V!28 CALL FOR PAPERS | THE DIGITAL AND THE SOUTH: QUESTIONINGS
CALL V!28 THE DIGITAL AND THE SOUTH: QUESTIONINGS
The theme "The digital and the South: Questionings" opens up to the wide spectrum of digital media that interpenetrate everyday life – urban or not –, including the Internet and its physical infrastructures and virtual worlds, the varied modes of digital communication, storage, and organization of information, the artistic expressions of the South in which digital is paramount, the technopolitical issues engendered by corporate actions, the role of the state and public policies for regulation, access, and digital literacy, the disputes for hegemony in the current global context oriented towards multipolarity, and counter-hegemonic actions. We also want to promote critical readings on the use of specific computer applications, online digital platforms and hardware devices in different areas of knowledge, the premises and conditions of their use and the products obtained, in addition to their articulations with scientific research, training, and professional performance.
Unpublished scientific articles and critical essays that explain, in their theme, in the abstract, and the body text, clear and unambiguous evidence about the relationship between the research presented and elements of digital culture in the Global South will be accepted for evaluation.
We hope, therefore, to stimulate debate and critical and grounded reflection that contribute to the understanding of the history, perspectives, limits, and potential of the relationship between the digital and the Global South from various areas of knowledge, especially Architecture, Urbanism, Arts, Cinema, Communication, Design, Law, Philosophy, Social, Environmental and Political Sciences, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, History, Geography, among others, dealing particularly – but not only – with the following topics and their intersections:
+ International tensions: the (new) world order and disputes over technological hegemony, the digital and the notions of decoloniality, multilateralism, globalization, internationalization, imperialism;
+ South-South dialogues, intercultural dialogues, cooperation, and international projects about digital or digitally supported;
+ The digital, cultural diversity and intersectionalities: gender and ethnic identity, multiculturalism, native peoples, blackness and afrodiasporic culture, cultural policies, transnational cultures, subaltern feminisms;
+ The digital and the diffusion of architectural models: the consolidation of the universal character of the modern model, the modern North-Atlantic model as an instrument of domination, construction techniques from the South aided by the digital, the disqualification of local and traditional conceptions, the construction industry;
+ New digitally-aided formal paradigms and Southern cultures: complex geometric architectures, parametric modeling, digital manufacturing, digital design and production processes, the conception and use of computer programs;
+ Artistic expressions and digital media: visual arts, photography, music, audiovisuals, indigenous art, afrodiasporic expressions, installations, urban art;
+ Audiovisual and the digital: documentary films, collaborative projects, digital platforms for debate and dissemination, cinema, urban readings, research and explorations;
+ History of digital media in the Global South: revisions, events, and erasures, new epistemological genealogies, characters, digital productions in the South, rescue of knowledge historically made invisible, criticism of official history;
+ The digital and the coloniality of work relations: platform workers, precariousness, homeworking, intersectionalities of race, gender, and social class;
+ The digital and the university: teaching, research and university extension practices, mission and institutional models, disciplines and curricula, distance education, disciplinary compartmentalization and transdisciplinarity, research networks and academic dialogue, productivism;
+ References from the South related to digital in academic research: review of concepts and analytical categories, rethinking objectives, field delimitations, methods and procedures, the role of the researcher;
+ Digital thinking and metatheories: systemic thinking, complexity, cybernetics, communication ecology, transdisciplinarity;
+ The cities of the South and the digital: smart cities, cartographies, new paradigms of urban development, cyber activism, cyberspace and public scene, social movements;
+ The digital and environmental issues: confronting climate change, North-South and South-South relations, sustainable development, metropolization processes, environmental preservation, agro-industrial models;
+ Contemporary economic models and the digital: the digital economy and the South, globalization and coloniality, de-dollarization, new economies of sustainability, greenwashing, substantive economy and other development models, buen vivir and other economies in the Global South, degrowth;
+ Ways of life in digital culture: the computerization of everyday life, housing and contemporary ways of living, review of design and production processes, intersections with spontaneous and traditional living spaces;
+ Design and the digital: teaching, research, production, innovation, consumption, review of models, new demands, recovery of ancestries;
+ Participatory digitally-supported processes of city design, construction, and management: online digital platforms as a locus of participation, bottom-up citizen actions, solidarity networks, models of political representation;
+ Artificial Intelligence and new forms of colonialism: algorithmic domination, colonialist data extractivism, AI and its impacts on everyday life, the authorship of the documents used and the product, AI and racism, data economy;
+ Technopolitics: digital citizenship, surveillance, free software and open source policies, social networks, fake news and deep fake, social manipulation and political representation, digital sovereignty, computer programs as instruments of control, data extractivism;
+ Cultural heritage and digital media: inclusive decision-making processes on the preservation of architectures and places of memory, valorization and processing of data on the memory and heritage of social minorities, HBIM, documentation, and life cycle control modes, digital architectural design process and traditional construction techniques.
In addition to text and graphic images, we welcome photo essays, videos, short films, animations, sound and musical pieces, and testimonials in audio files, art installation projects and criticism, architectural, urban studies, and building projects and criticism, slide shows and further digital languages considering Nomads.usp's interest in exploring the potential of digital media use on the Internet for academic communication.
Contributions will be received in ENGLISH, PORTUGUESE, OR SPANISH on the journal website no later than August 4, 2024, according to the guidelines for authors available at the Submissions page (www.nomads.usp.br/virus).
IMPORTANT DATES
May 20, 2024: Opening of the period for receiving articles
August 4, 2024: Submissions deadline
From October 7: Notification to authors on the editorial decision
November 11: Deadline to receive the authors' adjustments
November 25: Deadline to receive English, Spanish or Portuguese version
December 2024: Release of V!RUS 28
