Queering Friendship 2018
16-18 October 2018, Lisbon | Portugal
Queering Friendship is the 3rd and final International Conference of the ERC funded study INTIMATE: Citizenship, Care and Choice – The micro-politics of intimacy in Southern Europe, coordinated by Ana Cristina Santos (www.ces.uc.pt/intimate). The Conference will focus on LGBTQ Friendship, with a particular intersectional interest in practices of citizenship, care and choice beyond law and public policies.
Contrary to individualization theories that suggest the impoverishment of human relationships, theories of relationality recognize the increasing centrality of informal networks of solidarity and care. In this debate, friendship plays a fundamental role.
The mutual implications of intimacy and citizenship need to be addressed, exploring the extent to which issues of LGBTQ friendship matter (or not) in being recognized as citizens.
The centrality of friendship is even more striking when considering personal lives of trans and non-binary people, but also lesbian women, gay men and bisexual people, LGBTQ migrants and other intersecting, vulnerable groups. In particular, the way transgender people actively provide and receive different care between friends offers invaluable contributions to political debates and conceptual discussions around friendship and care as a key aspect of LGBTQ everyday life.
Unveiling the richness of the blurred spaces of intimacy, the ways in which LGBTQ people produce alternatives to family-based forms of cohabitation are also of critical importance. LGBTQ lived experiences further contribute to destabilizing the family/friends and public/private binaries, whilst challenging heterocisnormative expectations about who legitimately belongs to the intimate sphere and who remains excluded and/or invisible.
This conference welcomes conceptual and empirically-driven work that looks into the politics and practices of LGBTQ friendship in everyday life. It welcomes studies on care practices that mainstream sociological theory and social policy overlook; studies that examine the social impact of policies around care which disregard non-heterocisnormative care practices; as well as studies in which everyday practices of partnering, parenting and friendship contribute to the debate on choice and self-determination in relation to the intimate sphere.
The work language during this conference will be English. If you chose to present in another language, please use Portuguese, Spanish or Italian, and submit your abstract in English, ensuring you will later use slides or provide handouts in English before the presentation.
The conference will be held at Fundação Portuguesa das Comunicações, Lisbon, Portugal.