2011 AAG Sponsored Sessions:
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group sponsored sessions for the Association of American Geographers annual meeting April 12-16, 2011, Seattle, WA
Click on a link below to be taken to that session:
Academia Insurgent I: Organizing Research and Resistance
Academia Insurgent II: Emancipating Education in Seattle
Author/s Meets Critics: Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas
Between absence and presence: hiding, dissimulation, invisibility, and silence #2
Critical Geographic Theories of Public Education's Problems and Struggles #2
Critical Perspectives on Performativity: 3. Performativity, Space, and Politics #4
Critical perspectives on value theory I: the labor theory of value, global production, and the value theory of labor #2
Developing an Ecosocialist Politics of Technology #2 Panel
Everything old is new again: Neoliberalism and neocolonialism in development aid and investment
Exploring the Colonial Present: Contemporary Research on Palestine #2
Extending "America": Critical historical geographies of empire and development
Geographies of Alienation
Geographies of Palestinian Solidarity: Boycotts & Backlashes across Borders & Scales #2
Geographies of value, labor, and social reproduction
Immanent Materialisms in Geography: Marx, Deleuze, Spinoza and Space #2
James Blaut Memorial Award and Lecture
Making Space in Critical Geography for the Humanities
MUNICIPALITIES, REGIONS, SPOKES, and HUBS: Exploring Networks and Policy Change
Neoliberal Redevelopment Governance Post-2010: Trends and Possibilities
Neoliberalizing Space: Critical Perspectives on Place Branding #2
Putting Capital to work? Marxist abstractions and the concrete realities of geographic research
Reframing Islandness: Lived Experiences, Critical and Discursive Cartographies in Island Worlds #2
Social Movement Scholarship: Perilous Positionings between Academia and Activism #2 Panel
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group Business Meeting
Spaces of Libertarianism
Taking Stock of Space and Social Movements: What Have We Learned and Who are We Speaking to? #2
Ten Years On: Feminisms and the 'War on Terror'
The Geography of Black Social Movements: Current Research and Perspectives
The Politics of Expectations: Nature, Culture, and the Production of Space #2
The shock of the poetic: critical dialogues with magical marxism
What does race become through food?
What's feminist about this work? Challenges and insights from feminist research methodologies
World-Ecological Modernities #2 #3
2541 Academia Insurgent I: Organizing Research and Resistance
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 2:40 PM - 4:20 PM in 206 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Elizabeth Johnson - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis
Eli Meyerhoff - University of Minnesota
Chair(s):
Eli Meyerhoff - University of Minnesota
Panelist(s):
Elizabeth Mason-Deese
Gregory Martin - University of Technology Sydney
Elizabeth Johnson - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis
Session Description: It is said that the university is in "crisis." In the past year, students and faculty around the world have witnessed as governments and university administrations have responded to this crisis narrative by ushering in policies that "corporatize" higher education. These measures have included the elimination of departments in the humanities and social sciences, increasingly precarious labor conditions for students, staff and faculty, and ongoing tuition hikes for undergrads. Struggles against these measures have intensified in tandem, with the often stated goal of "reclaiming education" from state and corporate interests. This panel discussion will explore tactics and strategies for broadening, intensifying, and connecting these movements. We are particularly interested in sharing struggles to mobilize collective efforts within and across universities, as well as across levels of education, connecting with struggles against the re-segregation, standardization, and marketization of K-12 schools. Topics may include efforts to map the parameters of struggle, create alternative and radical education projects, collect and distribute information about local conditions of university labor, or the building of networks of information about, resistance to, and exodus from the university.
2641 Academia Insurgent II: Emancipating Education in Seattle
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 4:40 PM - 6:20 PM in 206 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Elizabeth Johnson - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis
Eli Meyerhoff - University of Minnesota
Chair(s):
Eli Meyerhoff - University of Minnesota
Panelist(s):
David Spataro - City University of New York
Robert Hunter Jackson - CUNY Graduate Center
Pierpaolo Mudu - UNIVERSITA DI ROMA
Ilona Moore - University of Minnesota
Session Description: This panel brings activists from the Seattle area working on issues broadly relating to precarious labor in the university, tuition hikes, access to education, worker-student-faculty alliances, radical pedagogy, democratic unions, and general forms of resistance to neoliberal university policies. The purpose of the session is both to bring awareness to the particular issues that activists and university citizens are working on in Seattle, as well as to create a forum for discussion around how those issues are linked to broader national and international trends.
Saturday, 4/16/11, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in 308 - Washington State Convention Center Level 3
Sponsorship(s):
Political Geography Specialty Group
Cultural Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Joseph Palis - North Carolina State University
Yousuf Mussa Al-Bulushi - UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Geography
Chair(s):
Margaret Pearce
Panelist(s):
Marie Cieri - Rhode Island School of Design
James Craine - California State University Northridge
Vincent J. Del Casino - California State University, Long Beach
Annette Kim - MIT
Discussant(s):
John Krygier - Ohio Wesleyan University
Denis Wood
Session Description: Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas is a collection of 50 some "poetic" maps narratively structured to tell the story of a neighborhood. Surveying his small neighborhood in North Carolina called Boylan Heights, Denis Wood subverts the traditional notions of mapmaking to discover new ways of seeing both this place in particular and the nature of place itself. Each map attunes the eye to the invisible, the overlooked, and the seemingly insignificant. From radio waves permeating the air to the location of Halloween pumpkins on porches, Wood searches for the revelatory details in what has never been mapped or may not even be mappable.
Making Maps Second Edition is a radically graphic updating of the best-selling visual guide to map design for GIS that Wood and John Krygier originally published in 2005. The book has been completely redesigned, is larger in format, with over 80% of the content updated and enhanced. An annotated map exemplar is used throughout the book to illustrate how map design plays out on an actual map designed and created by the authors. Throughout the second edition, the reader is urged to think critically, creating and using maps with a clear understanding of their technical and social nature. The second edition of Making Maps preserves the originality and enthusiasm of the original edition, but comes across as a completely new book.
2416 Between absence and presence: hiding, dissimulation, invisibility, and silence (1)
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 12:40 PM - 2:20 PM in 616 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Ethics, Justice, and Human Rights Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Rhys Dafydd Jones - Aberystwyth University
Jennifer Turner - Aberystwyth University
Chair(s):
James P Robinson - I.G.E.S., Aberystwyth University
Abstract(s):
12:40 PM Introduction: Rhys Dafydd Jones - Aberystwyth University
1:00 PM Author(s): *Georgie Urry - Bristol University
Abstract Title: Neither presencing nor absencing: The stagnation of sensing-towards-presence in the call centre
1:20 PM Author(s): *Vincent Miller - University of Kent
Abstract Title: The crisis of presence in contemporary culture.
1:40 PM Author(s): *Jennifer Turner - Aberystwyth University
Abstract Title: Criminals with 'Community Spirit': Practicing Citizenship in the Hidden World of the Prison
Introducer(s):
Rhys Dafydd Jones - Aberystwyth University
Session Description: Throughout history, 'absence' and 'presence' have been and continue to be utilised as a means of exercising control and reinforcing power relations; the former denies the existence of difference, while the latter defines 'other' as deviant. In the works of Foucault and others, much focus has been given to an examination of 'presence', whereas 'absence' has received far less attention, despite being entwined into everyday events and processes (Katz 2001; Dunn 2004). Certainly, acts of concealing and hiding may be considered to be reflex-like defence mechanisms, allowing the protection of individual places and spaces as well as the evasion of encounters with those who 'police' and control space. Such responses to power strategies have often invoked the language of subservience, which contends that such practices represent examples of 'false consciousness' and 'docility'. However, we would argue that such readings only take partial account of social interactions. In line with Scott (1985, 1990), we argue they ignore dissimulation, a tactical manipulation of power that can be(come) a resourceful tactic of the 'weak'.
This session proposes a dialogue between more theoretical treatments of absence, presence, and power with empirically informed discussions to address the following points:
-How are various practices employed to conceal/silence particular groups?
-How do individuals and groups distract attention from themselves and how are such absences used tactically to meet their own ends?
-What are the methodological implications for studying concealed and absent spaces and groups?
-How do issues of absence/invisibility/silence relate to experiences, conceptualisations, and the production of landscape, space, and place?
2516 Between absence and presence: hiding, dissimulation, invisibility, and silence (2)
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 2:40 PM - 4:20 PM in 616 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Ethics, Justice, and Human Rights Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Rhys Dafydd Jones - Aberystwyth University
James P Robinson - I.G.E.S., Aberystwyth University
Chair(s):
Jennifer Turner - Aberystwyth University
Abstract(s):
2:40 PM Author(s): *Danielle Drozdzewski - UNSW
Abstract Title: Knowing (or not) about Katyn: Creating alternate spaces for memory transfer.
3:00 PM Author(s): *Kirsi Pauliina Kallio - University Of Tampere
Abstract Title: Voiceless politics: political non-participation as a tactic of the weak
3:20 PM Author(s): *Louise Waite - University of Leeds
Abstract Title: Precarious lives: asylum seekers and refugees' experiences of forced labour.
3:40 PM Author(s): *James P Robinson - I.G.E.S., Aberystwyth University
Abstract Title: Invisible targets, strengthened morale: static camouflage as a 'weapon of the weak'
Session Description: Throughout history, 'absence' and 'presence' have been and continue to be utilised as a means of exercising control and reinforcing power relations; the former denies the existence of difference, while the latter defines 'other' as deviant. In the works of Foucault and others, much focus has been given to an examination of 'presence', whereas 'absence' has received far less attention, despite being entwined into everyday events and processes (Katz 2001; Dunn 2004). Certainly, acts of concealing and hiding may be considered to be reflex-like defence mechanisms, allowing the protection of individual places and spaces as well as the evasion of encounters with those who 'police' and control space. Such responses to power strategies have often invoked the language of subservience, which contends that such practices represent examples of 'false consciousness' and 'docility'. However, we would argue that such readings only take partial account of social interactions. In line with Scott (1985, 1990), we argue they ignore dissimulation, a tactical manipulation of power that can be(come) a resourceful tactic of the 'weak'.
This session proposes a dialogue between more theoretical treatments of absence, presence, and power with empirically informed discussions to address the following points:
-How are various practices employed to conceal/silence particular groups?
-How do individuals and groups distract attention from themselves and how are such absences used tactically to meet their own ends?
-What are the methodological implications for studying concealed and absent spaces and groups?
-How do issues of absence/invisibility/silence relate to experiences, conceptualisations, and the production of landscape, space, and place?
