether such links create a passage to radicalism. This section focuses on how Muslims in Europe �link� with other Muslims and Muslim groups across the globe. It looks into how Muslim networks across the globe influence Muslims in the West in terms of integration, social-political participation, education, etc. It also looks into how these groups influence each other, and how they reflect on issues concerning Muslim in Europe and across the globe.
   On a second level it ask the following questions; how do communication technologies create a new transnational Muslim community? How are transnational Muslim communities regardless of ethnic differences created through the use of mass media and social media? How is Islamic discourse spread through mass media, how is an Islamic thought developed and dispersed through social (mass) media? How do virtual communities bring about social change? What are the dynamics between Muslim intellectuals, mass media, and knowledge dispersion? What are the relationships between diaspora�s and online networking?
2. Social networking and Muslims in the West
   This section focuses on how Muslims connect online to learn more about their religion, for online dating/marriage, to share experiences of stereotyping/victimization/racism/islamophobia, to present/represent their ideology. It also looks into how through social media, Muslims create a space of debate, construct and share aspirations-imaginaries-products. How is consumerism among Muslims affected by shared images on these networks? How does the common sharing of certain video�s and texts, create a global common culture among Muslim youth?
3. (Social) Media and Participation: Muslims in Europe
   This section focuses on how social media and the press influences political tendencies of Muslims in Europe. How do Muslims construct a sense of belonging and political responsibility in Western Europe, and does social media and the press have an effect on these phenomena? How does media create a common sense of awareness and how does this awareness in the global and local scene have an impact on their social participation? How do Muslim charity organizations function within the sphere of media and social media?

Tuition Fees

Presenters and participants are expected to pay the costs of their travel and accommodation. The organizers have a reduced prize from hotel �La Royale� in Leuven.
The tuition fees to attend the workshop will be arranged as follows:

• Speakers and delegates: 50�
• The registration fee includes a conference dinner and refreshments.

Outcome

• A proceedings book of the workshop with ISBN code will be printed and distributed in advance of the workshop itself.
• Within six months � maximum 1 year of the event, an edited book will be produced and published by the GCIS with Leuven University Press, comprising some or all of the papers presented at the Workshop, at the condition that they pass a peer review organized by the publisher. The papers will be arranged and introduced, and to the extent appropriate, edited, by scholar(s) to be appointed by the Editorial Board.
• Copyright of the papers accepted to the Workshop will be vested in the GCIS.

Selection Criteria

• The workshop will accept up to 20 participants, each of whom must meet the following requirements:
  - have a professional and/or research background in related topics of the workshop;
  - be able to attend the entire programme.
• Since the Workshop expects to address a broad range of topics while the number of participants has to be limited, writers submitting abstracts are requested to bear in mind the need to ensure that their language is technical only where it is absolutely necessary and the language should be intelligible to non-specialists and specialists in disciplines other than their own; and present clear, coherent arguments in a rational way and in accordance with the usual standards and format for publishable work.

Timetable

• Abstracts (300�500 words maximum) and CVs (maximum 1 page) to be received by 10th January 2015.
• Abstracts to be short-listed by the Editorial Board and papers invited by 20th January 2015.
• Papers (3,000 words minimum � 5,500 words maximum, excluding bibliography) to be received by 10th March 2015.
• Papers reviewed by the Editorial Board and classed as: Accepted � No Recommendations; Accepted � See Recommendations; Conditional Acceptance � See Recommendations; Not Accepted, by 20th March 2015.
• Final papers to be received by 15th April 2015.

Papers and abstract should be sent to Merve Reyhan Kayikci:
mervereyhan.kayikci@soc.kuleuven.be

For more information plz contact:
Merve Reyhan Kayikci
KU Leuven G�len Chair for Intercultural Studies
Parkstraat 45 – box 3615
3000 Leuven

The post Call for Paper: Social Networking in Cyber Spaces: European Muslim’s Participation in (New) Media appeared first on ISA Research Committee 22.