PGSG Pre-conference(s)

This year’s 2 day PGSG preconference will be held at Virginia Tech’s Old Town Alexandria campus, located across the Potomac river from Washington DC, on Sunday April 11 and Monday April 12 2010. Please submit a paper title, author contact details and a brief abstract to Jason Dittmer and/or Mat Coleman at aag.pgsg@gmail.com no later than March 1 2010. Thanks to Gerard Toal, Gerry Kearns and co. for generously agreeing to host the preconference. A list of accommodations is available at http://www.planningacademy.ncr.vt.edu/location.html. www.priceline.com and www.hotels.com offer the best rates for the area. The Virginia Tech-Alexandria Center is a 10 minute walk from the King Street metro stop.

This year’s PGSG preconference is organized in concert with a very special 1 day “GEOPOL 2010” conference at Virginia Tech (for details on presenters and panel topics, see http://www.politicalgeography.org/images/newsletters/GEOPOL2010%20Program.pdf as well as www.criticalgeopolitics.com).

GEOPOL 2010 will take place at the Alexandria Lyceum Hall, 201 South Washington Street, Alexandria, Virginia (http://oha.alexandriava.gov/lyceum/) on Tuesday April 13 2010.

Call for papers — RGS

Call for Papers – RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London 1-3 September 2010

Change or continuity? Obama’s ‘new beginning’ one year on

Convenors: Sara Fregonese (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Adam Ramadan (University of Cambridge).

On 4 June 2009, US President Barack Obama called for ‘a new beginning’ in relations between America and Muslim communities around the world.  Obama’s speech set out part of a new approach to global diplomacy, one of mutual respect, cooperation and responsibility that contrasted sharply with the intervention and division typical of the Bush era.  In October, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his ‘extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.’  The prize came just eight months into Obama’s presidency, with his new approach to global diplomacy still in its infancy and yet to yield real results.

Since the Cairo speech, how much has changed?  As US military operations wind down in Iraq, they are being stepped up in Afghanistan.  Yemen and Somalia are the subject of renewed discussions on counter-terrorist measures, particularly after the attempted bombing of a plane over the US on Christmas Day.  Obama’s initial moves to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process have run up against the usual obstacles.  The question of Iran’s nuclear programme remains unresolved, while the regime attempts to crackdown on opposition protests.  The euphoria that greeted Obama’s election and his 4 June speech has subsided, as he struggles to translate words into actions.

During the past decade, political geographical analysis of the violent geographies of late modern war has been deeply shaped by the Bush administration’s approach to foreign policy.  Geographers have focused on the discourses and geopolitical architectures of the War on Terror, and the colonial nature of conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon.  This session seeks to open these reflections to the Obama era, assessing discursive and material changes and continuities between the geopolitics of the Bush and Obama eras.  A year on from the Cairo speech, has a new beginning really been achieved?

Papers might address the following themes:

- Change or continuity in Obama’s ‘new beginning’?

- Geographies of war and violence in the Obama era: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

- Excluded, left behind, unchanged spaces, emerging fronts: Gaza, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere.

- The seven sources of tension between the USA and the Muslim world, according to Obama: violent extremism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, nuclear weapons, democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights, economic development.

- Sovereignty and responsibility; a new geopolitics of ‘responsibility’?

- Urban geopolitics after Bush’s ‘war on terror’; geopolitical representations of Muslim spaces.

- Islam and the US, Islam in the US.

- Popular responses to Obama and his new diplomacy.

Please submit abstracts of max. 200 words to Sara Fregonese (sara.fregonese@rhul.ac.uk) or to Adam Ramadan (afr24@cam.ac.uk) by 12 February 2010.

Call for papers — The Journal for International and Global Studies

The Journal for International and Global Studies is seeking articles that address today’s global world. In particular, it seeks high-quality, original work that is based on both theory and practice. We encourage submissions from all fields, but pay particular attention to anthropology, education, geography, history, international relations, international management, political science, religion, and sociology.

We have extended our deadline for submission of essays to March 1, 2010.

Please see our first issue published in November, 2009 at www.lindenwood.edu/jigs.

Specifically, the journal seeks:

Studies that critically examine (i.e., not just describe) global content, ideas, organizations, policies, or practices
Studies that situate phenomena within their local, national, regional, or global context
Studies that consider international and global phenomena historically and in the present
Studies that are explicitly based in conceptual frameworks, representing one or more established, emerging, or grounded paradigms
Studies that are based upon qualitative data, quantitative data, policy documents or other texts from existing scholarship
Studies that explore major international and global issues
Materials submitted to the JI&GS are judged on the following criteria: (1) use of a theoretical or conceptual framework, (2) acknowledgment of relevant literature, (3) originality in analysis, (4) appropriateness of methodological approach, (5) contribution to the advancement of knowledge, (6) use of a global perspective, and (7) clarity of expression.

