7th International Conference of Critical Geography

Open Call for Participation

7th International Conference of Critical Geography

‘Precarious Radicalism On Shifting Grounds: Towards a Politics of Possibility’

26-30 July 2015  |  Ramallah, Palestine | www.iccg2015.org

ANNOUNCEMENT

The sense of revolutionary times triggered by recent events such as the Greek revolts, the Indignados and Occupy movements, as well as the Arab uprisings and the Idle No More protests in Canada, has been gradually overshadowed by a wave of virulent and violent responses by both state and global powers. Although these and other struggles have captured our imagination, an anxious feeling of being in a permanent state of crisis seems to have taken over as we observe an increase in and normalization of socio-economic and spatial inequalities and political repression against the population. This regression, which takes the form of a rise on authoritarianisms, revanchists’ responses, encroachment of fundamental rights, precarity of subsistence, social relations, employment, or the consolidation of populist right wing and fundamentalist movements, is to a large extent eclipsing and undermining the political space and fundamental work of individuals, communities and movements around the world. It certainly is a precarious time for radicalism. This grim landscape inevitably raises crucial questions about the current moment and its prospects. Are we witnessing and experiencing a fundamental historical shift? If so, how are we to interpret this transition? Or can these times be transformed into a moment of political possibility by reconsidering and/or expanding existing paradigms as well as by reconnecting solidarities and struggles?

The aim of the 7th International Conference of Critical Geography (ICCG 2015) is to provide an inclusive venue for the discussion of these and other themes that examine the geographies of critical social theory and progressive political praxis. Despite the significance of the issues at stake, we hope to create a fun, engaging and friendly atmosphere that welcomes a wide array of scholars, activists, artists, organizers and others interested in critical socio-spatial praxis. The conference will be held in Palestine, a rich context for critical geographers and others to observe first hand, learn about, and engage with the human, political and economic geographies resulting from more than a century of European settler colonialism and US imperialism. Palestine is however much more than the ‘object’ of imperial, colonial and capitalist forces. It is a place that stands at the heart of the recent Arab uprisings as an inspiration drive to the popular struggles that have profoundly shaken the Arab World and beyond in ways yet difficult to anticipate. Palestine will undoubtedly be an ideal site from where to pursue the mission and commitment set forth in the ICCG’s statement of purpose – that is “developing the theory and practice necessary for combating social exploitation and oppression”.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

The ICCG 2015 will be organized around nine main themes (see below) that connect to and expand the conference underlying subject, that is ‘Precarious Radicalism On Shifting Grounds: Towards a Politics of Possibility’.

Deadline for submissions is 1st December 2014. We invite you to submit paper abstracts and encourage proposals for populated panels, roundtable discussions, or sessions with alternative formats that address the proposed conference themes. As indicated in the application form, we ask that you include (a) information on which conference theme your panel or paper addresses; (b) title of your paper or session; (c) a brief bio (max. 100 words) of each participant with contact information, institutional affiliation, and any titles you would like placed in the program; (d) an abstract (max 500 words). Please take into consideration that proposed activities should fit into the 90-minutes time-slots. Feel free to issue your own Call for Panels through appropriate mailing lists such as CRITICAL-GEOG-FORUM, URB-GEOG-FORUM, CRIT-LAG-GEOG, LEFTGEOG, PYGYWG, H-NET, etc. before submitting to us.

The forms for Application for Paper and Application for Panel can be found under  www.iccg2015.org/call/

Selection decisions will be announced by 31st December 2014.

Send questions and proposals to submit@iccg2015.org

CONFERENCE THEMES

1 | Imperial, Colonial, Postcolonial and Anti-colonial geographies

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: colonial, anti-colonial, and post-colonial legacies and contestations; colonial cities/urbanism; political economies of colonialism/occupation; settler colonialism past and present; apartheid across borders and epochs; indigenous activism and revolutionary movements; securitization, militarization and privatization of space; land grabs; urban warfare and the war on terror; critical geopolitics, etc.

2 | Articulations and spaces of capitalism

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: financialization of capital and space, economies of urban development; alternative economies/economic alternatives; extraction industries and primitive accumulation; debt/credit economies; social reproduction and work; “free”, unpaid and slave labour in the 21st century; undocumented, informal and transnational work; (new forms of) labour struggles and unionism; class struggles and new conceptions of class; state interventions in the lives of economies, etc.

