[acc-cca-l] CCA 2026 - Call For Expressions of Interest: Revisiting Governmentality - Emerging Biopolitical Economies of Circulation

[Kenneth Werbin]

[△EXTERNAL]



Following up on our roundtable from CCA last year entitled “Risky Milieus: Contemporary Biopolitical Economies of Circulation,” we are inviting expressions of interest in participation on one or more pre-constituted panels related to milieus of circulation and the securing of bodies, resources, and things for the meeting of CCA June 2-4, 2026 at the University of Windsor.



In his seminal lecture series at the Collège de France in 1977-78, Michel Foucault (2007) laid out a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the biopolitics of circulation and the securing of bodies, resources, and things. Foucault outlined transformations of power from the 18th to the 20th century, which saw security move from guarding enclosed spaces, to exercising discipline over bodies, to securing the territorial and extraterritorial movements of populations in ‘milieus of circulation’. Apparatuses of security are essential instruments of governmentality aiming at risk mitigation through “the prevention or repression of disorder, irregularity, illegality, and delinquency”. For Foucault, the circulation of different bodies, resources, and things constitute different risks, and occasion different strategies and processes for their management and policing. In the contemporary context, we have seen how apparatuses of security are tapping into political economy by leveraging the vast swaths of data that speak to the minutiae of peoples’ social, political, economic, transactional, communicative, and locational lives. In our time, governmentality and power are tightly stitched together with the materiality of data and how it is “biologically bound” up with bodies, resources, and things in motion. Who has access to this data? How is it used to calculate and secure circulation, mitigate risk, and prevent, and police perceived threats, and with what consequences?



We invite expressions of interest and abstracts for papers that reinvigorate and take up the lineage of this theoretical framework, applying it to a new moment where the movement of bodies is more germane than ever. We are excited for contributions that move in a range of directions as they relate to milieus of circulation and the securing of bodies, resources and things, including in: BIPOC and LGBTQ2S+ communities, markets and economics, microbes, environment, epidemiology, labour, migration, immigration, homelessness, law, regulation and policy, surveillance, commodification, and other areas of inquiry.


We are currently inviting expressions of interest including a title and 2-3 sentences outlining the broad area of contribution by Nov. 1st, 2025, with a deadline for full abstracts (350-500 words) by Nov. 21st, 2025.


We look forward to hearing from you!


Ken Werbin

User Experience Design

MA in Cultural Analysis and Social Theory

Wilfrid Laurier University

kwerbin at wlu.ca


Penelope Ironstone

Communication Studies and Cultural Studies

MA in Cultural Analysis and Social Theory

Wilfrid Laurier University

pironstone at wlu.ca




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