Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines '08

3rd Call for Papers: CADAAD'08

Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD) is
an ongoing project which aims to foster and promote cross-disciplinary
communication in critical discourse research. Following the success of
the project's first international conference hosted at the University of
East Anglia in 2006, we are pleased to announce the second international
conference CADAAD?08, to be hosted at the *University of Hertfordshire,
10-11 July 2008*.

In line with the general aims of the project, we welcome papers both
from CDA and neighbouring disciplines such as communication studies,
media studies, narrative studies, sociology, philosophy and political
science. Abstracts are invited which assess the state of the art and
offer new directions for critical discourse research. By new directions
we mean i) theoretical/methodological development and/or ii) analysis of
contemporary discourses.

Theoretical/methodological frameworks sourced from all areas of the
social and cognitive sciences are welcome. Papers exploring the
following frameworks in linguistics are particularly welcome:

   * Cognitive Linguistics (Blending, Construction Grammars, Framing,
     Metaphor)
   * Corpus Linguistics (Corpus Construction, Data Extraction, Semantic
     Prosody)
   * Pragmatics (Presupposition, Relevance Theory, Speech Acts)
   * Systemic Functional Linguistics (Cohesion and Coherence,
     Grammatical Metaphor)

Analyses of all contemporary discourses are welcome, including those
within applied and professional areas such as business, education,
environment, health, and law. Papers applying critical analysis to
discourses used in the construction of 'minority' vs. 'normality' and
other dichotomies are especially welcome. Areas of particular interest
include:

   * Discourse on gender
   * Discourse of International Law
   * Discourse on immigration
   * Discourse of the war on terror
   * European Union discourse
   * United Nations and foreign aid discourse

Reflecting our commitment to multiplicity in critical approaches to
discourse analysis, the following plenary speakers have confirmed their
participation:

   * Professor Piotr Cap <http://www.geocities.com/strus_pl/piotr_cap>
     (University of ??d?, Poland)
   * Professor Jonathan Charteris-Black
     <http://www.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/llas/staff_charteris-black_j.shtml>
     (University of West England, UK)
   * Professor Teun van Dijk <http://www.discourses.org/> (Universitat
     Pompeu Fabra, Spain)
   * Professor Ruth Wodak
     <http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/wodak/index.htm>(Lancaster
     University, UK)

Abstracts of no longer than 400 words should be submitted as MS Word
attachment to discourse@cadaad.org by *30 November 2007*. Authors should
include their name, affiliation and email address. Successful authors
will be notified via email by *15 February 2008*. Papers will be
allocated twenty minutes plus ten minutes for questions. Selected
proceedings will be published.

Please visit http://cadaad.org/cadaad08 for further conference details.

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CFP: Subjectivity - International Conference in Critical Psychology, Cultural Studies and Social theory

Subjectivity: International Conference in Critical Psychology, Cultural Studies and Social Theory

Starts: 27 June 2008
Ends:  29 June 2008

This conference explores shifting conceptualizations of subjectivity in contemporary culture, politics, social science and theory. Although subjectivity is a key analytic term in fields as diverse as critical psychology, postcolonial studies, film theory, gender studies, social theory, geography, anthropology and cultural studies, it is rarely discussed in its own right. The conference attempts to explore subjectivity as a locus of social change, to rethink possibilities for everyday social interventions, to explore how subjectivities are produced and how emerging subjectivities remake our social worlds. We are interested in proposals for papers and symposia whose scope falls within or between one of the following areas:

Embodiment, Affect, Materiality

The emergence of 'body-theory' across the humanities has transformed the terrain in which questions about power, ideology, discourse and subjectivity can be asked. There is a move to dismantle the idea of separation between the body and the world and to see bodies as always gesturing towards practices, energies, things and intensities beyond themselves. This focus on process, connection, relationality and bodily affectivity traverses a diverse range of disciplines and is forcing a reconsideration of our understanding of subjectivity. In this stream we welcome papers that might deal with areas such as 'carnal knowing', the sentient body, embodiment, critical perspectives on cyberculture and the machine-human symbiosis, new materialism, affective labour and care, disability and the critiques of the 'able body', somatic feeling and the non-cognitive, for example.