For details on Submission of Manuscripts see http://www.lindenwood.edu/academics/humanities/cigs/submissionGuidelines.pdf.

We will also publish book reviews in the journal. If you are interested in reviewing a book on a topic dealing with globalization issues, please contact us.

The deadline for the submission of essays and book reviews for the first issue of the journal is July 1, 2009.

We are also seeking high-quality book manuscripts dealing with globalization topics for publication through the Center. If you are interested in publishing your manuscript through the Center, please send an abstract of your monograph or proposed monograph to Rscupin@lindenwood.edu.

We look forward to receiving essays, book reviews, and proposals for book monographs from all over the world on globalization issues.

Most important CFP of all time

Geographies of Rumor and Conspiracy
Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting (2010)
Sponsored by Political Geography Specialty Group

Organizers:
Alasdair Pinkerton (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Jason Dittmer (University College London)

This session explores the ways in which information, meaning, and interpretative frames circulate in, and remake, particular spaces. The papers in this session will explore processes of legitimation and de-legitimation, strategies for maintaining and/or violating the boundaries of acceptable knowledge, as well as epistemological and methodological problems associated with this kind of research. Additional foci might include technologies and practices of mediation, the study and collection of rumour and conspiracy by state and non-state organizations, their role in enabling certain forms of rumour and conspiracy, and the grounding of rumour and conspiracy in certain places and spaces. Papers are invited which either tackle contemporary examples (e.g. Obama’s citizenship) and/or historical geographies of rumour and conspiracy within the developed and developing worlds.

Those interested should please submit an abstract and their AAG registration PIN number to Alasdair Pinkerton (a.d.pinkerton@rhul.ac.uk) or Jason Dittmer (j.dittmer@ucl.ac.uk) no later than 15 October 2009.

CFP: Political Ecology of Resource Extraction in Latin America

Call for Papers, Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington DC, 14-18 April 2010

Session Title:  Emerging Research on the Political Ecology of Resource Extraction in Latin America

Abstract Submission Deadline: Oct. 21, 2009

Session organizers: Emily Billo, Syracuse University (erbillo@syr.edu)
Zoe Pearson, Ohio State University (pearson.190@osu.edu)

Protests against resource extraction in Latin America have recently become more visible and violent, most notably in Peru and Ecuador. This latest round of mobilizations may be attributed to what Anthony Bebbington has characterized as the “new extraction” in Latin America, and especially Andean nations. Focused on the shifting political economies of extraction regimes, this panel is designed to address emerging research, not only on the social responses to this new extraction, but also extractive activities themselves and their environmental impacts.

Despite political differences across governments, many are increasing pressure on local populations to open their lands to extractive activities, in order to fund so-called ‘socially responsible’ investments and programs at the national level (Bebbington 2009). In this session we aim to investigate the outcomes of intensified resource extraction as a tactic for development in Latin America. Papers will address the impacts of extractive models at multiple scales and with a variety of foci, including territorial claims and contradictions, livelihood impacts, ecology/the environment, and political agendas regarding extractivism. We welcome papers in the beginning stages of research.

Questions we hope to explore in this session include, but are not limited to:
•       How does the “new extractivism” affect populations indigenous to the sites of extraction?
•       How does resource extraction contribute to the ‘identity’ of a nation, and what does this mean for certain populations in the        context of citizenship and rights?
•       How does the new extractivism affect the formation of political identities and the mobilization strategies of contemporary social movements (and state responses to these)?

If you are interested in participating in this panel, please forward a short abstract to the session organizers by Oct. 21, 2009.
We welcome papers from students and faculty.

Questions may be directed to Emily Billo (erbillo@syr.edu) or Zoe Pearson (pearson.190@osu.edu).