3 | Migration, Mobility and Displacement

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: immobilities, regulating mobilities, borders, migrant and refugee subjectivities, global labor, (urban) asylum politics, fortress Europe, securitization, south-south mobilities, human trafficking, refugee and migrant health and well-being, etc.

4 | Nature, Society and Environmental Change

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: commodification of nature; urban metabolisms; environmental and climate justice; governing nature/society relations; feminist, racialized and queer positionalities within urban political ecology; mining and extraction; energy and water transitions; provincializing and urbanizing political ecology; climate debt environmental racism and disposable life; food justice and urban agriculture; perspectives on the anthropocene; ecocide, etc.

5 | Mapping Bodies, Corporeality and Violence

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: corporeality in crisis and contestation; bodily intersections/assemblages of race, gender and sexuality; primitive accumulation and the body; materializing theorizations of the body in space and time; production and reproduction of corporeality; body as target - war and urban contest; blackness, body and the afterlives of slavery; racialized re-segregations, containments and displacements; decolonizing the body; structural violence, marked bodies and everyday life; queer assemblages and the national body; carceral geographies, etc.

6 | Critical “Development” Geographies: perspectives from the Global South

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: critical and southern perspectives on development; decolonizing development; aid, donors and development interventions; the privatization and financialization of development aid; geographies of uneven development; postcolonial theory and development; development ethnographies; development, security, and bordering; geopolitics and biopolitics of development; technopolitics; gender and development, governmentality and development; etc.

7 | Geography and matter / materiality

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: materialist approaches to materiality; the materiality of inequality and dispossession; materiality in urban studies; materiality and power; vital materialisms; more than human geographies; the politics of urban assemblages; assemblage theory and methods; assemblage theory for strategic political action; socio-technical and socio-natural geographies; urban metabolisms; materializing political ecology, technopolitics and expert knowledge; emancipatory materialities; etc.

8 | Remaking Space through Ideology, Culture, and Arts

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: reclaiming space; identities and lifestyles; diasporic and migrant artistic engagement; high-art and architectural commodification of space; ideological narratives, othering and spatial enclosures; art, the ‘creative class’ and urban commodification; monuments, geography and nationalism; feminism and histories of urban art; geography, ideology and transgression; art and practices of resistance; art, ideology and everyday space; landscapes, memory, monuments, and commemoration; psychogeography and radical cartographies; exploring urban spaces through artistic

practices, etc.

9 | Knowledge Production, Education and Epistemic Agendas

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: corporatization of knowledge and exclusion in academia; the politics of open source; democratization and knowledge-production; southern theory; anarchists and dissident education; beyond eurocentric knowledge; radical pedagogies; resistance and education; the role of indigenous knowledge in the academy; participatory action research in teaching, learning and research; practicing solidarities, education and social change; education and justice; challenges of multi-disciplinarity and trans-disciplinarity; co-production of knowledge; value orientations and epistemic agendas; political conditions and consequences of the production and use of knowledge, etc.

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

Field Trips:  This edition capitalizes on the context by putting emphasis on fieldtrips that will build upon and further expand the conference themes through an engagement with local articulations and actors. Excursions correspond to a third of the total program duration, whereby a repertoire of 6 routes and destinations will be available for participants to choose from in accordance to preferences. Details in this regard will be released in spring 2015.

Limited Places:  Kindly note that due to logistical considerations participation space will be limited to 250 persons.

This conference complies with the Palestinian Call for the Academic and Cultural Boycott

of Israel (click here)

More information about the conference in our website www.iccg2015.org

We look forward to seeing you in Palestine!

www.iccg2015.org  |  connect@iccg2015.org

Historians in Space: Concepts of Space in recent European Historiography

Call for papers

“HISTORIANS IN SPACE”

Concepts of Space in recent European Historiography 

7th Annual Graduate Conference in European History

April 25-27, 2012

Budapest, Central European University

Organized by the Central European University, Budapest in co-operation with the European University Institute, Florence and the University of Vienna.

Historicize space! This injunction has not always been on the agenda of historians. Traditionally, historians were tempted to take space for granted. The boundaries of the nineteenth century nation-state were regarded as the natural presupposition of much historical research. These established “mental maps” still continue to influence the structure of history writing today. However, historians were not entirely immune to the effects of the “spatial turn” and can probably no longer be accused to treat space as if it were “packed solidly on to the head of a pin,” as Edward W. Soja did in his Postmodern Geographies in 1989.