New Political Subjectivities / New Social Movements

A developing body of scholarship examines the production of new subjectivities and social movements in a moment marked by neoliberalism, de/re-territorialising capitalism and emerging new sensibilities in relation to gender, sexuality, transnational mobility and racial and religious differences. What role are the media and new information and communication technologies playing in the production of new femininities, masculinities and sexualities - and resistance to them? What kinds of social movements are emerging to address global injustice related to the transformation of labour and the new conditions for the production of science and technology, biotech and medical rationalities? How adequately have our theoretical vocabularies engaged with new social, political and cultural complexities related to processes of racialization and migration? What new possibilities are there for interdisciplinary work that creates new spaces and dialogues, activism and interventions?

Redistributing the Psychological

For many years, critical psychologists and social theorists have attempted to move away from an individualist concept of the psychological. Some psychologists attempted to rework what was understood as on the inside to the outside through the concepts of discourse, activity and narrative; sociologists have attempted to understand what constitutes the psychological through exploring its position within the social and cultural lifeworld; social theorists have attempted to expand the concept beyond reductionist notions of the subject. While these attempts are all important, how successful are they? What is the future of critical studies of psychology and of the psychological? How can we develop work which goes beyond the psychological while still being able to accommodate and understand singularity and experience?

 

Please send a 200 word proposal to  subjectivity@cardiff.ac.uk  by 31 January 2008

Notification: 1 April 2008 (please contact us if you are in need of an earlier notification)

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Τα παιδιά των Η.Π.Α. χαπακώνονται πάρα πολύ!

το ακόλουθο είναι ένα άρθρο από τη λίστα radpsynet, που περιγράφει την κυριαρχία της αμερικάνικης φαρμακοβιομηχανίας στα παιδιά.
Και δεν είναι μόνο ηθικό το θέμα, αλλά και εμπορικό...

American Kids Being Drugged To Death

August 22, 2007.
By Evelyn Pringle
[Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for OpEd News and investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government and corporate America.]

