[nativestudies-l] CONF: New Worlds, New Sovereignties

[Alyssa Mt. Pleasant]

New Worlds, New Sovereignties
Melbourne, 6 - 9 June 2008
http://www.newsovereignties.org/
at the University of Melbourne

This conference will bring together a range of international experts,  
engaged scholars and community workers to discuss the new forms,  
understandings and practices of sovereignty that are emerging in the  
changing world order. Indigenous rights, citizenship, refugees, global  
security and other issues will be addressed from many different  
perspectives.

Which human groups are recognised as possessed of sovereignty and who  
are excluded? Should nation-states refuse to interfere in each other?s  
affairs regardless of the treatment of non-national minorities? Can  
different sovereignties overlap and coexist or is sovereignty  
monolithic and exclusive? Are settler democracy and Native sovereignty  
compatible?

Questions such as these have been debated since the sixteenth century.  
In the contemporary global era, ecological factors such as disease and  
global warming are impervious to national boundaries. The same may be  
said of the ?war on terror?. Does the tendency to supranational  
aggregation, whether for economic, ecological or military reasons,  
pose a threat to national sovereignties or is globalisation  
encouraging new but equally vibrant forms of contemporary statehood?  
Do these new concepts of sovereignty offer hopeful possibilities for  
Indigenous peoples in complex modern societies?

Our conference will address questions such as these with a view to  
bringing history to bear on the problems of the present. The  
conference?s standpoint will be from below. We will be focusing on  
sovereignty?s consequences for those whom the current order excludes  
or diminishes, exploring opportunities for redress and restoration.  
The conference will bring together distinguished international  
scholars, policy-makers and community organizations in an exchange of  
information that will make the fruits of contemporary scholarship  
available to those responsible for delivering practical outcomes at  
the local level. At the same time, it will alert academics to the  
practical experiences and problems that should be informing our  
scholarship.

Keynote speakers include:

Mrs Joy Murphy-Wandin (Wurundjeri/Australia, welcome to country)
Anthony Anghie, Australia/USA
Larissa Behrendt, Eualeyai-Kamilaroi/Australia
Ghassan Hage, Lebanon/Australia
Paul James, Australia
Marilyn Lake, Australia
Saree Makdisi, Lebanon/USA
Kent McNeil, Canada
Bob Miller, Eastern Shawnee/USA
Henry Reynolds, Australia
Ella Shohat, Israel/USA
Nin Tomas, Aotearoa/New Zealand

Convenors: Julie Evans (Melbourne University), Patrick Wolfe (La Trobe)

Host organisations: Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, School of  
Political Science, Criminology and Sociology, University of Melbourne

Sponsor organisations: CAIS, Monash University, Victoria University