History is primarily about time, about what happened when. Concurrently, it should not be forgotten that events and processes took place somewhere. Historical phenomena have a setting, a location - their place. However, taking their cue from geography, anthropology and sociology, some historians have come to broaden established notions of space. The concept may not refer merely to “geographical” or “real space” which “contains” peoples, nations and cultures. Rather, it may as well point to socially and culturally constructed objects of inquiry and how these are perceived by individuals or groups. In other words, space is understood as being framed through social and cultural relations, as Henri Lefebvre showed already in his path-breaking The Production of Space (1974).

Thus, some historical phenomena are essentially marked by their spatial dimensions and can thus be better approached from the vantage point of spatiality alongside temporality. The 7th Graduate Conference in European History (GRACEH) is inviting graduate students and young researchers to reflect on the rather ambiguous relationship historians entertain with the category of “space.”

We are welcoming abstracts which interrogate the various understandings of space, those which present new methodological approaches to the topic, and case studies which are placed within a wider theoretical context. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:

1. Historians and Space: methodological and theoretical approaches
2. Representations of space
3. Going Global: linking local, regional, national, transnational history
4. Symbolic geography and cultural spaces: for example ‘Europe’, ‘Central Europe’, ‘Southeast Europe’ or the ‘Balkans’, the ‘Levant’, the ‘Orient’, etc.
5. The spatial constitution of politics: empires and nation states (territoriality, kinship)
6. Economic history: world systems, ‘core’ and ‘periphery’, ‘backwardness’
7. Spatial dimensions of everyday life: approaching gender, ethnicity, class, religion
8. Urban spaces (morphology, planning; spaces of production, consumption and exchange, urban/rural divides)
9. Geographies of knowledge: production and transfers
10. Space and Memory
11. Digital technologies and tools for writing spatial history, visualizations, Geographical Information Systems

The working language of the conference will be English. Please send an abstract of no more than 400 words and a brief CV to graceh[at]ceu.hu by January 20, 2013. Full papers will be pre-circulated and grouped into thematic panels of 3 to 4 contributions. We would like to ask all participants to prepare a presentation of no more than 15 minutes, in order to allow ample time for discussion and questions.

Final papers are due on March 31, 2013.

GRACEH 2013 Organizers:

Jan Bröker, Mihai-Dan Cirjan, Adrian Grama, Liliana Iuga, Oskar Mulej, Zsuzsa Sidó

GRACEH 2013 Advisory Board:

Nadia Al-Bagdadi, Head of the CEU Department of History and of the School of Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies, EC member of the Religious Studies Program

László Kontler, Professor at the CEU Department of History, Pro-Rector for Hungarian and EU Affairs

http://graceh2013.wordpress.com/

Eredeti felhívás itt.

„Világunk határai” konferencia az Eötvös József Collegiumban

Eötvös Collegium, 2013. február 22–24.
Jelentkezési határidő: 2012. december 21.

Programfüzet január 28-tól lesz elérhető!
(Facebook esemény itt.)

Részletes program:

péntek

13:00 HORVÁTH LÁSZLÓ megnyitója
13:10 TATÁR GYÖRGY: Fordítás Bábelben (13:50 – vita)
14:10 szünet

14:20 Nyelvünkben hordozott kultúra és társadalmi kultúra (szekcióvezető: ANGYALOSI GERGELY)
14:20 PEREMICZKY SZILVIA: Perdimos también Espanya – Al-Andalusztól Szalonikiig: a spanyol zsidó kultúra transzformációi (plenáris előadás; 15:00 – vita)
15:20 szünet
15:30 BRANCZEIZ ANNA: Világunk határain innen, országunk határain túl – Radnóti recepciója angol nyelvterületen (15:50 – vita)
16:00 MAJOR ÁGNES: Géza Csáth: Muttermord (16:20 – vita)
16:30 BARNA LÁSZLÓ: Az interkulturális distancia megőrzése a fordításban: „Szabó Lőrinc Werthere” (16:50 – vita)
17:00 szünet
17:10 SZARVAS MELINDA: Nyelven innen, kultúrán túl (17:30 – vita)
17:40 PATÓCS LÁSZLÓ: A peremlét kultúrája – A kultúra mint a kívülállás diskurzusa Végel László prózájában (18:00 – vita)
18:10 VÁSÁRHELYI ÁGNES: „Undergroundban megtartani a hardcore-t, az maga a hardcore.” – Underground és mainstream a magyar hardcore punkban (18:30 – vita)
18:40 KIS KATALIN: Anti-Homophobia and Americanisation on the Contemporary Hungarian Telecinematic Screen as Exemplified by Attila Till’s Panic (2008) (19:00 – vita)
19:10 MAKAI PÉTER KRISTÓF: Travelling Without a Compass: Autism in Interaction in The Language of Others (19:30 – vita)
19:40 állófogadás