4483 Critical Geographic Theories of Public Education's Problems and Struggles 1
Friday, 4/15/11, from 12:40 PM - 2:20 PM in Juniper Room - Sheraton Hotel, Second Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Graduate Student Affinity Group
Organizer(s):
Christopher Riley - Ohio State University - Geography
Eli Meyerhoff - University of Minnesota
Chair(s):
Eli Meyerhoff - University of Minnesota
Panelist(s):
Christopher Riley - Ohio State University - Geography
Adam Parrillo - University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
Melissa R. Gilbert - Temple University
Christopher Lizotte - University of Washington
Discussant(s):
Eli Meyerhoff - University of Minnesota
Session Description: Any critical study of the terrain of education must grapple with systemic phenomena - racism, neoliberalism, sexism, segregation, tracking, charterization, privatization, standardization, among others. In order to situate, describe, and explain these phenomena and their intersections, geographers draw upon many different critical theories, such as Foucauldian, Marxist, Gramscian, Deleuzian, anarchist, queer, feminist, post-colonial, post-human, post-structuralist, and others. Rather than fixating on a particular definition of 'critical theory,' this panel aims to foster a conversation about what constitutes a critical theory of education and how geography can contribute to these discussions. In addition to highlighting analyses of the spatial and temporal aspects of education, we seek presenters who not only use these theories to critique the dominant institutions but also to speak to practical possibilities for resistance and subversion.
4583 Critical Geographic Theories of Public Education's Problems and Struggles 2
Friday, 4/15/11, from 2:40 PM - 4:20 PM in Juniper Room - Sheraton Hotel, Second Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Graduate Student Affinity Group
Organizer(s):
Christopher Riley - Ohio State University - Geography
Eli Meyerhoff - University of Minnesota
Chair(s):
Christopher Riley - Ohio State University - Geography
Panelist(s):
Andre Pusey
Bertie Russell
Eli Meyerhoff - University of Minnesota
Discussant(s):
Christopher Riley - Ohio State University - Geography
Session Description: Any critical study of the terrain of education must grapple with systemic phenomena - racism, neoliberalism, sexism, segregation, tracking, charterization, privatization, standardization, among others. In order to situate, describe, and explain these phenomena and their intersections, geographers draw upon many different critical theories, such as Foucauldian, Marxist, Gramscian, Deleuzian, anarchist, queer, feminist, post-colonial, post-human, post-structuralist, and others. Rather than fixating on a particular definition of 'critical theory,' this panel aims to foster a conversation about what constitutes a critical theory of education and how geography can contribute to these discussions. In addition to highlighting analyses of the spatial and temporal aspects of education, we seek presenters who not only use these theories to critique the dominant institutions but also to speak to practical possibilities for resistance and subversion.
1652 Critical Perspectives on Performativity: 3. Performativity, Space, and Politics
Tuesday, 4/12/11, from 4:40 PM - 6:20 PM in Jefferson - Sheraton Hotel, Union Tower, Fourth Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Michael R. Glass - University of Pittsburgh
Reuben S. Rose-Redwood - University of Victoria
Chair(s):
Reuben S. Rose-Redwood - University of Victoria
Abstract(s):
4:40 PM Introduction: Reuben S. Rose-Redwood - University of Victoria
4:45 PM Author(s): *Ilse Helbrecht, Prof.Dr. - Humboldt University Berlin
Peter Dirksmeier, Dr. - Humboldt-University Berlin
Ulrike Mackrodt - Humboldt-University Berlin
Abstract Title: 'Strange Encounters': Performing Places in Intercultural Interactions in the City
5:05 PM Author(s): *Pamela K. Sertzen - University of Texas at Austin
Abstract Title: Reconciling the past: a case study of the Caminata por la Paz y Solidaridad in Lima, Peru
5:25 PM Author(s): *Mara Ferreri - Queen Mary University
Abstract Title: Performing vacant spaces
5:45 PM Author(s): *Arnoud Lagendijk - Radboud University Nijmegen
Krisztina Varro - Radboud University Nijmegen
Abstract Title: The performativity of European innovation policies
6:05 PM Discussant: Michael R. Glass - University of Pittsburgh
Discussant(s):
Michael R. Glass - University of Pittsburgh
Introducer(s):
Reuben S. Rose-Redwood - University of Victoria
Session Description: This set of sessions brings together scholars working on the interrelations of performativity, space, and politics. In particular, we are interested in highlighting critical scholarship on the following themes: a) implications of performativity for political geographic research; b) case studies addressing performativity, space, and politics; c) interrelations of performativity and other geographic theories; and d) future directions for performativity in critical geographic scholarship.
2152 Critical Perspectives on Performativity: 4. Performativity, Space, and Politics
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Jefferson - Sheraton Hotel, Union Tower, Fourth Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Michael R. Glass - University of Pittsburgh
Reuben S. Rose-Redwood - University of Victoria
Chair(s):
Michael R. Glass - University of Pittsburgh
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Introduction: Michael R. Glass - University of Pittsburgh
8:05 AM Author(s): *Reuben S. Rose-Redwood - University of Victoria
Brian Tucker - University of Victoria
Abstract Title: Inventing the 'Salish Sea': Toponymic Rescaling, Performativity, and the Making of Transnational Spaces
8:25 AM Author(s): *Philippe Le Billon - University of British Columbia
Abstract Title: Extracting Transparency: Petro-Capitalism and the Spectacle of Good Governance
8:45 AM Author(s): *Robert Kaiser - University of Wisconsin - Madison
Abstract Title: Performativity and the Eventfulness of Bordering Practices
9:05 AM Author(s): *Carolin L. Schurr - University of Berne
Abstract Title: Performing political space differently? The performative power of 'new' political subjects in Ecuador
9:25 AM Discussant: E Jeffrey Popke - East Carolina University
Discussant(s):
E Jeffrey Popke - East Carolina University
Introducer(s):
Michael R. Glass - University of Pittsburgh
Session Description: This set of sessions brings together scholars working on the interrelations of performativity, space, and politics. In particular, we are interested in highlighting critical scholarship on the following themes: a) implications of performativity for political geographic research; b) case studies addressing performativity, space, and politics; c) interrelations of performativity and other geographic theories; and d) future directions for performativity in critical geographic scholarship.
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 12:40 PM - 2:20 PM in Grand Ballroom D - Sheraton Hotel, Second Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Jim Glassman - University Of British Columbia
Joel D Wainwright - The Ohio State University
Chair(s):
Jim Glassman - University Of British Columbia
Abstract(s):
12:40 PM Author(s): *Luke Robert Bergmann - University of Minnesota
Abstract Title: Peregrinations of value as capitalism globalizes: Theory and measure
1:00 PM Author(s): *Rachel Silvey - U. of Toronto
Abstract Title: Trading in justice: Migrant workers' rights and the problem of value
1:20 PM Author(s): *Marion Werner - University at Buffalo, SUNY
Abstract Title: Beyond Upgrading: Value and industrial restructuring in global production networks
1:40 PM Author(s): *Vinay K. Gidwani, Associate Professor - University of Minnesota
Abstract Title: Waste, Value, Commons
2:00 PM Author(s): *Geoff Mann - Simon Fraser University
Abstract Title: After the value theory of labour
Session Description: Marx's theory of how value is produced in the labor process - the so-called labor theory of value - remains an important, unresolved, and contested issue in contemporary geography. This session examines conceptual foundations of the labor theory of value as well as some of the challenges of employing it in a global capitalist space economy.
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 2:40 PM - 4:20 PM in Grand Ballroom D - Sheraton Hotel, Second Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Jim Glassman - University Of British Columbia
Joel D Wainwright - The Ohio State University
Chair(s):
Eric S. Sheppard - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis
Abstract(s):
2:40 PM Author(s): *Altha J. Cravey - University Of North Carolina
Abstract Title: Artisanal Paper-Making, Social Reproduction, and Value
3:00 PM Author(s): *Junjia Ye - The University of British Columbia
Abstract Title: Labour value and social reproduction: Bangladeshi male migrants in Singapore's division of labour
3:20 PM Author(s): *Jim Glassman - University Of British Columbia
Abstract Title: The Incalculable Value(s) of Marx's Labor Theory
3:40 PM Author(s): *Joel D Wainwright - The Ohio State University
Abstract Title: On Marx's theory of value and economic geography
4:00 PM Discussant: Cindi Katz - CUNY Graduate Center
Discussant(s):
Cindi Katz - CUNY Graduate Center
Session Description: Marx's theory of how value is produced in the labor process - the so-called labor theory of value - remains an important, unresolved, and contested issue in contemporary geography. This session examines conceptual foundations of the labor theory of value as well as some of the challenges of employing in relation to processes of social reproduction.
2141 Developing an Ecosocialist Politics of Technology I: Dialectics of Technopolitics
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in 206 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Salvatore Engel-DiMauro - SUNY New Paltz
David Correia - University Of New Mexico
Chair(s):
David Correia - University Of New Mexico
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Author(s): *Autumn Thoyre - UNC-Chapel Hill
Abstract Title: Climate change and light bulbs: Examining the connection in the discourses of American environmental groups
8:15 AM Author(s): *Paula Decker - University of Arizona
Abstract Title: Technologies of governance and control in the reintroduction of Mexican wolves
8:30 AM Author(s): *Elizabeth Johnson - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis
Abstract Title: Politicizing the Banality of RoboBees, or: Musings on Technoscience and the Quotidian
Session Description: Many critical perspectives have considered the political ends ensconced in technologies (and scientific work), but too few question the political agendas, power relations and environmental implications behind technology. Regardless of social-environmental repercussions, technologies continue to be developed without much effective political organising for their democratic control. In this paper session, presenters contribute to an ecosocialist understanding of technology by exploring the contradictions inherent to technology-fixated solutions to problems generated through capitalism. This session is organized on behalf of the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism: A Journal of Ecosocialism. Anyone not presenting but interested in writing on this topic is very much encouraged to submit a manuscript to the journal for a special issue on technology (15 April 2011 deadline). Please contact the organisers to this end.
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 206 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Salvatore Engel-DiMauro - SUNY New Paltz
David Correia - University Of New Mexico
Chair(s):
Salvatore Engel-DiMauro - SUNY New Paltz
Abstract(s):
10:00 AM Author(s): *Matthew Huber - Syracuse University
Abstract Title: Ecosocialism, the Productive Forces, and "the Realm of Freedom"
10:15 AM Author(s): *Dylan Smith, BA -
Abstract Title: The Implications of Autonomous Technology: Capital, the Megamachine, and the Ongoing Ecological Crisis
10:30 AM Author(s): *John G. Hintz - Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Abstract Title: The Forest and the Fracker: Searching for Politics against Stealth Technics
10:45 AM Author(s): *David Correia - University Of New Mexico
Abstract Title: From Bourgeois Primitivism to Ecosocialism: NoImpactMan and Technopolitics
Session Description: Many critical perspectives have considered the political ends ensconced in technologies (and scientific work), but too few question the political agendas, power relations and environmental implications behind technology. Regardless of social-environmental repercussions, technologies continue to be developed without much effective political organising for their democratic control. This paper session features studies on the political motivations and agendas behind technologies and technocratic imaginaries and proposals that help forge an ecosocialist politics on technology, including strategies to counter technology-driven authoritarian projects characteristic of capitalism. This session is organized on behalf of the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism: A Journal of Ecosocialism. Anyone not presenting but interested in writing on this topic is very much encouraged to submit a manuscript to the journal for a special issue on technology (15 April 2011 deadline). Please contact the organisers to this end.
