ICS Seminar Series

BOB HODGE - ICS/UWS

'The Hydra paradox: global disaster management in a world of crises'

Abstract:
This paper describes an on-going interdisciplinary, international project focused on disasters.
This theme is surprisingly under-researched and under-theorised by cultural studies
researchers, given the huge impact disasters are having on the planet and its modes of
governance, and the connections that can be made with such big issues as globalization,
sustainability and climate change. The exposition starts from a new look at the ancient
myth of Hydra, still used to capture the intractability of global crises and problems. Hydra
represented hyper-complexity and exponential growth, qualities that characterize global
problems today. Less obviously, it also presented a fantasy solution which dominant groups
have found irresistibly seductive for millennia. The paper explores the dynamics of global
crises in the sphere of disasters and their management, against a backdrop of multiple crises
that are seen as defining the current condition of globalization, driven by an ongoing dialectic
between forces from ‘above’ and ‘below’. The paper draws on forms of chaos theory, treating
disasters and their management as a key site in which to examine intersections of crisis and
chaos in global processes, colliding with destructive natural events and forces which are still
outside dominant systems of control. The team involved in this research includes, from ICS,
Professor James Arvanitakis, Dr Gabriela Coronado and Dr Juan Salazar; from UWS School
of Management, Dr Greg Teal; from CSU, Dr Val Ingham; and from Mexico, some leading
international disaster researchers Professors Teresa Carbo, Virginia Garcia, and Drs Joel
Audefroy and Jesus-Manuel Macias.

Bio:
Bob Hodge is Research Professor in the Humanities at the Institute for Culture and Society,
University of Western Sydney, Australia. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the
Humanities who has researched and published widely in social and cultural research,
applying theories of chaos and complexity. His most recent books are 'Chaos theory and the
larrikin principle', Liber, Copenhagen, 2010 (with Coronado, Duarte and Teal) and 'Mexico and
its others: a chaos approach', Legas, Ottawa, 2012 (with Coronado).

MICHELE LANCIONE - UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY

'Postcards from the city of the homeless subjects'

Abstract:
The presentation will begin showing some of the materials collected during a ten months
ethnographic fieldwork with homeless people in Turin, Italy. These materials will be presented
in forms of interconnected stills, or postcards, picturing the relational entanglements that take
place between homeless people and the city. The main aim of the presentation is indeed to
blur the canonical distinction between the subject and the city: homeless people are neither
only subjects who performs the city (as the “performative” scholarships claim), nor only
subjected to the policies of the city (as the “punitive approach” tells), but they constitute their
complex and heterogeneous subjectivities with the wider urban environment to which they
relate. Engaging with the work of Deleuze and Guattari as well as with critical assemblages
thinking, the notion of subjectivity adopted in the research will be sketched and the meaning
of the postcards unfolded. In this sense, and through the help of more ethnographic materials,
three key-points will be highlighted. First, the role of urban objects in affecting homeless
people projects and desires. Second, the role of normative policies in creating negative
affective atmosphere for homeless people. Third, the importance of recognizing homeless
people own capabilities. The research implications and the political consequences of the
proposed approached will be sketched in the final phase of the presentation.

Bio:
Michele Lancione is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in CMOS (Centre for Management &
Organization Studies), UTS, where he investigates the Frank Gehry’s designed Dr Chau
Chak Wing Building (unfolding its rationales and wider urban impact). During his Ph.D.
in Human Geography (Durham University, UK) he spent ten months on an ethnographic
fieldwork with homeless people in Turin, Italy, which resulted also in the publication of a novel
(“Il Numero 1”, Eris Edizioni 2011). His interests include urban space, issues of marginality
and diversity, and post-structuralism. (www.michelelancione.eu)