szombat

10:00 Nyelv és igazság (szekcióvezető: BÁRÁNY TIBOR)
10:00 LAKI JÁNOS: A tudományos tudás makroszociológiai kontextusa (plenáris előadás; 10:40 – vita)
11:00 szünet
11:10 KAPELNER ZSOLT: Lefordíthatatlan nyelvek, megérthetetlen kultúrák (11:30 – vita)
11:40 RONKAY MARGIT: Állítások mint hallgatólagos tudás – Nyelv, igazság és valóság kapcsolata Polányi Mihály filozófiájában (12:00 – vita)
12:10 PÉTER MÓNIKA: A megértés nyelvisége – A filozófiai hermeneutika nyelvszemlélete (12:30 – vita)
12:40 SÓS CSABA: A dekonstrukció peremvidékein – A metafizikai érintettségre vonatkozó kérdés Derrida és de Man esetében (13:00 – vita)

13:10 ebédszünet

14:10 Nyelv és kultúra (szekcióvezető: TÁTRAI SZILÁRD)
14:10 NÁDASDY ÁDÁM: Miért vonakodik a nyelvész? (plenáris előadás; 14:50 – vita)
15:10 szünet
15:20 CSUDAY CSABA: Fantasztikus irodalom: kalandok a megismerés határmezsgyéin (plenáris előadás; 16:00 – vita)
16:20 SÁGI ATTILA: Nyugati eredetű jövevényszavak a japán nyelvben (16:40 – vita)
16:50 SZANYI ILDIKÓ: A „centrum” és a „periféria” – azaz a német nyelv és a déli svájci nyelvjárások – viszonya a globalizáció korában (17:10 – vita)
17:20 szünet
17:30 NAGY KATALIN: A globalizálódó elmeteória (17:50 – vita)
18:00 NÉMETH DÁNIEL: Szerepnyelvek (18:20 – vita)
18:30 LAMÁR ERZSÉBER: Szavak és határok – az idegenség tapasztalata Derridánál (18:50 – vita)
19:10 állófogadás

vasárnap

10:00 Globális és lokális politika (szekcióvezető: MIKLÓSI ZOTLÁN)
10:00 DR. SALÁT GERGELY: Kína – civilizáció, nemzetállam, birodalom? (plenáris előadás; 10:40 – vita)
11:00 szünet
11:10 BALLA PÉTER: Polonizációs törekvések a Rzeczpospolitában (11:30 – vita)
11:40 BISZTRAI MÁRTON: Balról jobbra: a kufijja rögös útja (12:00 – vita)
12:10 KISS MÁTÉ: (12:30 – vita)
12:40 SÁRVÁRI BALÁZS: (13:00 – vita)

13:10 ebédszünet

14:10 Kultúra és történelem (szekcióvezető: ERDÉLYI ÁGNES)
14:10 GYÁNI GÁBOR: A történetírás mint kultúratudomány (plenáris előadás; 14:50 – vita)
15:10 szünet
15:20 SMRZ ÁDÁM: A prisca theologia és az egyetemes történelem eszméje (15:40 – vita)
15:50 TÁNCZOS PÉTER: A történeti tipológia lehetősége a koraromantikában (16:10 – vita)
16:20 HORNYÁK PÉTER ISTVÁN: Generáció a fogalomtörténet mérlegén (16:40 – vita)
16:50 szünet
17:00 SÁR ESZTER: Kapitalizmus mint evilági aszkézis – Max Weber a kultúra és a vallás történelemformáló szerepéről (17:20 – vita)
17:30 KOVÁCS CS. TAMÁS: Mai magyar antiszemitizmus: történeti vagy kulturális kód? (Töprengések egy fiatalok körében 2011-ben végzett kérdőíves mikrofelmérés kapcsán.) (17:50 – vita)
18:00 VINCZE GABRIELLA: „Ez már túlmutat a pajtán…” – a történelem aktualizálhatóságának és felhasználhatóságának kérdése a Jedwabne-vita kapcsán (18:200 – vita)
18:30 szünet