2441 Developing an Ecosocialist Politics of Technology: Panel Discussion
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 12:40 PM - 2:20 PM in 206 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Salvatore Engel-DiMauro - SUNY New Paltz
David Correia - University Of New Mexico
Chair(s):
David Correia - University Of New Mexico
Panelist(s):
Kathryn Furlong - Université de Montréal
Jacque (Jody) L. Emel - Clark University
Salvatore Engel-DiMauro - SUNY New Paltz
Jon Kosek
Discussant(s):
Brent McCusker - West Virginia University
Session Description: Many critical perspectives have considered the political ends ensconced in technologies (and scientific work), but too few question the political agendas, power relations and environmental implications behind technology. Regardless of social-environmental repercussions, technologies continue to be developed without much effective political organising for their democratic control. Panelists will discuss ways in which a specifically ecosocialist politics can help promote and build a left anti-capitalist development and use of technologies. This session is organized on behalf of the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism: A Journal of Ecosocialism. Anyone not presenting but interested in writing on this topic is very much encouraged to submit a manuscript to the journal for a special issue on technology (15 April 2011 deadline). Please contact the organisers to this end.
4241 Everything old is new again: Neoliberalism and neocolonialism in development aid and investment
Friday, 4/15/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 206 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group
Development Geographies Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Jamey Essex - University of Windsor
Chair(s):
Edward R Carr - University of South Carolina
Abstract(s):
10:00 AM Author(s): *Lucy Jarosz - University of Washington
Abstract Title: Representing Foreign Investment and Dispossession: Meta-narratives about hunger, poverty and development in Africa
10:20 AM Author(s): *Joshua Muldavin - Sarah Lawrence College
Abstract Title: Land from the Tiller: China's role in global processes of land dispossession
10:40 AM Author(s): *Emma Mawdsley, Dr - Cambridge University
Abstract Title: Public perceptions of development cooperation within 're-emerging donors': research from China, India, Poland, Russia and South Africa
11:00 AM Author(s): *Susan M. Roberts - University Of Kentucky
Abstract Title: Foreign assistance for development: USAID and the world of development contractors
11:20 AM Author(s): *Jamey Essex - University of Windsor
Abstract Title: Feeding the future? Aid effectiveness after the global food crisis
Session Description: Long a staple of development in theory and in practice, foreign aid has undergone tremendous upheaval and profound change over the last two decades. The volume and direction of foreign aid flows, the key institutions involved, as well as the goals and objectives that motivate them, have all altered significantly. The multiple and sometimes incommensurate objectives of aid have shifted with a number of intersecting processes and factors: the end of the cold war, the rise of global neoliberalism, the increasing importance of NGOs and social movements, the growth of private aid channels and new state donors such as China, questions about the efficacy and ethics of aid, geopolitical shifts accompanying the US-led global war on terror, and new patterns of FDI leading to "land grabs" and North-South relationships that many describe as neocolonial. Yet longstanding development concerns, such as poverty, hunger, and gender inequality, remain persistent challenges to both the global aid architecture and mainstream development theory and practice. The papers in this session examine various aspects of this disconnect, focusing on continuities and discontinuities in development aid which stem from the neoliberal and neocolonial underpinnings of the current global order.
4142 Exploring the Colonial Present: Contemporary Research on Palestine (I)
Friday, 4/15/11, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in 211 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Omar Jabary Salamanca
Kareem Rabie - CUNY Graduate Center
Chair(s):
Tristan Sturm - UCLA
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Author(s): *Reecia Orzeck - University of Vermont
Abstract Title: Colonialism, Violence, and Public International Law
8:20 AM Author(s): *Brooke Lober, MA - University of Arizona, Department of Gender and Women's Studies
Abstract Title: Reckoning with Jewish Diaspora
8:40 AM Author(s): *Antonia House, MA Candidate - Hagop Kevorkian Center, New York University
Abstract Title: Landscapes, Memory and the Contradictions of Jewish Democracy
9:00 AM Author(s): *Lisa Bhungalia - Syracuse University
Abstract Title: Strategies for living, struggles over how to live: Negotiating USAID and the politics of liberal governance in Palestine
9:20 AM Author(s): *Wendy Ake - Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
Abstract Title: Outcomes, Intentionality and Activist Logic: The Free Gaza Movement and the international campaign to end the siege on Gaza
Session Description: The recent wave of scholarship in Geography addressing the Palestinian-Israeli question has often emphasized colonial practices from a geopolitical perspective and scale, and has focused on the mechanics of Israeli occupation through issues of territory and territoriality, borders, violence, militarization, and so on. This research is characterized on the one hand by a presentist tendency that contributes to the framing of this particular situation as exceptional and without similarities to other colonial conflicts, and on the other hand, by a shortage of local empirical research and consequently, characterizations of Palestine and Palestinians as a cohesive and homogeneous entity. Within the structure of Israeli settler colonialism and in the present context, aid intervention, neoliberal practice, and actors such as Palestinian elites and returnees, donor governments, subcontracting agencies, international organizations as well as local governments, grassroots movements, settlers, and other actors are reshaping socio-political, spatial, legal, economic, and environmental relations in Palestine. This paper session invites scholars to theorize Palestine from a critical perspective at the intersection of different political, economic, legal, and other processes operating at multiple scales in order to explore the similarities and differences between the Palestinian case and other colonial conflicts or global struggles for social justice.
4242 Exploring the Colonial Present: Contemporary Research on Palestine (II)
Friday, 4/15/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 211 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Omar Jabary Salamanca
Lisa Bhungalia - Syracuse University
Chair(s):
Christopher Harker - Durham University
Abstract(s):
10:00 AM Author(s): *Kareem Rabie - CUNY Graduate Center
Abstract Title: "Palestine is holding a party and the whole world is invited:" Housing Development, Privatization, and State-building in the West Bank
10:20 AM Author(s): *Omar Jabary Salamanca - Ghent University
Abstract Title: Geographies of infrastructural violence. Insights from Palestine
10:40 AM Author(s): *Robert R Sauders, Ph.D. - Eastern Washington University
Abstract Title: Rejecting Colonialism One Tag at a Time: International Grassroots Activism as Expressed in the Graffiti on the Israeli Separation Barrier
11:00 AM Author(s): *Natalie K. Jensen - University of South Carolina
Abstract Title: Micro-migrations of Palestinian women to Ramallah
11:20 AM Author(s): *Nathan W Swanson - University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Abstract Title: Dissonance and Dispossession in Palestine: International Law and the Space of Home
Session Description: The recent wave of scholarship in Geography addressing the Palestinian-Israeli question has often emphasized colonial practices from a geopolitical perspective and scale, and has focused on the mechanics of Israeli occupation through issues of territory and territoriality, borders, violence, militarization, and so on. This research is characterized on the one hand by a presentist tendency that contributes to the framing of this particular situation as exceptional and without similarities to other colonial conflicts, and on the other hand, by a shortage of local empirical research and consequently, characterizations of Palestine and Palestinians as a cohesive and homogeneous entity. Within the structure of Israeli settler colonialism and in the present context, aid intervention, neoliberal practice, and actors such as Palestinian elites and returnees, donor governments, subcontracting agencies, international organizations as well as local governments, grassroots movements, settlers, and other actors are reshaping socio-political, spatial, legal, economic, and environmental relations in Palestine. This paper session invites scholars to theorize Palestine from a critical perspective at the intersection of different political, economic, legal, and other processes operating at multiple scales in order to explore the similarities and differences between the Palestinian case and other colonial conflicts or global struggles for social justice.
2273 Extending "America": Critical historical geographies of empire and development
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in Queen Anne - Sheraton Hotel, Union Tower, Third Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Historical Geography Specialty Group
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Mona Domosh - Dartmouth College
Chris Sneddon - Dartmouth College
Chair(s):
Chris Sneddon - Dartmouth College
Abstract(s):
10:00 AM Author(s): *Scott Kirsch - University of North Carolina
Abstract Title: The Road to Baguio: Space and Symbolic Action in the American Colonial Philippines
10:20 AM Author(s): *Mona Domosh - Dartmouth College
Abstract Title: Managing war: American businessmen in revolutionary Russia
10:40 AM Author(s): *Matthew Farish - Department of Geography, University of Toronto
Abstract Title: Western Electric Turns North: Engineers, Contractors, and the Technical Cold War
11:00 AM Author(s): *Chris S. Sneddon - Dartmouth College
Abstract Title: The "Modern Cheops": John L. Savage, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Geopolitics of Technical Assistance, 1935-1950
11:20 AM Discussant: John A. Agnew - University of California - Los Angeles
Discussant(s):
John A. Agnew - University of California - Los Angeles
Session Description: Through engagements with the lived experiences of "agents of empire," critical historical geographies of empire and development have more fully recovered how the imperial was enacted and contested in everyday and embodied encounters. For the most part however these encounters have been studied through the lens of the British colonial experience. In this set of papers we query the role of "agents of empire" in the making of American hegemony. In the first half of the 20th century, United States government agencies and corporations dispatched engineers, bankers, statisticians, marketers, bureaucrats (to name a few) to create new markets, to guide new consumers, and to transform "underdeveloped" regions through novel technologies and institutions. These "agents of empire" contributed to an emerging American hegemony in global geopolitics, but in ways that were never clearly utilitarian and always messy. The lived experiences of these individuals-their travels in and encounters with different places and peoples (with difference)-constitute an important perspective on the emergence and consolidation of American imperial visions in the first half of the 20th century. These papers interrogate and problematize these lived experiences of "agents of empire" and "agents of development" within the context of US international expansion.
4642 Geographies of Alienation
Friday, 4/15/11, from 4:40 PM - 6:20 PM in 211 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Christian Anderson - The City University of New York - Graduate Center
Chair(s):
Jesse Goldstein - City University of New York
Abstract(s):
4:40 PM Introduction: Christian Anderson - The City University of New York - Graduate Center
5:00 PM Author(s): *Tracey J Potts - University of Nottingham
Abstract Title: "Tears for Souvenirs": Rethinking the Disaster of Disaster Kitsch
5:20 PM Author(s): *Dragos Simandan, PhD - Brock University
Abstract Title: Distance and delays in geography
5:40 PM Author(s): *Clayton Rosati - Bowling Green State University
Abstract Title: Rethinking the Fetishism of Commodities: On alienation and the issue of "self-expansion"
6:00 PM Author(s): *Brett Story, PhD Student - University of Toronto
Abstract Title: Solitary Confinement, Alienation, and the Ontology of the Individual in Modern Life
Introducer(s):
Christian Anderson - The City University of New York - Graduate Center
Session Description: Alienation is a theme that cuts across several strands of critical/radical social theory and social philosophy. In many of these traditions, the concept is understood in close relation to myriad material conditions including the mode of production, forms of social and/economic mediation, the state, or the routine practices of everyday life. As these material conditions continue to change, presumably so too should our understanding of alienation. This session urges renewed appraisal of the concept, exploring how changing configurations of space and spatialization—in both theory and practice—intersect with or enrich theories of alienation.
