Thursday, August 13, 2009

CAQTUS Collaborative - Exploring Virtuality

At a meet organized at the University of Texas- Pan American (UTPA) in August 2009, Professor A. Fuat FIRAT and associated scholars launched the CAQTUS Collaborative. The goal of CAQTUS Collaborative is to initiate, support, and critique studies of Culture, Business, Markets, Consumption, Organizations, Globalization, and related topics from poststructural and cognate perspectives. In addition to A. Fuat FIRAT, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Romain Laufer, Cory Wemberly, Alladi Venkatesh, Amy Wendling, Jorge Rocha, Salavador Trevino Martinez, and Mohammadali Zolfagharian attended the founding discussions of the CAQTUS Collaborative.

Among the initial topics that CAQTUS Collaborative will focus on are these:

- Paradoxes of Value, Contradictions of Capital

- Bureaucracy, Legitimacy, and Emancipatory Possibilities

- Cultures of Migration, Migrating Cultures

- Dynamic Reshaping of Needs, Wants, Desires

- Technology, Culture & Experience

- Cultural Embeddedness of Business Frameworks

- Rhetoric, Symbols, Strategies, Subversions

- Marketing as a Desire Machine

- Appropriation, Reappropriation, Exploitation, Liberation