18:40 VÁRNAI ANDRÁS: (19:20 – vita)
19:40 állófogadás

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Egyetemes lett-e a nyugati kultúra jelentősége azáltal, hogy sajátos, kapitalista munkaszervezési formája teret hódított a második és a harmadik világban is? Max Weber a Protestáns etikához írott előszóban még így fogalmazott: „a kultúra valamiféle egyetemes története” szempontjából a Nyugat „egyetemes jelentőségű és érvényű fejlődés irányába hatott” miután racionális munkaszervezésével létrehozta a bürokráciát és a kapitalizmust. Megállja-e azonban a helyét Weber gondolata ma is? Vannak-e még napjainkban egyetemes jelentőségű és érvényességű elképzelések, vagy csupán egymással versengő narratívák léteznek?

A kultúra eredete és tárgya is az ember, vagyis ha van fogalom, amely általános érvényűségre tarthat számot, akkor ez az. Mégis ha megpróbáljuk közelebbről meghatározni, jelentései hidrafejek módjára szaporodni kezdenek. Napjainkat globalizáció és lokalizáció egyaránt jellemzi: a kommunikációs eszközök egyfelől lehetőséget teremtenek arra, hogy a Föld különböző részein élő emberek diskurzust folytassanak, másfelől az egyre táguló és gyorsuló világ kihívásaira sok helyen a mikroközösségek tudatos izolálódása, és a lokális kultúra eredetéhez való visszatérés kísérlete a válasz. A multikulturalizmus és az identitáspolitikák összecsapása és válsága nyomán egyre aktuálisabbak a kultúra mibenlétére vonatkozó kérdések.

Wittgenstein szerint egy nyelvet megtanulni annyi, mint elsajátítani egy életformát. Úgy tűnik, hogy az életformák történelmi meghatározottsága ma is döntő szerepet játszik az egyes kultúrákban, az elmúlt ötven év fokozódó gazdasági egymásrautaltsága mégis egyre inkább fellazítja az önálló kultúrák határait. Világpolgárok lettünk-e ezáltal vagy megmaradtunk nyelvünkben hordozott kultúránk letéteményeseinek?

BA-, MA-, illetve PhD-képzésben résztvevő hallgatók jelentkezését várjuk az alábbi szekciók valamelyikében:

• Nyelv és kultúra (szekcióvezető: Tátrai Szilárd, plenáris előadó: Nádasdy Ádám)

Hogyan hatnak egymásra nyelvek és kultúrák a globalizálódó világban? Mennyiben új jelenség a globalizáció? Lezajlott-e már hasonló folyamat a történelemben? Milyen nyelvelméleti kérdéseket vet fel ez a jelenség? Hogyan közelíthető meg mindez az antropológia és a kultúratudomány kontextusában? Milyen a viszony „centrum és periféria” között? Párbeszéd vagy nyelvi/kulturális imperializmus jellemzi inkább korunkat?

• Globális és lokális politika (szekcióvezető: Miklósi Zoltán, plenáris előadó: Salát Gergely)

Milyen szerepe volt nyelvnek és kultúrának a nemzeti és nemzetközi politikában egykor és most? Mi a különbség globális, nagyhatalmi és birodalmi politika között? Milyen nyelvi és kulturális hatások érvényesülnek a globális politikában (Occupy mozgalom, Arab tavasz, Kony stb.)? Értelmezhető-e a nemzeti kultúra a nemzetállamok kora után? Mi az összefüggés nyelvi, kulturális és politikai identitás között?

• Nyelv és igazság (szekcióvezető: Bárány Tibor, plenáris előadó: Laki János)

Mi a különböző tudományok viszonya a nyelvhez? Létezhet-e egységes tudományos nyelv? Mennyiben nemzetközi a tudomány ma és mennyiben volt az korábban? Igazi alternatívái-e a nyugati természettudományoknak az „alternatív tudományok”? Mi a viszonya a tudomány nyelvének a kultúra nyelvéhez? Vannak-e „lefordíthatatlan” filozófusok és „lefordíthatatlan” filozófiák? Létezhet-e nyelv- és kultúrafüggetlen igazság?