1534 Geographies of Palestinian Solidarity: Boycotts & Backlashes across Borders & Scales (I)
Tuesday, 4/12/11, from 2:40 PM - 4:20 PM in 3A - Washington State Convention Center Level 3
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Omar Jabary Salamanca
Punam Khosla - York University
Chair(s):
Ron Smith - University of Washington
Panelist(s):
Ron Smith - University of Washington
Omar Jabary Salamanca
Punam Khosla - York University
Daniel Olmos
Session Description: Over the past year five hundred geographers, faculty, students, and people of conscience signed an open letter to the International Geographical Union (IGU) entitled We cannot be neutral on a moving train! urging them to relocate their July 2010 regional conference in Tel Aviv in support of the widely endorsed Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Initiated in 2005 by a broad range of Palestinian youth, women's, refugee rights organizations, unions and civil society groups, the BDS movement calls on the International community to protest the State of Israel's escalating colonial policies and practices towards Palestinian rights to land, everyday life, livelihood and return to their homeland. The resulting academic and cultural, sports and consumer boycotts, economic divestment, and multi-pronged sanctions have re-drawn the social and geographical boundaries of the Palestinian struggle across multiple scales. These panel discussions will hear from scholar-activists engaged on a number of the fronts and specific sites where civil society groups have responded to the BDS call and the backlash they have encountered as they come up against Israeli state-sponsored economic, political, academic and cultural offensives to confront, counteract and crush the BDS movement and its supporters. It will also explore the role of geographers in constructing counter-geographies of Palestinianstruggle.
1634 Geographies of Palestinian Solidarity: Boycotts & Backlashes across Borders & Scales (II)
Tuesday, 4/12/11, from 4:40 PM - 6:20 PM in 3A - Washington State Convention Center Level 3
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Omar Jabary Salamanca
Ron Smith - University of Washington
Chair(s):
Punam Khosla - York University
Panelist(s):
Patrick Bond - University of KwaZulu-Natal
Anna Zalik
Bruce Braun - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis
Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi - Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED), SFSU
Session Description: Over the past year five hundred geographers, faculty, students, and people of conscience signed an open letter to the International Geographical Union (IGU) entitled We cannot be neutral on a moving train! urging them to relocate their July 2010 regional conference in Tel Aviv in support of the widely endorsed Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
Initiated in 2005 by a broad range of Palestinian youth, women's, refugee rights organizations, unions and civil society groups, the BDS movement calls on the International community to protest the State of Israel's escalating colonial policies and practices towards Palestinian rights to land, everyday life, livelihood and return to their homeland.
The resulting academic and cultural, sports and consumer boycotts, economic divestment, and multi-pronged sanctions have re-drawn the social and geographical boundaries of the Palestinian struggle across multiple scales.
These panel discussions will hear from scholar-activists engaged on a number of the fronts and specific sites where civil society groups have responded to the BDS call and the backlash they have encountered as they come up against Israeli state-sponsored economic, political, academic and cultural offensives to confront, counteract and crush the BDS movement and its supporters. It will also explore the role of geographers in constructing counter-geographies of Palestinian struggle.
3682 Geographies of value, labor, and social reproduction
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 4:40 PM - 6:20 PM in Grand Ballroom D - Sheraton Hotel, Second Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Jim Glassman - University Of British Columbia
Joel D Wainwright - The Ohio State University
Chair(s):
Geoff Mann - Simon Fraser University
Panelist(s):
Michael Webber - The University of Melbourne
Luke Robert Bergmann - University of Minnesota
Henry Wai-chung Yeung - National University of Singapore
Marion Werner - University at Buffalo, SUNY
Cindi Katz - CUNY Graduate Center
Session Description: Marx's theory of how value is produced in the labor process - the so-called labor theory of value - remains an important, unresolved, and contested issue in contemporary geography. This session examines conceptual foundations of the labor theory of value as well as some of the challenges of employing it in a global capitalist space economy as well as in processes of social reproduction.
3112 Immanent Materialisms in Geography: Marx, Deleuze, Spinoza, and Space 1
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in 612 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Political Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Nathan Lee Clough - University of Minnesota
Chair(s):
Nathan Lee Clough - University of Minnesota
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Author(s): *Ulrich Best -
Abstract Title: State theory and Deleuze/Guattari
8:20 AM Author(s): *Nathan L Clough - University of Minnesota
Abstract Title: Love and Class Hatred: Affect at the Center of Radical Politics
8:40 AM Author(s): *Giorgio Hadi Curti - San Diego State University
Abstract Title: Revolutionary power and the ethics of joyful anger: Tra(ns)vers(al)ing the immanent plan(e) of the art of the world
9:00 AM Author(s): *Jason Read - University of Southern Maine
Abstract Title: temp
9:20 AM Discussant: Joshua J. Kurz - Ohio State University
Discussant(s):
Joshua J. Kurz - Ohio State University
Session Description: The last several years have witnessed an explosion of interest in Spinozan and Deleuzian theoretical perspectives in Geography. Yet sadly, there has sometimes been an opposition between these trajectories of thought and more conventional Marxian approaches. This session hopes to get beyond such dichotomizations through an explicit attention to Deleuzian and Spinozan Marxisms and the potentiality of these theoretical trajectories to reconcile and/or problematize over-easy generalizations of what counts as a revolutionary theory in geography. Specifically, we are interested in geographic work that engages with aleatory and immanent theorizations of Marxism. This theoretical trajectory draws on the work of scholars such as Deleuze and Guattari, Macherey, Agamben, Negri, Spinoza, and the late writings of Althusser in developing a revolutionary Marxist project realigned with the concepts, tools, and critiques of post-structuralism.
3212 Immanent Materialisms in Geography: Marx, Deleuze, Spinoza and Space 2
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 612 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Political Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Nathan Lee Clough - University of Minnesota
Chair(s):
Nathan Lee Clough - University of Minnesota
Abstract(s):
10:00 AM Author(s): *Jeff Popke - East Carolina University
Abstract Title: Labor, Space and the Common: On Negri's Ethical Materialism and Nonrepresentational Theory
10:20 AM Author(s): *Garnet Kindervater - University of Minnesota
Abstract Title: Aleatory Materialism and the Future
10:40 AM Author(s): *Arun JJ Saldanha - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis
Abstract Title: Communism Without Transcendence: Workers of the World Multiply!
11:00 AM Discussant: Susan Ruddick - University of Toronto
11:10 AM Discussant: Katharine Hall - University of Minnesota
11:20 AM Discussant: Jason Read - University of Southern Maine
Discussant(s):
Susan Ruddick - University of Toronto
Katharine Hall - University of Minnesota
Jason Read - University of Southern Maine
Session Description: The last several years have witnessed an explosion of interest in Spinozan and Deleuzian theoretical perspectives in Geography. Yet sadly, there has sometimes been an opposition between these trajectories of thought and more conventional Marxian approaches. This session hopes to get beyond such dichotomizations through an explicit attention to Deleuzian and Spinozan Marxisms and the potentiality of these theoretical trajectories to reconcile and/or problematize over-easy generalizations of what counts as a revolutionary theory in geography. Specifically, we are interested in geographic work that engages with aleatory and immanent theorizations of Marxism. This theoretical trajectory draws on the work of scholars such as Deleuze and Guattari, Macherey, Agamben, Negri, Spinoza, and the late writings of Althusser in developing a revolutionary Marxist project realigned with the concepts, tools, and critiques of post-structuralism.
2220 James Blaut Memorial Award and Lecture
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 620 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Jamey Essex - University of Windsor
Chair(s):
Jamey Essex - University of Windsor
Abstract(s):
10:00 AM Introduction: Jamey Essex - University of Windsor
10:15 AM Discussant: Don Mitchell - Syracuse University
Discussant(s):
Don Mitchell - Syracuse University
Introducer(s):
Jamey Essex - University of Windsor
Session Description: James Blaut's passing in 2000 was a terrible loss to the academy and liberation struggles around the world. A radical geographer, Jim worked indefatigably on issues of social justice and inequality; enhanced our understanding of racism, imperialism, and Eurocentrism; and contributed directly to the advancement of socialist and anti-colonial struggles. The Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group (SCGSG) of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), with support and co-sponsorship from Antipode, will present the 6th James Blaut Award and Memorial Lecture at the 2011 AAG Annual Meeting. To honor Jim Blaut's efforts, the award will recognize a scholar who, over the course of her/his life, has (1) used a geographic and historical analysis of capitalism to explain current social injustices and inequalities; (2) promoted activism against oppressive power relations both within and outside the academy; and (3) bridged socialist theory and practice.
3242 Making Space in Critical Geography for the Humanities
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 211 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Geography of Religions and Belief Systems Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Cultural Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Liana Vasseur - University of Kentucky
Garrett Graddy - University of Kentucky
Chair(s):
Garrett Graddy - University of Kentucky
Abstract(s):
10:00 AM Author(s): *Jeff Birkenstein - Saint Martin's University
Abstract Title: Beloved Signposts of History in Lexington, Kentucky
10:20 AM Author(s): *Hugh Deaner - University of Kentucky
Abstract Title: Painting Town Branch: Full scale earth mapping in downtown Lexington, Kentucky
10:40 AM Author(s): *Donna Houston - Macquarie University
Abstract Title: Earthly Performativity: Memory, Materiality and Method
11:00 AM Author(s): *Liana T. Vasseur - University of Kentucky
Abstract Title: Poetics of the secret map
11:20 AM Author(s): *Garrett Graddy - Carleton College
Abstract Title: Rhythm, memory, narrative: spatial epistemologies of seed-saving
Session Description: This session addresses the benefits of including artistic, literary, and theological perspectives and genres of communication in Critical Geography. We ask participants to share experiences of incorporating humanities into their research methodologies and teaching pedagogies—not just as data to be analyzed, but as sources and means of analytical thought.
Often the humanities are feminized and delegitimized, so we frame the respectful acknowledgement of the intellectual and emancipatory power of the arts and theology as a distinctly feminist project. Postcolonial theorists have noted the inherent exclusivity of purely text-based genres that claim to be comprehensive mediums for "producing knowledge" or expertise about a subject, space, or region. This is a particularly pressing issue for those of us who expressly aim to dismantle social and ecological exploitation and inequity.
So, how are you making space in Geography for a more inclusive and empowering means of learning about the world and communicating ideas to others? What role does creativity play in this endeavor?
3182 MUNICIPALITIES, REGIONS, SPOKES, and HUBS: Exploring Networks and Policy Change
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Grand Ballroom D - Sheraton Hotel, Second Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Urban Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Cristina Temenos - Simon Fraser University
Freya Kristensen
Chair(s):
Lindsay Galbraith - University of Cambridge
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Author(s): *Jessica E Carriere - University of Toronto
Abstract Title: Public Policy 'in Motion': Tracking the Discursive Circulation of Place Based Policy from London (UK) to Toronto
8:20 AM Author(s): *Cristina Temenos - Simon Fraser University
Eugene McCann - Simon Fraser University
Abstract Title: Branding and mobilizing sustainability in Whistler, BC: The production, practice, and circulation of a sustainability model.