CFP: Geographies of Tolerance

Call for papers Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington
April 14-18, 2010

Geographies of tolerance

Organised by Helen Wilson (Durham University), Ruth Healey (University of Chester) and Jonathan Darling (University of Manchester)

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the workings of tolerance as a political discourse – concerned with forms of difference, equality, identity, civic cohabitation and justice. Whilst growing fundamentalisms, refugee crises, concerns over uncontrolled immigration and threats to national security and modern secular societies have apparently challenged the widespread promotion of tolerance as a national quality, political issues such as segregation and social inequality are increasingly framed as matters of prejudice that demand a tolerant response (Brown 2006).  Tolerance is therefore attached to a range of sites and objects – cultures, races, sexualities, lifestyles, religions and so on, yet whilst it is generally perceived to be a common good and virtue, such attachment and its uncritical promotion as a generalised language of anti-prejudice has received considerable scrutiny. Tolerance can be the permission and acceptance of practices despite
disapproval of them; a mask that works to control violence and/or a concept that renders its subject deviant (Gibson 2007, Galeotti 2002). Rather than simply an individual ethic and practice, Brown in particular, demands that we consider how tolerance functions as a political discourse of state regulation and social organisation, that we question what kind of social subject it produces and what habits of civic cohabitation and orientation it might promote? Who is given the right and power to tolerate and who is marked as being in need of tolerance? Do those marked as ‘in need’ desire to be
tolerated? And how do such desires and impositions map onto contemporary geographies of exclusion, inequality and prejudice?

This session is interested in the multiple sites and workings of tolerance, how it might regulate identity and difference, inform judgements and everyday encounters, make distinctions between bodies and be experienced across a range of geographical scales and settings.  To this end, we invite papers addressing tolerance in a variety of different ways and at different scales – Some possible areas might include, but not be limited to;

•        The role of tolerance in constructing place
•        The relationship between tolerance and the construction of identity and/or subjectivities
•        How tolerance might be performed and experienced in everyday encounters
•        Conceptual engagements with tolerance as a political discourse
•        The shifting nature of tolerance across geographical scales and settings
•        How tolerance is, and might be, promoted
•        The limits and conditions, of tolerance
•        The relation between ideas of tolerance, charity and civic virtue
•        The promotion of tolerance as a lifestyle
•        The uses of tolerance to the state
•        The objects of tolerance
•        The relationship between tolerance and modalities of power

Expressions of interest from potential contributors should be sent to Helen Wilson (h.f.wilson@durham.ac.uk), Ruth Healey (r.healey@chester.ac.uk), and Jonathan Darling (jonathan.darling@manchester.ac.uk) in the form of an abstract acceptable to the AAG of 250 words or less (http://aag.org/annualmeetings/2010/papers.htm#abstracts) by 21st October
2009.

References
Brown (2006) Regulating Aversion : Tolerance in the Age of Identity, Princeton University Press
Galoetti (2002) Toleration As Recognition. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Gibson (2007) ‘‘Abusing our hospitality’. Inhospitableness and the politics of deterrence’ in Molz, J. and Gibson, S. (eds) Mobilizing hospitality : the ethics of social relations in a mobile world. Aldershot, Ashgate

CFP: Territory, nationalism, and homeland in political geography

CFP: 2010 Annual Meetings of the AAG, Washington, DC, April 14-18

Territory, nationalism, and homeland in political geography

Organizers: Ted Holland, Adam Levy, and Natalie Koch (University of Colorado, Boulder)

Political geography, as a sub-discipline, has a long tradition of theoretical and empirical engagement with the interconnected concepts of territory and nationality. Nationalism is fundamentally a territorial project, which seeks to make the boundaries of the cultural group, or nation, congruent with those of the political container, or state.  Efforts to bind the national group and define its members as citizens involve more than a simple hyphen between nation and state, and are often mediated through the idea of “homeland.” Yet, as Diener (2009) has recently noted, homeland itself remains a slippery subject for many reasons.  In his view, the subject eludes sustained and focused academic inquiry, partially due to the prosaic, accepted nature of homeland, and partially because of its multivalent definition.

In this session, we seek to bring together papers that engage—whether theoretically, methodologically, empirically, or critically—with concepts of “homeland”, as variously defined.  Recognizing the variety of ways in which this notion has been conceptualized and operationalized, this session aims to incorporate scholarship that facilitates a more robust theoretical definition of and/or empirical engagement with the concept of homeland using a geographic lens.  A diversity of methodological and epistemological approaches is encouraged and the scope is not limited to any particular region.  Rather, in recognizing the pervasiveness of homeland as an idea, this session seeks develop a more rigorous and comparative framework to determine how such spaces form and function.