• Kultúra és történelem (szekcióvezető: Erdélyi Ágnes, plenáris előadó: Gyáni Gábor)

Egyetemes-e a történelem, vagy csak helyi történetek léteznek? Hogyan viszonyul a történeti emlékezet a nyelvek és kultúrák sokféleségéhez? Történetileg meghatározott kultúrákról vagy kulturálisan meghatározott történetekről beszélhetünk? Mennyiben határozza meg kultúránk a történelemről alkotott elképzelésünket, és mennyiben a történelem a kultúránkat? Létezhet-e a kultúrától független történelmi emlékezet? 

• Nyelvünkben hordozott kultúra és társadalmi kultúra (szekcióvezető: Angyalosi Gergely, plenáris előadó: Peremiczky Szilvia)

Hogyan értelmezzük a kulturális terek jelentőségét: lehet-e hegemón és alárendelt kultúráról beszélni? Mennyiben meghatározók a társadalmi nemek, milyen szerepet játszik a nyelv az interszekcionalitásban? Milyen jelentőséggel bír egy műalkotás befogadása szempontjából kulturális kontextusa? Léteznek-e néma, a mainstream számára láthatatlan kultúrák? Mennyiben határozza meg a nyelv és a kultúra a(z akár irodalmi, akár művészeti, akár történelmi) kánonképzés gyakorlatát? Képes-e párbeszédre az eltérő nyelvű és kultúrájú, ugyanakkor egységesülő piacú művészet? Egységes szférát alkotnak-e az emberi szellem termékei?

A nyitóelőadást Tatár György, a záróelőadást Várnai András tartja.

Az előadások nyelve magyar vagy angol, hossza 20 perc, amelyet 10 perc vita követ. Az 1000-1500 leütés terjedelmű absztraktokat a szekció megjelölésével az vilagunkhatarai@gmail.com címre várjuk. Kérdéseitekre ugyanezen a címen szívesen válaszolunk. A jelentkezések elbírálásáról legkésőbb 2013. január 18-ig értesítjük a jelentkezőket. Szállást a Collegium épületében 3.000 Ft/éj áron biztosítunk.

Az előadások írott változatából válogatás jelenik meg a konferenciakötetben.

RGS-IBG Conference (2013): The Making of the English Working Class at Fifty

The Making of the English Working Class at Fifty: Space, Agency and History From Below

Convenors: David Featherstone, Neil Gray and Paul Griffin, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow.

Sponsored by the Historical Geography Research Group and the Political Geography Research Group.

For the RGS-IBG Conference 2013.

50 years on from its original publication E.P. Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class continues to inspire and to provoke critical debate and reflection. A foundational text of what has come to be known as ‘history from below’, the book has impacted on contexts far beyond the West-Riding of Yorkshire or the back rooms of London pubs that were the key sites of the book. It has been a pivotal text, even if primarily through critical dialogue, within intellectual traditions as diverse as History Workshop in South Africa and Subaltern Studies.

The Making has, of course, been subject to numerous critiques and engagements notably by feminist and post-colonial critics (Clark, 1995, Hall, 1992). The cultural nationalism that informed Thompson’s work have been robustly contested by Paul Gilroy (1987, 1993). Forms of Thompsonian inspired social history have been productively taken in more transnational dimensions by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. In geography its reception was subject to significant debate, especially in relation to Derek Gregory’s critique of Thompson’s account of the relations between class and space. Engagement with Thompson’s work, however, has been oddly absent from recent debates on workers’ agency in labour geography. His commitment to asserting and recovering diverse forms of agency in shaping class formation, however, resonates with many critical geographical projects.

This session seeks to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Making. It seeks to use this as an opportunity for critical reflections on Thompson’s text and to consider the relations between geographical work and ‘history from below’. The session invites both critical commentaries and empirically informed papers. These might consider:

•  The imaginations of space and place in the Making of English Working Class

•  The transnational impact of the Making of the English Working Class

•  The contested geographies of the new left

•  Critical engagements with Thompson’s use of the terms experience and agency.

•  The political contexts that shaped The Making of the English Working Class

•  The relations between Thompson, Subaltern Histories and attempts to think history from below spatially.

Abstracts of up to 250 words should be sent to Dave Featherstone (David.Featherstone[at]glasgow[dot]ac[dot]uk) by February 8th.