8:40 AM Author(s): Eugene McCann, Dr - Simon Fraser University
*Kevin Ward, Professor - University of Manchester
Abstract Title: Assembling Urbanism: Methodological Notes
9:00 AM Author(s): *Tom Baker - University of Newcastle, Australia
Abstract Title: Approaching urban policy transfer: the geography, politics and practice of mobilising policy
9:20 AM Author(s): *Freya Kristensen - Simon Fraser University
Abstract Title: Networks as urban policy-makers: A new space for climate change governance?
Session Description: n recent years discussions of environmental governance have placed municipalities in positions of considerable influence within policy debates. As this area of research grows in interest, theories that conceptualize policy change are being reconsidered. Emerging literature on what has been termed 'policy mobilities' (James & Lodge, 2003; Evans, 2004; Stone, 2004; McCann, 2008; Peck & Theodore, 2010) is engaging policy theorists with the importance of place in the policy process, while still allowing for critical reflection on the politics of scale (Bulkeley, 2005). For example, assumptions around how 'best practices' are identified and deemed transferable and universally applicable is under scrutiny (e.g. Bulkeley, 2006). This session seeks to explore policy mobilities and other approaches, such as actor network theory and policy networks, to broadly examine how networks are used (a) as a tool by municipalities to shape environmental policy and (b) as a theory to conceptualize policy change. How do policies in one spatial context become heralded as universal solutions for environmental problems? In what ways do such policies flow from one place to another? How do policies change in the course of this transfer and in the process of their adoption in a new place?
3282 Neoliberal Redevelopment Governance Post 2010: Trends and Possibilities
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in Grand Ballroom D - Sheraton Hotel, Second Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Urban Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Sternberg Carolina - University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Matthew Anderson - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Chair(s):
Sternberg Carolina - University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Abstract(s):
10:00 AM Author(s): *Carolina Sternberg - University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Matthew Anderson - University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Abstract Title: Chicago's Neoliberal Redevelopment Governance and the Retirement of Mayor Daley: What Comes Next?
10:20 AM Author(s): *Robert Edward Cochran - University of Illinois
Abstract Title: REINTERPRETING FOUCAULT: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CURRENT U.S. CITY
10:40 AM Author(s): *James A. Hanlon - Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Abstract Title: With or Without HOPE VI: The Devolution of Public Housing Redevelopment in the U.S.
11:00 AM Author(s): *Stijn Oosterlynck - University of Antwerp
Sara Gonzalez - Leeds University
Abstract Title: The financial-economic crisis and variegated urban neoliberalization: a cultural political economy approach
11:20 AM Author(s): *Andrew Wood - University of Kentucky
Abstract Title: The growth machine in troubled times?
Session Description: Neoliberal Redevelopment Governances across north Atlantic metropolitan regions are now confronted with a convergence of forces: the global financial crisis, local mortgage crises, and deepening fiscal deficits. This reality represents a historical moment in that neoliberal governances now face the manifestation of their own contradictions. Yet, many of these governances remain fixed on long-standing neoliberal principles and operations. Set against this reality, what are the path-shaping capacities and path-dependencies currently facing neoliberal redevelopment governances today? To what extent does the post-2010 period represent a potential starting point for the advancement of a new post-neoliberal social formation (i.e., a neo-Keynesian managerialism, a frightening neo-conservative authoritarianism, or a progressive socialism).
5140 Neoliberalizing Space: Critical Perspectives on Place Branding I
Saturday, 4/16/11, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in 205 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Urban Geography Specialty Group
Economic Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Reuben S. Rose-Redwood - University of Victoria
Jani Vuolteenaho - University of Helsinki
Chair(s):
Jani Vuolteenaho - University of Helsinki
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Introduction: Jani Vuolteenaho - University of Helsinki
8:05 AM Author(s): *Thomas Niedomysl - Institute for Futures Studies
Mikael Jonasson - Halmstad University
Abstract Title: Towards a descriptive theory of place marketing
8:24 AM Author(s): *Ida Andersson - Stockholm University
Abstract Title: All that glitters is not branding: a critical approach to case study analysis in place branding research.
8:43 AM Author(s): *Eliot Tretter - University of Texas - Austin
Abstract Title: Branding a City 'Live Music Capital of the World.'
9:02 AM Author(s): *Helen Morgan Parmett, Ph D Candidate - University of Minnesota
Abstract Title: Disneyomatics: Cultural policy, the creative economy, and the production of neoliberal urban space in post-Katrina New Orleans
9:21 AM Author(s): *David J. Madden, PhD - Bard College
Abstract Title: Neighborhood Branding as Spatial Practice: The politics of toponymy in Brooklyn, NY
Introducer(s):
Jani Vuolteenaho - University of Helsinki
Session Description: This is the first of two sessions on the spatial politics of 'place branding,' which refers to the various neoliberal strategies of place-marketing that have been employed in recent years treating the identities of places as if they were mere commodities. The sessions will explore the different ways in which places have been 'branded' as well as how hegemonic place branding practices have been resisted, subverted, or reconfigured through the construction of counter-identities of 'place.'
5240 Neoliberalizing Space: Critical Perspectives on Place Branding II
Saturday, 4/16/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 205 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Urban Geography Specialty Group
Economic Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Reuben S. Rose-Redwood - University of Victoria
Jani Vuolteenaho - University of Helsinki
Chair(s):
Reuben S. Rose-Redwood - University of Victoria
Abstract(s):
10:00 AM Introduction: Reuben S. Rose-Redwood - University of Victoria
10:05 AM Author(s): *Lachlan Barber - University of British Columbia
Abstract Title: Breathing Space: Un/Branding Hong Kong's Central Market Oasis
10:24 AM Author(s): *Andrew Harris - University College London
Abstract Title: Art without art: brandscapes of neoliberal Buenos Aires
10:43 AM Author(s): *Sami Matti Kolamo - university of Tampere
Abstract Title: Place branding through the FIFA World Cup tournaments
11:02 AM Author(s): *Andrew Fordham - The Open University
Abstract Title: Food, Art, Books: The Cultural Politics of Rural Place Branding in Scotland
11:21 AM Author(s): *Jani Vuolteenaho - University of Helsinki
Abstract Title: Place branding through the urban built form: analyzing neoliberal brandscapes in Finnish cities
Introducer(s):
Reuben S. Rose-Redwood - University of Victoria
Session Description: This is the second of two sessions on the spatial politics of 'place branding,' which refers to the various neoliberal strategies of place-marketing that have been employed in recent years treating the identities of places as if they were mere commodities. The sessions will explore the different ways in which places have been 'branded' as well as how hegemonic place branding practices have been resisted, subverted, or reconfigured through the construction of counter-identities of 'place.'
4550 Putting Capital to work? Marxist abstractions and the concrete realities of geographic research
Friday, 4/15/11, from 2:40 PM - 4:20 PM in Boren - Sheraton Hotel, Union Tower, Fourth Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Political Geography Specialty Group
Economic Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Marc Auerbach
Kevin R. Cox - Ohio State University
Chair(s):
Marc Auerbach
Panelist(s):
Kevin R. Cox - Ohio State University
Tod D. Rutherford - Syracuse University
David L. Rigby - UCLA
Roger Lee - Queen Mary, University Of London
Session Description: What is a critically inclined geographer to do? Marxist geography appears at once so powerful and so weak. It arguably explains much about the broad contours of capitalist development, yet it seems to falter when confronted with the messy diversity of lived reality. If, as Marxist geography suggests, the accumulation process and the class relation are continually reorganizing our socio-spatial reality, it is nonetheless evident that they do not determine it. One cannot read off historical-geographic outcomes from the "abstract" categories of Capital. That much is well established. How, then, should the veritable Marxist categories be incorporated into concrete research? That, evidently, is not so clear. At times, Marxist work seems burdened by a noticeable gap between the abstract arguments on offer and the concrete case study. And it is sometimes difficult to discern a distinction between work which invokes Marx and the broader field of critical geography. All of this raises a series of questions which we invite our panelists to address: Methodologically speaking, what makes Marxist geography Marxist? How have Marxist geographers succeeded or failed in bringing the abstract categories of Capital (and The Limits to Capital) to bear on concrete research? What is necessary today to advance the project of Marxist geography (and should it be advanced)?
Friday, 4/15/11, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Issaquah A - Sheraton Hotel, Union Tower, Third Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Cultural Geography Specialty Group
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Joseph Palis - North Carolina State University
Arnd Holdschlag - Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg
Chair(s):
Joseph Palis - North Carolina State University
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Author(s): *Laura Brewington - University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Abstract Title: The Galápagos Islands as Bounded Space, Conceptual Nature, and Legal Territory
8:20 AM Author(s): *Wardlow Friesen - UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND
Abstract Title: The politics of paradise in the western Solomon Islands
8:40 AM Author(s): *Sarah Kennedy - School of GAP
Abstract Title: The importance of language for island identities
9:00 AM Author(s): *Elaine Stratford, PhD - University of Tasmania
Abstract Title: The cartographic impulse and the understanding of island form, effect, and sense of be(com)ing?
9:20 AM Discussant: Lisa Marshall
Discussant(s):
Lisa Marshall
Session Description: For centuries, island worlds provided a space for discursive discussions that position these geographical entities as isolated and unmappable utopias that need to be occupied, conquered and colonized. In the words of Elizabeth DeLoughrey: "the island has functioned in various historical eras as a new Eden . . . a refreshment stop for long maritime journeys, and the contained space . . . where metropolitan homes are reconstructed." These early and long-held modernist views engendered voyeuristic tourism, encoded postcolonial Othering and environmentally determinist knowledge production among others. With the emergence of the "spatial turn" in cultural analysis comes the reevaluation of the trope of island as refreshment, laboratories, and site for exoticism. Recent studies focused on the spatial and historical dimensions of "repeating island", alternative histories derived from homegrown storytelling, tidal dialectics and the conceptual reformulation of the island imaginary.
This panel presents papers that discuss, challenge and (re)imagine islands and island worlds through the presentation of new field data, discursive practices, and critical ethnographies and cartographies. Emerging, peripheral and work-in-progress research that offers fresh analyses and conceptualizations on islands, island worlds and island imaginaries are particularly welcome.
