I am so happy at the prospect of welcoming you to Exeter! Exeter, Europe, that is! Exeter is a pretty Cathedral City and the County Town of Devon in the Southwest peninsula of England and inland from an area known as 'England's Riviera' (plenty of palm trees grow here)! We are two and a half hours by train from London, an hour South of Bristol, a similar distance from Plymouth and situated in what I (as an American) think is an one of England's most exquisite sites of natural beauty: near the mouth of the river Exe and a glorious coastline, and close to Dartmoor, whose mists and Tors (granite outcrops) are well described in the Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles. The campus, at Exeter, has two extensive botanical gardens and lakes, and is a 15 minute walk from town. (There are also buses to and from town every 12 minutes).
There is a stereotype about English food, I know. But from a culinary perspective Devon can be exciting! It is best known for its 'health' items such as 'pasties' (savoury pies), 'clotted cream' (delicious but not for the cholesterol-shy), apple cider, ice-cream and superb local goat's cheeses that - dare I say this for I know it will provoke heated debate? - rival those of France. The organic produce movement is burgeoning here. And the local seafood - scallops, crab, squid - is excellent.
We decided to schedule the meeting over the first weekend of September to avoid clashes with ASA (August 12-16 in Washington DC) and the ISA RC 37 Mid-term meeting in Barcelona, July 6-8. (For details about the ISA meeting contact Arturo Rodriguez Morato at rodrig@eco.ub.es). Early September has another advantage: the weather is still good (not to promise of course, because this *is* English weather!).

Bob and I are currently working on some plans for post-conference, in case anyone desires to make a holiday. Our colleague Barry Barnes (whom you may know for his work on the sociology of science) has offered to lead a walk on Dartmoor and I'm looking into what it would cost to hire a bus and visit the Tate Gallery in Cornwall, which features art of the Southwest of England in a very attractive modern building on the coast at St Ives. But more about these things later. Here follows is the Call for Papers.

European Sociological Association, Network on the Sociology of the Arts International Conference and Call for Papers

STATES OF THE ARTS . AESTHETIC MEDIA IN EUROPE ACROSS THE MILLENNIA
School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies

University of Exeter
Exeter, Devon, EX4 4RJ
England, UK

September 1-3, 2000
Organizers: Tia DeNora and Robert Witkin

The ESA Network on Sociology of the Arts was founded with the aim of promoting collaboration and scholarly exchange between European-based scholars of the arts and non- European scholars whose work encompasses the arts in Europe, past or present. The group shares a common conception of the arts as active ingredients of social life. This concern has heightened salience in Europe where, on the eve of the millennium, the arts are increasingly employed as media through which 'states' - governmental, social psychological and emotional, economic, legal and cultural - are formulated and reformulated over time. Exploring the interrelationship between 'states' and the arts relocates arts sociology from the periphery to the centre of sociology's paradigms and furthers interdisciplinary exchange.
Papers are invited (please send abstracts of no more than one page) to address the role of the arts and aesthetic media in Europe with regard to 'state' formation, past or present. Topics to include: aesthetic representation and collective memory; arts consumption, amateur practice and life-style; the arts in relation to identity construction; urban arts; leisure and aesthetics; aesthetic media and technology; censorship; sponsorship; cross-national and cross-cultural studies; policy formation; aesthetic modernity; aesthetic citizenship; gender and the arts, ethnicity and race; artistic production; interpretative studies of aesthetic forms; aesthetic features of political and economic action (such as the poetics of discourse, the aesthetics of money, diplomacy and political style); marginal or protest arts; the construction, politics and consequences of artistic value; the arts and social movements; the arts in relation to religious faith; arts education; aesthetic capital and aesthetic authority; regional/national aesthetics; aesthetic experience and social formation; aesthetic materials and 'social control'; aesthetic agency and aesthetic reflexivity; theoretical perspectives; interrelations between the arts and other culture producing fields (e.g., science, social science); arts historiography; the material culture of the arts; arts institutions.