³One Planet One Humanity: Communications For and Against²
An International, Interdisciplinary, Research-Planning Conference
Benedictine University, May 29-31, 2014
CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: January 20, 2014
We are seeking proposals by academicians from the sciences, social
sciences, media studies, and the humanities who
are interested in participating in the
conference and in developing papers on the conference theme.
Please send resume and 600-word abstract to Luigi Manca and Jean-Marie
Kauth, conference coordinators (lma...@ben.edu; jka...@ben.edu). Each proposal
will be reviewed by a panel composed of members
of the conference organizing committee. The
committee includes members from a variety of disciplines.
The purpose of this research-planning conference is to bring together
scholars from different disciplines who are
interested in discussing the emergence of an
interconnected humanity in an interconnected world and the role of the mass
media of communication in this process.
Today¹smedia are failing humanity. The interconnected spiritual reality of
humans has been contaminated by a pervasive,
irresponsible, and dysfunctional use at
the global level of the mass media of communication. Rather than providing
pictures of reality on which the world¹s citizens
can act, the corporate-controlled
media are widely used as instruments of commercial and political
propaganda, creating an immense web of images and
narratives that their creators know
to be not true fabrications designed to sell,
to manipulate, and in a sense, to
enslave worldwide audiences. Under these conditions, it is not possible
for the human race to achieve any true awareness
of itself and of its habitat, and
to develop an adequate orientation about the issues confronting the world
today.
And the systematic destruction of our future goes on.
This conference is about the media and about liberation from the dominant
images and narratives of consumer society.
At the core of this discussion is a rather simple utopian vision of one
planet for a unified humanity billions of
people whose destinies and dreams are
interconnected and interdependent, and who share the same planet. One
planet one humanity. It is a vision of a world not divided into separate
countries or separate ethnic or religious
communities all competing or even going to war
against one another over the exploitation of the available resources. It
is a vision of a world in which we all share responsibly for the common human
habitat. From this point of view, issues such as global warming, world-wide
pollution, and the systematic destruction of the environment are
immediately connected to human rights issues
because these issues impact our ability to
fulfill our needs and dreams in the one living planet we all share, and
because our own survival as a species may very well be at stake here.
If we look at the media from the point of view of this utopian vision we must
first realize that the media industry is not controlled by the people but
by the corporations. Corporate interests exercise a monopoly control over the
media and, through them, over the images and narratives that reach
worldwide audiences. We must also realize that the interests of the corporate
structure that controls the available resources
and that pollutes the human physical
and cultural habitat are on a collision course with the interests of this one,
interconnected humanity. These corporate interests are not necessarily
unified by a single agenda. In fact,
multi-national corporations compete against
one another in a continued struggle for control of markets, resources,
political influence, and profits. What does unify
these corporate interests is the
need to continue to support and expand a consumer economy that is based on the
exploitation of people and resources, the eventual destruction of the
environment, and the contamination of public discourse.
Still, we don¹t see the media necessarily as the enemy. Instead, we see the
multinational corporations who control the media and compete to advance
their profits and influence as the enemy. In fact, if freed from the corporate
control, the media can help us change the world. For the first time in
human history, we now have the kinds of media of communication that could
potentially connect all the people in the planet
with one another and with the huge
body of accumulated knowledge, art, and culture.
As the extensions of humans, the
media can be instruments of salvation instead of
destruction, liberation instead
of oppression.
The conference will run for three days and will consist of one on-going plenary
session in which each participant presents his or her ideas, after which
we all engage in general discussion. While we don¹t want to have separate
simultaneous sessions, we can have some breaks
long enough for people to get together in
smaller groups to discuss whatever they want.
We intend to limit the total number of people attending the conference to 25.
One intended outcome of the conference is the compilation of a book
provisionally entitled One Planet One Humanity:
Communications For and Against. The book will consist of a peer-reviewed
selection of some of the essays developed through the conference.