Among the relevant topics in the Reframing Islandness sessions:
-Inter-island connectivities
-Emerging and emergent island identities
-Migration and diasporic mobilities
-Alter/native historiographies
-Critical narratives of exile and ex-isle
-Kamau Brathwaite and tidalectics
-Post-representation of islandness
-Tourism and island-laboratories
-Military installations in islands
-Law of the Sea and island territorialism
-New island mapping and/or island counter cartographies
-Island imaginaries
Friday, 4/15/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in Issaquah A - Sheraton Hotel, Union Tower, Third Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Cultural Geography Specialty Group
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Joseph Palis - North Carolina State University
Arnd Holdschlag - Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg
Chair(s):
Elaine Stratford - University of Tasmania
Abstract(s):
10:00 AM Author(s): *Haruna Suzuki - University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Abstract Title: La Cara de San Cristóbal: Discourses on Sea Lion Conservation in the Galápagos Islands
10:20 AM Author(s): *Arnd Holdschlag - Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg
Abstract Title: Environmental stressors and knowledge systems in The Bahamas
10:40 AM Author(s): *Chris Castagna - Sonoma State University
Abstract Title: The Culture of Forests: Selected Indigenous Perspectives on Plantation Forestry in Aotearoa/New Zealand
11:00 AM Author(s): *Lisa Marshall - UNC - Chapel Hill/NC State University
Abstract Title: Caribbean-Canadian-ness: a geography of journeys
11:20 AM Discussant: Amy L McCleary - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Discussant(s):
Amy L McCleary - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Session Description: For centuries, island worlds provided a space for discursive discussions that position these geographical entities as isolated and unmappable utopias that need to be occupied, conquered and colonized. In the words of Elizabeth DeLoughrey: "the island has functioned in various historical eras as a new Eden . . . a refreshment stop for long maritime journeys, and the contained space . . . where metropolitan homes are reconstructed." These early and long-held modernist views engendered voyeuristic tourism, encoded postcolonial Othering and environmentally determinist knowledge production among others. With the emergence of the "spatial turn" in cultural analysis comes the reevaluation of the trope of island as refreshment, laboratories, and site for exoticism. Recent studies focused on the spatial and historical dimensions of "repeating island", alternative histories derived from homegrown storytelling, tidal dialectics and the conceptual reformulation of the island imaginary.
This panel presents papers that discuss, challenge and (re)imagine islands and island worlds through the presentation of new field data, discursive practices, and critical ethnographies and cartographies. Emerging, peripheral and work-in-progress research that offers fresh analyses and conceptualizations on islands, island worlds and island imaginaries are particularly welcome.
Among the relevant topics in the Reframing Islandness sessions:
-Inter-island connectivities
-Emerging and emergent island identities
-Migration and diasporic mobilities
-Alter/native historiographies
-Critical narratives of exile and ex-isle
-Kamau Brathwaite and tidalectics
-Post-representation of islandness
-Tourism and island-laboratories
-Military installations in islands
-Law of the Sea and island territorialism
-New island mapping and/or island counter cartographies
-Island imaginaries
3407 Social Movement Scholarship: Perilous Positionings between Academia and Activism 1
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 12:40 PM - 2:20 PM in 607 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Byron A. Miller - University of Calgary
Walter J. Nicholls - Sociology, University of Amsterdam
Chair(s):
Walter J. Nicholls - Sociology, University of Amsterdam
Abstract(s):
12:40 PM Author(s): *Melissa R. Gilbert, PhD - Temple University
Abstract Title: Participatory Action Research on Social Movements: Contradictions and Crises
1:00 PM Author(s): *Walter J. Nicholls - Sociology, University of Amsterdam
Byron Miller - Geography, University of Calgary
Abstract Title: Giving Voice: The Perilous Roles of Intellectuals in Social Movements
1:20 PM Author(s): *Heather P. Bedi - Student
Abstract Title: Methodological reflections on resistance research in India
1:40 PM Author(s): *Raju J Das - York University
Abstract Title: Appearance and Content: A study of a political movement in India
2:00 PM Author(s): *Sophie Oldfield, PhD - University of Cape Town
Abstract Title: Building Valhalla: Neighborhood activism, research practice and knowledge production in a southern city
Session Description: Scholars interested in contentious politics are oftentimes positioned between contradictory worlds. On the one hand, their professional fields require them to produce empirical analyses of how social movements unfold across space and time, and how such movements challenge and change the powers that be; the principal objective is to contribute to the broad 'scientific' knowledge on social movements and political struggles. On the other hand, scholars are themselves (typically) citizens with political rights, often sympathetic to or involved in the movements they study. As partisans of a struggle, they may want to employ the knowledge produced to achieve political and ideological ends. These two different positionings (academia and activism) therefore produce somewhat conflicting objectives and expectations for citizen-scholars.
This session asks citizen-scholars interested in social movements to address some of the tensions and problems that can arise from their dual positioning.
-How do researchers deal with the conflicting expectations between the worlds of academia and activism?
-In what ways are social movement scholars pressured to limit their political engagement, and how does this pressure conflict with democratic rights of citizen-scholars?
-Does political involvement affect what researchers examine, say, and publish about the social movements under investigation?
-How can scholars employ their theoretical knowledge about social movements to advance the political aims of their comrades?
-Can political engagement affect the ways in which we assess the value of scholarship?
-What methodological issues arise from one's involvement in social movements?
-Does the involvement of scholars and intellectuals in social movements change their internal dynamics?
3507 Social Movement Scholarship: Perilous Positionings between Academia and Activism 2
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 2:40 PM - 4:20 PM in 607 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Byron A. Miller - University of Calgary
Chair(s):
Walter J. Nicholls - Sociology, University of Amsterdam
Abstract(s):
2:40 PM Author(s): *Valeria Pecorelli - Loughborough University
Abstract Title: Wondering while wandering: from the ivory tower to the squat.
3:00 PM Author(s): *Jules Boykoff - Pacific University
Abstract Title: "Between a Lecture Hall and a Convergence Space: Riding the Line between Academia and Activism"
3:20 PM Author(s): *Andre Pusey - University of Leeds
*Leon Sealey-Huggins - University of Leeds
Bertie Russell - University of Leeds
Thomas Gillespie - University of Leeds
Abstract Title: The 'Activist-Academic': A False Dilemma
3:40 PM Author(s): *Peter North - University of Liverpool
Abstract Title: Impact, Knowledge Exchange and Activism: exploring low carbon futures
Session Description: Scholars interested in contentious politics are oftentimes positioned between contradictory worlds. On the one hand, their professional fields require them to produce empirical analyses of how social movements unfold across space and time, and how such movements challenge and change the powers that be; the principal objective is to contribute to the broad 'scientific' knowledge on social movements and political struggles. On the other hand, scholars are themselves (typically) citizens with political rights, often sympathetic to or involved in the movements they study. As partisans of a struggle, they may want to employ the knowledge produced to achieve political and ideological ends. These two different positionings (academia and activism) therefore produce somewhat conflicting objectives and expectations for citizen-scholars.
This panel asks citizen-scholars interested in social movements to address some of the tensions and problems that can arise from their dual positioning.
-How do researchers deal with the conflicting expectations between the worlds of academia and activism?
-In what ways are social movement scholars pressured to limit their political engagement, and how does this pressure conflict with democratic rights of citizen-scholars?
-Does political involvement affect what researchers examine, say, and publish about the social movements under investigation?
-How can scholars employ their theoretical knowledge about social movements to advance the political aims of their comrades?
-Can political engagement affect the ways in which we assess the value of scholarship?
-What methodological issues arise from one's involvement in social movements?
-Does the involvement of scholars and intellectuals in social movements change their internal dynamics?
3607 Social Movement Scholarship: Perilous Positionings between Academia and Activism
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 4:40 PM - 6:20 PM in 607 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Byron A. Miller - University of Calgary
Walter J. Nicholls - Sociology, University of Amsterdam
Chair(s):
Walter J. Nicholls - Sociology, University of Amsterdam
Panelist(s):
Jane Wills - Queen Mary University of London
Nathan Lee Clough - University of Minnesota
Nik Theodore
Kristin M. Sziarto - University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Jules Boykoff - Pacific University
Session Description: Scholars interested in contentious politics are oftentimes positioned between contradictory worlds. On the one hand, their professional fields require them to produce empirical analyses of how social movements unfold across space and time, and how such movements challenge and change the powers that be; the principal objective is to contribute to the broad 'scientific' knowledge on social movements and political struggles. On the other hand, scholars are themselves (typically) citizens with political rights, often sympathetic to or involved in the movements they study. As partisans of a struggle, they may want to employ the knowledge produced to achieve political and ideological ends. These two different positionings (academia and activism) therefore produce somewhat conflicting objectives and expectations for citizen-scholars.
This panel asks citizen-scholars interested in social movements to address some of the tensions and problems that can arise from their dual positioning.
-How do researchers deal with the conflicting expectations between the worlds of academia and activism?
-In what ways are social movement scholars pressured to limit their political engagement, and how does this pressure conflict with democratic rights of citizen-scholars?
-Does political involvement affect what researchers examine, say, and publish about the social movements under investigation?
-How can scholars employ their theoretical knowledge about social movements to advance the political aims of their comrades?
-Can political engagement affect the ways in which we assess the value of scholarship?
-What methodological issues arise from one's involvement in social movements?
-Does the involvement of scholars and intellectuals in social movements change their internal dynamics?
2838 Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group Business Meeting
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 7:30 PM - 8:30 PM in 203 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Program Committee
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in 304 - Washington State Convention Center Level 3
Sponsorship(s):
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Philip E. Steinberg - Florida State University
Chair(s):
Philip E. Steinberg - Florida State University
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Author(s): *Philip E. Steinberg - Florida State University
Elizabeth A Nyman - Florida State University
Mauro J Caraccioli - University of Florida
Abstract Title: Atlas Swam: Freedom, Capital, and Floating Sovereignties in the Seasteading Vision
8:20 AM Author(s): *Christopher Niedt - Hofstra University
Abstract Title: Libertarian Challenges to Eminent Domain: The Shifting Suburban Terrain of Racial Exclusion and Property Rights
8:40 AM Author(s): *Fred M. Shelley - University of Oklahoma
Heather Hollen - University of Oklahoma
Abstract Title: How Has the Tea Party Affected Contemporary American Electoral Geography?
9:00 AM Author(s): *Nick Quinton - Florida State University
Abstract Title: A Tea Party Nation? Electoral Politics and the Tea Party Movement in Tennessee
9:20 AM Discussant: Barney Warf - University of Kansas
Discussant(s):
Barney Warf - University of Kansas
Session Description: Few political movements have had such a meteoric rise in political thought and practice in recent years as libertarianism. Rooted in the philosophy of Robert Nozick, the economic theory of Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, the political theory of John Locke, the radically individualist writings of Ayn Rand, and the resistance to central government that has long characterized U.S. political discourse, libertarianism has been taken up by a range of political actors, from the right-wing Republicans of the Tea Party to anarcho-bohemians of the drug legalization and open internet movements.
Lost in most analyses of libertarian philosophy, economics, and politics, however, is that libertarians often adopt explicitly spatial strategies in their efforts to achieve their ends. From attempts to establish libertarian commonwealths on survivalist compounds to the libertarian-inspired new urbanism of Léon Krier, the libertarian project - if not explicitly utopian – has been heterotopian. Libertarians have sought to establish "other spaces" that are both within and in opposition to the dominant organization of space, and they often have hoped that these "other spaces," in addition to providing a venue for escape, would provide an example and springboard for wider-reaching systemic change.
Although this session broadly considers libertarianism as an ethical system, economic philosophy, and political movement, papers specifically focus on how libertarians incorporate (or leverage) conceptions of space in their visions.
