Of potential interest to the members of the list. ------ CALL FOR PAPERS 7th Annual Global Internet Governance Symposium 5 November 2012 Baku, Azerbaijan The Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) is seeking submissions of research about Internet Governance to be presented at the Seventh GigaNet Annual Symposium, held on 5 November 2012, one day before the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Baku, Azerbaijan. GigaNet is a scholarly community that promotes the development of Internet Governance as a recognized, interdisciplinary field of study and facilitates informed dialogue on policy issues and related matters between scholars and governments, international organizations, the private sector and civil society. http://giga-net.org/ Since 2006, GigaNet has organized an Annual Symposium to showcase research about Internet Governance, focusing on an interdisciplinary approach. As in previous years, the symposium will provide room to discuss current and future questions as well as the challenges encountered and results achieved in Global Internet Governance. Conference themes GigaNet is interested in receiving abstracts related to Internet Governance themes, especially those containing innovative approaches and/or emerging research areas. We encourage submissions on the following topics: * Internet policies on freedom of expression (censorship, kill-switches, filtering, policies that promote free expression, corporate social responsibility) * Internet freedom and governance in regions in transition (Arab region, Caucasus etc.) * From PIPA to ACTA: National and international agreements on online copyright enforcement * Cyber-security, the state and international relations * Dataveillance and privacy - the economic perspective * Global Internet infrastructure policy (net  neutrality, peering and interconnection, ASN assignment, routing infrastructure security, etc.) * Innovative methods for Internet Governance research * The role of the UN and intergovernmental institutions in global Internet Governance * Policy issues surrounding ICANN’s new gTLD program * IP addressing: economic and technical challenges of scarcity and governance * Internet governance and development Other proposals on questions of global Internet governance will also be considered. Submissions Interested scholars should submit abstracts of research paper not later than 20 May 2012, at the Easy Chair platform: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=giganet2012. Paper proposals should be submitted following these requirements: * An abstract of 800-1000 words, in English, where it is mandatory to describe the main research goal(s) and the methodological background of the paper * A short bio note focused on institutional affiliations, advanced degrees, scholarly publications and work in the field of Internet Governance and related issues (for example ICTs). Please include a link to a more detailed CV. * Important note: accepted abstracts will be required to deliver their full paper a month before the conference. Those unable to do so will be removed from the program. Process and publication The Program Committee members will evaluate the abstracts submitted and decisions will be sent to applicants by email before 15 June 2012. Accepted papers for oral presentations should be followed by a full research paper to be sent by 30 September 2012. Some quality papers submitted that are not accepted for oral presentations will be recommended for poster presentations. Accepted speakers and poster presenters’ submissions and final papers will be published on the GigaNet website. An online publication with selected papers on the main challenges of Internet Governance is also planned for the Azerbaijan IGF. Registration The GigaNet Annual Symposium is free of charge. However, registration will be required to gain entry to the event venue. Please continue visiting our website for further information about registration, venue and accommodation. GigaNet 2012-13 Program Committee * Leo Van Audenhove – PC Chair, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium * Milton Mueller – GigaNet Steering Committee Chair, Syracuse University, USA * Titi Akinsanmi –  University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa * Sandra Braman – University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA * Fatima Cambronero – AGEIA DENSI, Argentina * Laura DeNardis –  American University, USA * Dmitry Epstein – Cornell University, USA * John Gathegi – University of South Florida, USA * Hans Klein – Georgia Institute of Technology, USA * Francesca Musiani – MINES ParisTech, France * Jamal Shahin – University of Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, The Netherlands * Sonny Zulhuda – International Islamic University, Malaysia If you have any question related to the submission or the symposium activities, please e-mail the Program Committee Chair: leo.van.audenhove@vub.ac.be.

A friend forwarded me this link: > I believe that American Christianity has been shaped by the suburbs far more > than the suburbs have been shaped by American Christianity. To borrow a word > from the Apostle Paul in Romans 12, American churches have conformed to the > suburbs. > > The effect of this has been huge and pervasive. It has tended to favor forms > of church and flavors of theology that fall toward the conservative end of the > culture-war spectrum, but it¹s misleading to therefore refer to this as a more > ³conservative² theology. Radical changes and a massive break with the > theology, traditions and institutions of the past aren¹t usually the sorts of > things we describe as ³conservative.² > > The suburbanization of American Christianity has had a huge impact on > institutional and denominational structures. Automobile-shaped development has > produced an automobile-shaped ecclesiology > www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/06/29/why-dont-you-people-ever-seem-to- > live-near-churches/ > > The car has abolished the possibility of the parish. And that, in turn, has > helped to redefine ³neighbor² as a matter of preference more than of proximity > ‹ as optional rather than obligatory. That redefinition is rather significant, > since ³Who is my neighbor?² is an important question for Christians. And my comment was this: There is literature concurring with this thesis above (that the communicational and transportational shape of the world, in turn, shapes belief and devotional practice). For example, a very, very difficult book entitled Beyer, Peter. (2006). Religions in global society. New York: Routledge. It¹s an interesting question - how non-co-present (that is to say virtual) contact in religious communities molds and re-configures communities of faith. I reside four doors from one church (Methodist), a block and a half from another (Baptist) and three blocks from another (Catholic) and have more than a dozen other synagogues within a mile radius. I entered Keneseth Israel (and subsequently Beth Sholom) only because my son had childcare there when he was younger. A\fter 10 years in the town where I currently live, I only recently entered the Methodist and Baptist churches for services, because I was recruiting for the Obama campaign. Churches (and other houses of supernatural belief system) once performed social service and even infrastructure needs, particularly when political authority was fragmented pre-Peace of Westphalia (Anderson, Benedict. (1983/ 2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. New York: Verso). However, with greater bureaucracy and capitalistic fulfillment of social services, Medieval institutions (housese of worship) have become obsolete. The phenomenon of globalization stresses people¹s established social AND economic status and (in my view) they may then revert to hyper-traditional identities and communities what I have elsewhere called ³white working class panic.² This reversion or ³panic² is sometimes framed in religious terms (explored in Armstrong, Karen. (2000). The battle for God. New York: Ballantine Books). It may not seem obvious that racial-xenophobic identity panic is related to ethnoreligious identity. However, for example, during the Bosnian conflicts, attackers asked imminent victims to pray, and thereby identified them as Serbs, Croats or Bosniaks based on which dialect they spoke. This act of prayer (learned in childhood and difficult to fake) stigmatized people as belonging to one of several possible religious groups. Similarly, Catholics and Lutherans in the U.S. recite ³grace² and the Lord¹s Prayer and other oral texts in different ways. These affinities and early patterns are shaped by where people live physically and how they communicate (virtually or in physical community) etc. Not connecting it to religious practice, but connecting it to urban studies, a professor at Temple U. (Bill Yancey) wrote and lectured about ³institutionally complete² communities in which people walked to their barber, school, grocery store, church, etc. and in which people had chance meetings with members of all those types of circles. When people only drive and only have intentional and/or virtual ³meetings² the reinforcement and fulfillment of social needs in a larger community erodes. People have less sense of their (different or more peripheral) neighbors; and people in the small town in suburban Philadelphia where I reside surely have no sense of people in North Philadelphia only two miles away. When people don¹t see different people, or poor people, or people of different faiths, those outsiders seem much scarier and the fantasy of depraved, indolent people sucking away the prosperity of society via a bloated (secular) social service state seems much more frightening. Adrienne