Washington, DC: As result of the marketing power the pharmaceutical industry obtained by spending tens of billions of dollars to gain influence over politicians in power, the FDA and the medical profession, American kids are being pumped full of the most powerful and dangerous psychiatric medications on the market, in drug cocktails that are literally killing them. Neurologist Dr Fred Baughman, author of "The ADHD Fraud," calls the leadership of the psycho-pharm- government cartel (FDA, NIMH, White House New Freedom Commission on Mental Health) the biggest, most evil drug cartel in history. "At least the pusher of 'crack' on inner city streets does not come in a white coat," he says. According Dr Baughman, kids have become "for-profit receptacles" for psychiatric drugs which will forever alter their brains and bodies. And its happening all across America he says, not by thousands but by tens of thousands.
Experts say, the drugging regime usually begins by doctors convincing parents that their children have attention deficit disorder, and the medications prescribed are the exact same drugs that street addicts call "speed." They include the amphetamines Adderall, Dexedrine, and methylphenidates such as Ritalin and Concerta. FDA records show that, between 1999 and 2003, seventy-eight million prescriptions were written for ADHD drugs for children ranging in age from one to 18. A review of adverse events posted on the FDA web site reveals that, between January 2000 and June 30, 2005, there were nearly 1,000 reports of psychosis or mania possibly linked to ADHD drugs, with psychosis characterized by the inability to distinguish real and imaginary events. "The most important finding of this review is that signs of psychosis or mania, particularly hallucinations, can occur in patients with no identifiable risk factors, at usual doses of any of the drugs used to treat ADHD," according to a March 3, 2006, memo penned by two members of the agency's ADHD psychiatric review team. FDA records also show reports of 25 deaths in children and adults between 1999 and 2003, and 54 cases of serious cardiovascular problems, including stokes, heart attacks, hypertension, palpitations and arrhythmia.
But according to Dr Baughman, in addition to the deaths cited by the FDA, the MedWatch database also contains 186 more deaths of persons using ADHD drugs for the period between 1990 and 2000. Dr Grace Jackson, author of "Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent," says that "whether by ignorance or design, the FDA remains oblivious to the evidence-based limitations of ADHD drugs." She notes that at least 40% of children fail to respond or tolerate stimulant therapy, "and about twice as many respond at least as well to non-pharmacological interventions. " "The link between stimulants, cardiovascular disease, and death," Dr Jackson reports, "is well documented but doctors and government regulators have refused to acknowledge the dangers associated with the drugs." The long-term outcomes for kids on ADHD drugs, she says, show diminishing effects over time, including "artificial behavioral improvements" which end when the medication is withdrawn. Because stimulant drugs cause insomnia, sleeping pills are now being fed to children to counteract the insomnia side effect. Medco Health Solutions, a managed-care firm, found an 85% increase in the use of sleeping pills among children between 2002 and 2004.
One of the world's leading authorities on psychiatric drugs, Dr Peter Breggin, founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology and the journal Ethical Human Sciences and Services, warns that all ADHD drugs can cause "a continuum of stimulation, which includes agitation and irritability, anger, hostility, disinhibition, hypomania and mania." The activation syndrome, he says, was observed decades ago with the amphetamines like Adderall and Dexedrine, and methylphenidates such as Ritalin and Concerta. As an unrecognized side effect to most doctors, the syndrome more often than not results feeding the kids more drugs. As a child's emotional control breaks down due to the stimulant effects, Dr Breggin says, mood stabilizers such as antiseizure medications and antipsychotics may be added to the mix. "Eventually, " he states, "these kids end up on four or five psychiatric drugs all at once and toddlers are even being diagnosed with bipolar disorder." The new generation of "atypical" antipsychotics, originally approved only to treat adults with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which include Zyprexa (Eli Lilly), Risperdal (Johnson & Johnson), Seroquel (AstraZeneca) , Abilify (Bristol-Myers Squibb), Clozaril (Novartis) and Geodon (Pfizer), were not approved for any condition in children, but studies of Medicaid records and HMO databases found an alarming increase in the use of these drugs by kids, particularly for behavioral disorders such as ADHD, according to the spring 2006 issue of the Journal of Ambulatory Pediatrics.
Researchers led by Dr William Cooper at Vanderbilt University analyzed data on health care services rendered in the US and found that between 1995 and 2002, there were 5,762,193 outpatient visits where children between the ages of 2 and 18 were prescribed an antipsychotic. The researchers explained that there had been no increase in mental disorders and noted that, "schizophrenia and psychosis accounted for only 13.5% of the total antipsychotic visits during the study period, so this diagnosis alone could not explain the increase." A USA TODAY analysis of the FDA's adverse event reporting system between 2000 and 2004 found at least 45 deaths of kids where the "primary suspect" was an atypical and more than 1,300 reports of other serious side effects.
Dr Breggin has served as an expert witness in several cases that resulted in favorable verdicts for the plaintiffs in which Risperdal caused a condition known as tardive dyskinesia in children, when it was prescribed in attempt to control behaviors that were in fact caused by ADHD drugs. He explains that tardive dyskinesia is a neurological movement disorder that is often mistaken for a mental illness because the symptoms are so "strange" and "bizarre." The abnormal movements, he says, can affect any muscle group in the body and impair the ability to speak, walk, breathe and swallow. According to Dr Breggin, this serious disorder occurs at a cumulative rate of between 4% and 7% in otherwise healthy patients taking antipsychotics each year and after only a few years, 20% or more of patients will be afflicted. The drug makers have apparently found ways to influence the prescribing habits of Canadian doctors, because the new antipsychotics are now being doled out in record numbers to Canadian children for behavior and mood problems, with a significant proportion for children under nine, according to new research from Canada.
On June 18, 2007, Sharon Kirkey of CanWest News reported that ninety-four per cent of 176 child psychiatrists in Canada surveyed are prescribing the antipsychotics for a variety of disorders and symptoms, including anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and "poor frustration tolerance," citing a study in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry Risperdal was the most commonly prescribed, followed by Zyprexa and Seroquel. The report said that a "surprising" number of the prescriptions were for the very young, with 12% written for children aged eight or under, including three-year-olds, and noted that none of the drugs has been officially approved for use in children in Canada. Lilly, J&J and AstraZeneca are currently named as defendants in Medicaid fraud lawsuits related to the illegal off-label marketing of Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel, filed to recover money paid for patients' use the drugs, as well as the costs of medical care for patients injured by them. In addition, investigations in several states have recently started looking into the behind-the-scenes financial relationships between the drug makers and some of the doctors who have been heavily involved in promoting the prescribing of the drugs for off-label uses.

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