3135 Taking Stock of Space and Social Movements: What Have We Learned and Who are We Speaking to? I
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in 3B - Washington State Convention Center Level 3
Sponsorship(s):
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Byron A. Miller - University of Calgary
Walter J. Nicholls - Sociology, University of Amsterdam
Chair(s):
Walter J. Nicholls - Sociology, University of Amsterdam
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Author(s): *Gerda R. Wekerle, Professor - Faculty of Environmental Studies York University
Abstract Title: Land Conflicts: Tensions of Place, Planning, Environment and Democratic Governance
8:20 AM Author(s): *Helen C. Jarvis, PhD - University of Newcastle Upon Tyne
Abstract Title: Real and Imagined Geographies of Communalism: Lessons for the Mainstream
8:40 AM Author(s): *Mark Treskon - New York University
Abstract Title: Local Advocacy in a National Movement: Scalar Politics and Anti-Predatory Lending
9:00 AM Author(s): *Jan Willem Duyvendak - University of Amsterdam
Abstract Title: Strategies of Sustainable Belonging
9:20 AM Author(s): *Byron A. Miller - University of Calgary
Walter Nicholls - University of Amsterdam
Abstract Title: Spatialities, Social Movements, and the Politics of Transformation
Session Description: In a world wracked by environmental crisis, multiple forms of injustice, imperialism, and the erosion of democratic self-determination, aggrieved people have embraced collective resistance as a means to express their concerns and outrage in the public sphere. Over the years, geographers have become increasingly interested in the spatial constitution of social movements that confront these and other issues. The intervention of geographers has been significant because it has provided important insights into how spatial processes and characteristics like uneven development, relational fluidity, identity and framing, and scale shifting have shaped the networking dynamics driving social movements. Though geographers have produced important insights into the spatialities of social movements, these insights have been informed by very different epistemological, theoretical and methodological traditions. The eclecticism of this nascent subfield has certain benefits but it also constrains productive debates.
These sessions aim to provide an opportunity for researchers to take stock of what we have learned about the spatialities of social movements, identify points of tension and problems in what we have found, and reflect on what this knowledge is good for. From our consideration of what we have learned, we hope to collectively chart out possible avenues forward, both theoretically and in praxis.
3235 Taking Stock of Space and Social Movements: What Have We Learned and Who are We Speaking to? II
Thursday, 4/14/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 3B - Washington State Convention Center Level 3
Sponsorship(s):
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Byron A. Miller - University of Calgary
Walter J. Nicholls - Sociology, University of Amsterdam
Chair(s):
Byron A. Miller - University of Calgary
Panelist(s):
Wendy Wolford - University Of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Deborah G. Martin - Clark University
Mark H. Purcell - University of Washington
Helga Leitner - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis
Jan Willem Duyvendak - University of Amsterdam
Session Description: In a world wracked by environmental crisis, multiple forms of injustice, imperialism, and the erosion of democratic self-determination, aggrieved people have embraced collective resistance as a means to express their concerns and outrage in the public sphere. Over the years, geographers have become increasingly interested in the spatial constitution of social movements that confront these and other issues. The intervention of geographers has been significant because it has provided important insights into how spatial processes and characteristics like uneven development, relational fluidity, identity and framing, and scale shifting have shaped the networking dynamics driving social movements. Though geographers have produced important insights into the spatialities of social movements, these insights have been informed by very different epistemological, theoretical and methodological traditions. The eclecticism of this nascent subfield has certain benefits but it also constrains productive debates.
These sessions aim to provide an opportunity for researchers to take stock of what we have learned about the spatialities of social movements, identify points of tension and problems in what we have found, and reflect on what this knowledge is good for. From our consideration of what we have learned, we hope to collectively chart out possible avenues forward, both theoretically and in praxis.
2615 Ten Years On: Feminisms and the 'War on Terror'
Wednesday, 4/13/11, from 4:40 PM - 6:20 PM in 615 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Roberta Hawkins - Clark University
Kate Coddington Senner - Syracuse University
Chair(s):
Roberta Hawkins - Clark University
Abstract(s):
4:40 PM Discussant: Deborah Cowen - University of Toronto
5:00 PM Author(s): *Vanessa A. Massaro, MA - Penn State University
Abstract Title: Dealing Terror: Reconnecting Two Social Wars
5:20 PM Author(s): *Jill Williams - Clark University
Abstract Title: Protection as Subjection: National Security, Female Vulnerability, and US-Mexico Border Enforcement Post-9/11
5:40 PM Author(s): *Amy D Piedalue, doctoral student - University of Washington
Abstract Title: Deconstructing Dominant Paradigms of Gendered Violence: A Feminist Reading of Developmental Framings of Domestic Violence, Women's Empowerment, and Violent Masculinities
6:00 PM Author(s): *Emily Mitchell-Eaton - Syracuse University
Abstract Title: Married to "The Man": Violence, Discipline and Intimate Neocolonies in Filipina Women's Marriages to American Men
Discussant(s):
Deborah Cowen - University of Toronto
Session Description: Writing in 2003, responding to the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Arundhati Roy asks, "Can we bomb our way to a feminist paradise?" Nearly ten years have passed since President George Bush introduced the phrase "war on terror" to describe the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, declaring to Congress that, "Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there." In the past ten years, geographers have critically examined aspects of terrorism and the 'war on terror' ranging from geopolitics (Megoran 2006; Dalby 2008; Jones 2009; Flint and Radil 2009), the blurring of terror and territory (Elden 2009; Lunstrum 2009), and Guantanamo Bay (e.g. Gregory 2006) to affective (Anderson 2010), everyday (Amoore 2009) and "contrapuntal" (Oza 2007) geographies highlighted by these events. Feminists, too, have engaged with the 'war on terror', querying its role in feminist epistemologies (Thobani 2007) and geographical imaginaries (Hyndman 2010), as well as grappling with its everyday gendered ramifications on the ground (Kaplan 2003; Phillips 2008). This session welcomes empirically- and conceptually-focused papers by graduate students and early career faculty on geographical aspects of terror, gender and feminisms.
5378 The Geography of Black Social Movements: Current Research and Perspectives
Saturday, 4/16/11, from 12:00 PM - 1:40 PM in Douglas Room - Sheraton Hotel, Second Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Political Geography Specialty Group
Ethnic Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Doris Garcia - Louisiana State University
Paul Karolczyk - Louisiana State University
Chair(s):
Clement Lai - Cornell University
Abstract(s):
12:00 PM Author(s): *Clement Lai, Ph.D. - Cornell University
Abstract Title: Multiracial Alliance Building in the Redeveloping City
12:20 PM Author(s): *Doris Garcia - Louisiana State University
Abstract Title: Garinagu Land Rights Movement: Geography and Political Practices in the United States and Honduras
12:40 PM Author(s): *Paul Karolczyk - Louisiana State University
Abstract Title: The New Afrikan Independence Movement: Geography and Mobilization in the Deep South
1:00 PM Author(s): *Priscilla McCutcheon - University of Georgia
Abstract Title: Building "Heaven on Earth" through the Food Programs of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church
1:20 PM Author(s): *Bobby M. Wilson - University Of Alabama
Abstract Title: Political Consumerism and the Struggle for Civil Rights
Session Description: This session presents current geographical research and perspectives on black social movements in America's racialized landscape. Examined are historical and contemporary movements such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Christian Nationalist movement, the New Afrikan Independence Movement, and the Garinagu land rights movement. Presenters discuss how these movements have adapted to and navigated sites of struggle in urban and rural places on the east and west coasts and in the Deep South. Underlined is the interconnectivity between human geography and practices that fall under the rubric of resistance and social movement mobilization. Placed in geographical context are practices such as cross-cultural organizing, nation-building, identity politics, scalar politics, and political consumerism. Researchers also evaluate the appropriateness of qualitative methods in mapping geographies of social movements by their usage of ethnography, interviewing, participant observation, archival work, and analysis based on social theory, cultural studies, and political economy.
4442 The Politics of Expectations: Nature, Culture, and the Production of Space I
Friday, 4/15/11, from 12:40 PM - 2:20 PM in 211 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
James Porter
Samuel Randalls
Chair(s):
James Porter
Abstract(s):
12:40 PM Author(s): *Samuel Randalls - University College London
Gillian Petrokofsky - University of Oxford
Abstract Title: Saws, sonar and submersibles: expectations of/for underwater logging
1:00 PM Author(s): *Rebecca Lave - Indiana University Dept of Geography
Abstract Title: Freedom and Constraint: embracing contradiction in the stream restoration field
1:20 PM Author(s): *Federico Caprotti - University of Plymouth
Abstract Title: Geographies of concepts: producing and performing the cleantech sector, 1990-2010
1:40 PM Author(s): *Kimberley Kinder - Department of Geography
Abstract Title: "Making Nature": Urban expansion as wetland restoration in Amsterdam
2:00 PM Author(s): *Liza Griffin - University Of Westminster
Abstract Title: Making Communities Resilient & Sustainable: Space, Environmental Politics & Power
Session Description: Expectations are incredibly powerful things. Whether materialized via climatic models, economic forecasts, or based on the promise of personalised medicines, expectations (and those who engineer them) play a deeply political yet often unsung role in bringing into being a particular kind of future as well as shaping a particular kind of present. Savvy actors seeking to engineer change may decide to write editorials, give press briefings, or try to normalise trust between the communities involved so as to enrol support and resources for an emerging marketplace (and consumer) they have envisioned. Such discursive as well as performative practices pre-emptively shape the social and economic context for developing technologies so that the actors involved not only develop their physical objects but also influence other people's thinking. Rather than dismiss such efforts as exaggerated or self-serving claims, the "sociology of expectations" (cf. Anderson, 2010; Brown, 2003; Hedgecoe, 2004; Law, 1994) points to the constructive, performative, and even destructive role such expectations have in today's world where competition for funding, research impact and innovation are so intense. As many geographers researching the 'commercialization of nature' have noted (cf. Castree, 2003; Johnson, 2010; Lave et al., 2010; Prudham, 2005), expectations of future natures inhabit contemporary environmental management in a series of subtle and not so subtle ways for all actors. But how are expectations created, configured, and stabilized? What, and whose, interests shape them, and in turn, whose interests do they shape? And why do some persist whilst others don't?
4542 The Politics of Expectations: Nature, Culture, and the Production of Space II
Friday, 4/15/11, from 2:40 PM - 4:20 PM in 211 - Washington State Convention Center Level 2
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
James Porter
Samuel Randalls
Chair(s):
Samuel Randalls
Abstract(s):
2:40 PM Author(s): *Cheryl McEwan, Dr - University Of Durham
Abstract Title: Fighting for fynbos: The politics of expectation in ethical wild flower harvesting
3:00 PM Author(s): *Erik Jönsson - Lund University
Abstract Title: Contested Expectations: Future Natures, Social Struggle, and Ontological Politics at the Menie Estate
3:20 PM Author(s): *Jessica Lehman -
Abstract Title: Expecting the sea: Natural Disaster, Climate Change, and Uncertainty on Sri Lanka's East Coast
3:40 PM Author(s): *James Porter -
Abstract Title: Blurred Boundaries: The Making of A 'Good Scientist' in an Ethically Contentious Field
4:00 PM Discussant: Leigh Johnson - University of California Berkeley
Discussant(s):
Leigh Johnson - University of California Berkeley
Session Description: Expectations are incredibly powerful things. Whether materialized via climatic models, economic forecasts, or based on the promise of personalised medicines, expectations (and those who engineer them) play a deeply political yet often unsung role in bringing into being a particular kind of future as well as shaping a particular kind of present. Savvy actors seeking to engineer change may decide to write editorials, give press briefings, or try to normalise trust between the communities involved so as to enrol support and resources for an emerging marketplace (and consumer) they have envisioned. Such discursive as well as performative practices pre-emptively shape the social and economic context for developing technologies so that the actors involved not only develop their physical objects but also influence other people's thinking. Rather than dismiss such efforts as exaggerated or self-serving claims, the "sociology of expectations" (cf. Anderson, 2010; Brown, 2003; Hedgecoe, 2004; Law, 1994) points to the constructive, performative, and even destructive role such expectations have in today's world where competition for funding, research impact and innovation are so intense. As many geographers researching the 'commercialization of nature' have noted (cf. Castree, 2003; Johnson, 2010; Lave et al., 2010; Prudham, 2005), expectations of future natures inhabit contemporary environmental management in a series of subtle and not so subtle ways for all actors. But how are expectations created, configured, and stabilized? What, and whose, interests shape them, and in turn, whose interests do they shape? And why do some persist whilst others don't?