Potential paper topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

•           Multi-sited and multi-national homelands

•           The banality of homeland

•           The iconography of homeland

•           The production or imagination of homeland at the local, regional, or nation-state scales

•           Homeland and diasporic communities or transnational migration movements

•           Homeland security across geographic contexts

•           Cartographies or ‘mental maps’ of homeland

•           Homeland as liminal space at the political margins; Homelands as/in peripheries

•           Romantic, literary, architectural, artistic, folkloric engagements with homelands

•           Practical (geo)political engagements with homeland

•           Methodological approaches to situating homelands, including quantitative, qualitative and ethnographic approaches

•           Historical transformations of past and present homelands

•           Intersections of homeland, gender, race, and class

Please submit queries and abstracts (approximately 250 words) to Ted Holland (Edward.Holland@colorado.edu), Adam Levy (Adam.Levy@colorado.edu), or Natalie Koch (Natalie.Koch@colorado.edu).  Abstracts will be accepted until October 10.  Depending on interest, we will organize multiple sessions on the topic.

Reference:

Diener, A.C. 2009.  One Homeland or Two? The Nationalization and Transnationalization of Mongolia’s Kazakhs.  Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

It’s going to be a good meeting for political geography!

Annual Conference of the Association of American Geographers, 14-18th April 2010, Washington DC.

Call for Papers – Territory and Cartography: Politics, History, Techniques

Session organisers: Jeremy Crampton (Georgia State) and Stuart Elden (Durham)

The relation between cartography and territory seems well-known. State territories are one of the key objects of cartographic work, both in terms of their depiction on geopolitical maps and in terms of the state agencies that produce maps of their territory. Here we want to reverse the question: to what extent is cartography productive of territory? If territory can be understood as a political technology, comprising a range of techniques for the measurement of land and the control of terrain, then cartography, alongside land surveying and the military, is one of those techniques; part of what might be conceived of as state territorial strategies.

This session aims to bring together papers analysing maps politically in terms of their relation to the state and its territory, drawing on a range of historical and geographical contexts. A focus on the techniques involved is particularly welcome, but the papers should principally speak to the question: if we know that the map is not the territory, to what extent is it still productive of it?

Proposals should be sent to both stuart.elden@durham.ac.uk and jcrampton@gsu.edu by 5th October 2009.

Should the papers form a sufficiently coherent collection, there is the possibility of a follow-up workshop and/or publication at some future point

It’s that time of year…

Call for Papers
Association of American Geographers annual meeting Washington, DC, USA – April 14-18, 2010
Proposed Session Title: Political Ecology in the Far North
Organizers: Kolson Schlosser, Clarkson University and Meredith Marchioni, Clarkson University
Discussant: Andrea Nightingale, The University of Edinburgh

Description: Political ecology research in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions is obviously highly varied, but the impact of climate change on the region has made commonalities amongst this research well worth exploring. This proposed session would provide a venue through which to bridge this research and explore its commonalities. We are especially interested in political ecology (broadly defined) research related to climate change, but research unrelated to climate change is more than welcomed as well. For the purpose of this session, the ‘Far North’ is defined broadly to include all Arctic and reasonably sub-Arctic regions. The session will have four papers and a discussant, and could potentially have a second session if necessary.

If interested, please email Kolson Schlosser at kschloss@clarkson.edu. Please include a title and an abstract (a temporary, informal one is fine).

CALL FOR PAPERS

Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington DC, 14-18 April 2010

From conflict to cooperation: Spaces of engagement, resource governance and the extractive industries

Abstract submission deadline: Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Organizers: James Van Alstine, University of Leeds (j.vanalstine@leeds.ac.uk)
Roy Maconachie, University of Bath (r.maconachie@bath.ac.uk)

Co-sponsored by the Cultural and Political Ecology, Development Geographies and Political Geography Specialty Groups

Multiple and often conflicting discourses characterize the impacts of natural resource extraction on host communities. On the one hand, the extractive industries have significant social, economic and environmental impacts on the communities and countries in which they operate; on the other, if well governed, the sector can contribute to sustainable local development and poverty reduction. This session seeks to explore the geographies of community-company-government engagement in host communities impacted by the extraction of energy and non-energy minerals. Community engagement with extraction may differ depending on stages of the project cycle, ranging from exploration to closure. Often ‘engagement’ emerges as a sort of place-based accountability and scalar politics ranging on a spectrum from conflict to cooperation. In exploring this continuum, the session aims to gain insight into how engagement processes within extractive contexts result in distinct governance outcomes (e.g. community-development funds, participatory monitoring schemes, site closure/interruption, etc). A broad range of papers is invited from different theoretical perspectives (e.g. local livelihoods, political ecology and political economy), including submissions from practitioners.

If you are interested in presenting a paper in this session, please forward a short abstract to the organizers by Wednesday, October 21, 2009. Please direct any questions to the organizers listed above.