CALL FOR PAPERS AND PANELS

Pat-Net 2003
Anchorage, AK
June 19, 20, 21, 2003

Masks...Boundaries
The 2003 PAT-Net Conference provides a unique opportunity to explore the boundaries of the PA discipline in a way that reflects the unique environment of the conference venue: Alaska. This Conference Call links important Alaskan themes to public administration theory and seeks creative responses across a broad array of interests. A few thoughts are offered below for paper and panel topics, but PAT-Net members and other potential contributors are invited to explore far more connections than are identified.

Masks play an important role in various Native Alaskan cultures. Masks, like theories, are representations of a perceived reality. The boundaries between the representations and the represented challenge both the mask maker and the theorist. Important in pre-modern, modern, and post-modern societies, masks allow humans to play many roles, create new realities, and to hide others. Masks are metaphors. They are critical elements in story telling and other rituals.

You will cross boundaries - geographic, political, and mental, on your way to Anchorage. As we meet on the summer solstice, less than 300 miles below the Arctic Circle, the boundary between day and night will take on new meaning. You will notice boundaries between land, water, and ice; development and wilderness. These more tangible boundaries, we hope, will stimulate our sense of the less tangible boundaries PAT-Net members have perennially grappled with - individual identity and boundary setting; discourse across individual and group boundaries; boundaries between theorists and practitioners, practitioners and citizens; disciplines; pre-modern, modern, and post-modern; cultures; genders; insiders and outsiders. We can explore boundary setting, boundary crossing, and changing boundaries. Closely related is the idea of borders and borderlands.

Paper and panel proposals might consider the roles of masks, the roles of masks in PA, the roles of boundaries in PA; and the relation between masks and boundaries. Equally interesting would be the role of the theorist as story teller, how the various theories mask or reveal stories, the limits imposed by various masks and/or boundaries, and how assuming new and different masks might affect traditional and current PA boundaries. Additionally we seek proposals and nominations for plenary or keynote speakers.

Choose a mask and explore the boundaries of public administration theory.