4471 The shock of the poetic: critical dialogues with magical marxism
Friday, 4/15/11, from 12:40 PM - 2:20 PM in Metropolitan Ballroom A - Sheraton Hotel, Third Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Mazen Labban - University of Miami
Chair(s):
Mazen Labban - University of Miami
Panelist(s):
Andy Merrifield - none
Discussant(s):
Nik Heynen - University of Georgia
Kanishka Goonewardena
Erik Swyngedouw - University of Manchester
Geoff Mann - Simon Fraser University
Kevin St. Martin - Rutgers University
Salvatore Engel-DiMauro - SUNY New Paltz
Ruth Wilson Gilmore - CUNY Graduate Center
Introducer(s):
Mazen Labban - University of Miami
Session Description: Politics, Andy Merrifield recently asserted, "needs the magical touch of dream and desire, needs the shock of the poetic". The time is ripe for marxism, Merrifield writes, "to get magical... to invent a new poetry of the future". Merrifield's Magical Marxism (2011, Pluto Press) calls for radical, active and phantasmal political visions, acute forms of subjectivity capable of creating "imaginative tools for staking out new trails of permanent subversion", ways to defect from the lifeless present and invent life anew, another reality "more real than objective reality itself"--an insurrectional marxism whose ingredients include the poetic life, dream and desire. This is not a traditional author-meets-critics panel but a call for reflection on the nature of insurrection and insurrectional theory, on the form and subject of transformative politics, its tools, methods, and geography, in critical dialogue with the ideas elaborated by Merrifield in his forthcoming book.
5361 What does race become through food?
Saturday, 4/16/11, from 12:00 PM - 1:40 PM in Ballard - Sheraton Hotel, Pike Tower, Third Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group
Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Rachel Slocum
Chair(s):
Rachel Slocum
Panelist(s):
Lynda Johnston - university of waikato
Julie Guthman - Univ of California Santa Cruz
Paul T. Kingsbury - Simon Faser University
Nazanin Naraghi
Susan Paulson - Lund University
Garrett Graddy - University of Kentucky
Susannah R. McCandless - Clark University
Hilda Kurtz - University of Georgia
Rachel Slocum
Discussant(s):
Nigel Clark - The Open University
Introducer(s):
Arun Saldanha - University of Minnesota - Minneapolis
Session Description: Is race an organizing principle of Western foodscapes alone, or is it global? If it is a globally relevant concept, why has it been so often theorized as 'difference', 'otherness', 'division of labor', 'culture', 'indigeneity' or 'ethnicity', yet so seldom as race? If it isn't, how exactly do the tangible inequalities and affinities we study emerge from the embodied practices of discrimination and ingestion, attraction and taste? Does race obtain as explanation in the face of the global juggernauts of climate change, speculation in grain markets and the love of excess? How does calling these phenomena 'racial' matter to knowledge and political practice? This panel explores some of the more provocative questions so far mostly implicit in the geographical study of food production, distribution, and consumption. In those studies, discussion is limited to how institutionalized racism operates in foodwork, land tenure arrangements and access to food resources or to critiquing the representations of various populations' foodways. What else is there? As geographers we are looking to conceive of constellations which engage scale in newly transversal and materialist ways, tracing the flows of commodities, desire, weather patterns, and healthy living as they take shape. By confronting the geography of foodstuffs, panelists engage the ever-slippery question: what is race, ecologically, politically, historically, and ethically?
5233 What's feminist about this work? Challenges and insights from feminist research methodologies
Saturday, 4/16/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 310 - Washington State Convention Center Level 3
Sponsorship(s):
Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Kate Coddington Senner - Syracuse University
Roberta Hawkins - Clark University
Chair(s):
Kate Coddington Senner - Syracuse University
Abstract(s):
10:00 AM Author(s): *Maureen H. Hickey, Ph.D. - National University of Singapore
Abstract Title: The Non-Innocent Abroad: Researchers, Monsters, and Donna Haraway's "Politics of Affinity" in the Field
10:20 AM Author(s): *Caitlin O'Neill Gutierrez - UCL
Abstract Title: Doing (Critical) Justice: An In/Outsider's Dilemmas of Presenting an "Authentic Voice" in Feminist Youth Research
10:40 AM Author(s): *Natalie Bourdon - Mercer University
Abstract Title: What is in a Word?: Exploring Feminist Cross-Cultural Research on Feminism
11:00 AM Discussant: Lawrence D. Berg - University of British Columbia
Discussant(s):
Lawrence D. Berg - University of British Columbia
Session Description: This session incorporates empirically- and conceptually-focused papers by graduate students and early career faculty on the challenges, ethics, realities and goals of conducting feminist research methodologies. While feminist research methodologies may be varied, they often encourage the researcher to embrace a reflexive perspective and often envision research as a collaborative process. However the translation of such methodologies "on the ground" often yields challenges, surprises and insight. Reflecting on such challenges and insights is one of the goals of this session along with questioning what feminist research methodologies entail, their benefits and potential pitfalls.
5113 World-Ecological Modernities I
Saturday, 4/16/11, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in 613 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group
Economic Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Diana Gildea
Jason W. Moore
Chair(s):
Diana Gildea
Panelist(s):
Holly Buck - Lund University
Sandra Brown
Julie Tuttle
Matthew Huber - Syracuse University
Session Description: It is today virtually impossible to learn social theory without engaging humanity's relations with the rest of nature. But if the Cartesian divide of nature and society has been de-stabilized (or at least acknowledged) in social theory, social reductionism remains secure in its hegemony over the theory of social change. The great meta-concepts that seek to illuminate patterns of recurrence, evolution, and crisis in the modern world-system remain firmly rooted in an ontology that places "society" in one box, and "nature" in another.
If, however, the modern world-system is a world-historical matrix of human- and extra-human nature, premised on endless commodification (a capitalist world-ecology), no domain of human experience is exempt from socio-ecological analysis. Modern world history may then be reimagined toward the socio-ecological constitution of modernity's strategic relations. The production of nature has been every bit as much about factories as forests, stock exchanges and securitization, shopping centers, slums, and suburban sprawls as soil exhaustion and species extinction.
In this panel, we explore and enact some of the possibilities for viewing the "master processes" of modernity (Tilly) as irreducibly socio-ecological. This entails a shift from "environmental histories of" to a reading of the large-scale, long-run vectors of world-historical change as environmental history. From this standpoint, the socio-ecological crystallizations of power and process embodied in these meta-processes become something more than mere outputs of the system; they become constitutive of capitalism as world-ecology, unifying the production of nature and the accumulation of capital in dialectical unity.
5213 World-Ecological Modernities II
Saturday, 4/16/11, from 10:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 613 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group
Economic Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Diana Gildea
Jason W. Moore
Chair(s):
Rebecca Lave - Indiana University Dept of Geography
Panelist(s):
Georgina Drew - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Diana Gildea
Daniel Buck - University of Oregon
Anna Zalik
Session Description: It is today virtually impossible to learn social theory without engaging humanity's relations with the rest of nature. But if the Cartesian divide of nature and society has been de-stabilized (or at least acknowledged) in social theory, social reductionism remains secure in its hegemony over the theory of social change. The great meta-concepts that seek to illuminate patterns of recurrence, evolution, and crisis in the modern world-system remain firmly rooted in an ontology that places "society" in one box, and "nature" in another.
If, however, the modern world-system is a world-historical matrix of human- and extra-human nature, premised on endless commodification (a capitalist world-ecology), no domain of human experience is exempt from socio-ecological analysis. Modern world history may then be reimagined toward the socio-ecological constitution of modernity's strategic relations. The production of nature has been every bit as much about factories as forests, stock exchanges and securitization, shopping centers, slums, and suburban sprawls as soil exhaustion and species extinction.
In this panel, we explore and enact some of the possibilities for viewing the "master processes" of modernity (Tilly) as irreducibly socio-ecological. This entails a shift from "environmental histories of" to a reading of the large-scale, long-run vectors of world-historical change as environmental history. From this standpoint, the socio-ecological crystallizations of power and process embodied in these meta-processes become something more than mere outputs of the system; they become constitutive of capitalism as world-ecology, unifying the production of nature and the accumulation of capital in dialectical unity.
5313 World-Ecological Modernities III
Saturday, 4/16/11, from 12:00 PM - 1:40 PM in 613 - Washington State Convention Center Level 6
Sponsorship(s):
Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group
Economic Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Diana Gildea
Jason W. Moore
Chair(s):
Jason W. Moore
Panelist(s):
Rebecca Lave - Indiana University Dept of Geography
Erik Jönsson - Lund University
Jennifer Casolo
Bram Büscher - Institute of Social Studies
Madeleine Eriksson - Umeå University, Department of Social and Economic Geography
Session Description: It is today virtually impossible to learn social theory without engaging humanity's relations with the rest of nature. But if the Cartesian divide of nature and society has been de-stabilized (or at least acknowledged) in social theory, social reductionism remains secure in its hegemony over the theory of social change. The great meta-concepts that seek to illuminate patterns of recurrence, evolution, and crisis in the modern world-system remain firmly rooted in an ontology that places "society" in one box, and "nature" in another.
If, however, the modern world-system is a world-historical matrix of human- and extra-human nature, premised on endless commodification (a capitalist world-ecology), no domain of human experience is exempt from socio-ecological analysis. Modern world history may then be reimagined toward the socio-ecological constitution of modernity's strategic relations. The production of nature has been every bit as much about factories as forests, stock exchanges and securitization, shopping centers, slums, and suburban sprawls as soil exhaustion and species extinction.
In this panel, we explore and enact some of the possibilities for viewing the "master processes" of modernity (Tilly) as irreducibly socio-ecological. This entails a shift from "environmental histories of" to a reading of the large-scale, long-run vectors of world-historical change as environmental history. From this standpoint, the socio-ecological crystallizations of power and process embodied in these meta-processes become something more than mere outputs of the system; they become constitutive of capitalism as world-ecology, unifying the production of nature and the accumulation of capital in dialectical unity.