Conference Theme：

The ICA 2021 conference theme of Engaging the Essential Work of Care: Communication, Connectedness, and Social Justice calls for our examination of how care forms the fabric of our social and interconnected lives. From the moment that we enter this world we are completely dependent on the care of others, and as we move through our lives, the care of our teachers, doctors, leaders, and artists shape us into the adults that we are today. Even as we leave this earth, on our last days, we are comforted by the care of loved ones.

“Care” can be understood from a variety of perspectives relevant to communication. Namely, care can refer to:

    -Providing Assistance for Others (She takes care of my aunt.)

    -Being Interested in a Topic/Issue/Idea (They care about the notion of compassion.)

    -Concern about Others’ Well-Being (He cares what will happen to his children.)

    -The Provision of Needed Attention or Resources (Do they provide care at the hospital?)

The concept of care can also be understood from at least two vantage points that intersect with those meanings: self-directed and community-centered. The relative priority of self and community care within a given community reflects deeply embedded cultural values, experiences of oppressions, access to resources, and histories of trust.

The concept of “care” requires our thoughtful examination and reflection. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis of climate change, and militarized police brutality that continues to target, harass, and kill people of color, the urgency of care to address entrenched inequalities, an overarching climate of neglect, and a global political economy of individualized self-help has been rendered visible. Communication emerges in this backdrop as a transformative site for re-working care, anchoring it in relationships, communities, organizing processes, media systems, and social formations. Care is both constituted by and constitutive of communication, as a register for creating spaces of compassion and connectedness.

This theme invites scholars to consider a host of related questions and issues, including (but not limited to) the following:

    -How do we cultivate and celebrate care?

    -How is care communicated interpersonally, politically, economically, and via communication technologies?

    -How can care be used to amplify diverse voices and provide courage to those who resist?

    -How can care be the embodiment of healing, community, and solidarity?

    -How is care enacted and experienced differently across communities and cultures?

    -How is the concept of care relevant to issues of climate change and efforts to protect the humans, animals, and plants that inhabit our environment?

    -Why have those who provide us with care -- our teachers, our health-care workers, our refuse collectors -- been disparaged and      economically neglected, only to now be deemed as “essential” and therefore expected to risk their lives to provide comfort to the most privileged?

    -How has the concept of care been communicated or executed in ways that work against social well-being or utilized to justify the continuation of inequities and oppression?

    -In what way might structures and practices, such as transnational NGO programs, impose care in ways that instantiate neocolonial forms of power? How can we probe the problematic ethics of care?

    -How and why is care “gendered,” and what impact does this have on labour and economic/political disparity?

    -How does the marketing of and profit from care by corporations, governments, or other entities use the same bodies in appeals that often get neglected in practice?

    -How can we use our scholarship to encourage and enhance care, and how can we ensure that our organization practices the ethic of care in our mentorship, our publications, our teaching, our research, our service, and our collaborations?

Conference Program Chair:
Mary Beth Oliver, Pennsylvania State U
mbo@psu.edu

Conference Theme Committee Co-Chairs:
Walid Afifi, U of California at Santa Barbara, w-afifi@ucsb.edu
Mohan Dutta, Massey U, mohanjdutt@gmail.com
Chenjerai Kumanyika, Rutgers U, Chenjerai.Kumanyika@gmail.com
Srividya Ramasubramanian, Texas A&M U, srivi@tamu.edu
Anamik Saha, Goldsmith, U of London, a.saha@gold.ac.uk
Meghan Sanders, Louisiana State U, msand@lsu.edu

Comference Timeline:

18 May
See the live schedule for only the live events at #ICA21. The final print program can be found here for your reference. Since most pre-recorded presentations are asynchronous there is no schedule for those sessions.

27 May
First day of virtual #ica21.

31 May
Last day of virtual #ica21. Conference registration closes at 17:00 ICA Headquarters time (EDT).

1 June - 30 July
Video content will stay live on the platform for an additional 60 days after the last day of conference (31 May), until midnight EDT on Friday, 30 July.

Questions:

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