Second World Urbanity: Between Capitalist and Communist Utopias

Call for Papers

June 21-23, 2013

Location: The Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe, Leipzig, Germany

In 1967 the architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable published a long piece in the New York Times on Soviet advances in urban planning and construction. Surprisingly for the Cold War era, the author openly praised the Soviets for creating a country-wide system of mass production of standardised prefabricated cheap housing, ‘an architectural sputnik’ in her own words. She claimed with great enthusiasm, ‘In size, scope and boldness, in spite of crudities, failure and sometimes ludicrous imperfections it is a singularly important undertaking of the 20th century.’ Moreover, she noted, ‘the latest product is acceptable as architecture.’ Describing new residential neighborhoods mushrooming all across the Soviet Union, she wrote: ‘There is no scale, no variety, no surprise. It is monotony with light, air, sun, and greenery in season, and on sum, that effect is no worse and sometimes a good deal better than a lot of construction on the outskirts of large American cities.’ Admitting all the flaws of current Soviet construction she urged her readers to pay closer attention to this ‘special brand of modern architecture [that] is reshaping the Soviet World.’

Second World Urbanity: Between Capitalist and Communist Utopias seeks to investigate the history of the radical reshaping of the Soviet World (in our words – the Second World), that Ada Louise Huxtable reported on in the late 1960s. This project aims to bring together scholarly contributions on the various endeavors in the Second World to conceive, build, and inhabit a socialist cityscape that was an alternative to the segregated spaces of capitalist cities and the atomized world of suburbia. Imagining and designing urban space were undeniably powerful instruments of forging socialist modernity. Second World Urbanity pays close attention to the tensions between global challenges and locally driven agendas that made architects, planners, and ordinary dwellers alter socialist modernity according to more particular interests. What were the visions and meanings that architects and urban planners sought to communicate through their work? What pre-existing styles did they draw on, reject, and appropriate, and was there a Second World postmodernism? To what degree was the socialist cityscape a product of negotiation between its dwellers and its designers? Where did other local players–such as major industries and local party bosses–fit in such negotiations over the design and construction of the socialist city?

As a venue for opening a conversation about the new approaches to urbanity and planning, this project goes beyond the geographic boundaries of the Eastern Bloc and seeks transnational, comparative, and global approaches to the study of the socialist city. We propose to think of socialist urban planning from Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union to China and Cuba as a distinct and multifaceted division of global urban planning trends. Just as the geographic scope is broad so, too, is our chronological reach, which will span the early post-World War II period through the collapse of state socialism and beyond to the present day. Was there a common denominator to the variety of projects and planning efforts implemented from Cuba to China, from the Urals to Belgrade? Was it socialist in form and national in content as the common formula of Socialist Realism suggested? Or was it modern in form and undefined in content, to paraphrase the formula Kevin Plath and Benjamin Nathans recently coined for describing the nature of late-Soviet culture? In exploring such questions, what do we – urban historians and historians of architecture – have new to say on the history of the Second World? What are the new research questions that our subfield has generated in recent years?

The present stage in our project is a conference that will be hosted at the The Center for the History and Culture of East Central Europe, in Leipzig, Germany, June 21-23, 2013. Paper proposals are solicited for this conference and an edited volume of selected papers on a wide range of topics from (but not limited to) the history of professional networks and institutional organization, monumental projects, mass housing schemes, transfers of technologies and styles, the organization of public and private spaces, the political engagement of urban planning professionals, the treatment of gender, ethnic, and class differences in the socialist cityscape, the role of the state, the ideological premises of urban schemes and visionary projects, everyday life, urban residents’ (mis)uses of planned urban spaces. Papers from all disciplines in the social sciences and humanities will be considered.

Critical information:

Please send paper proposals (a 300-500 word abstract and a 1-page cv) to swurbanity[at]gmail[dot]com by February 1, 2013. Paper proposals will be reviewed by the project’s organizers and program committee. We will announce the papers that have been accepted on March 1, 2013.

If your paper is accepted for the conference, the deadline for submitting your paper will be May 20, 2013. Papers should be no longer than 5,000 words including footnotes or endnotes. Papers will be distributed to conference participants ahead of the conference via our project’s blog.

The project is presently soliciting funds to cover some of the transportation and/or housing costs of participants. We will know whether such funds are available only in Spring 2013. Therefore, interested participants should plan for covering costs through their home institutions. The conference will not have a conference fee.

Program committee: Andres Kurg, Brigitte Le Normand, Daria Bocharnikova, Kimberly Elman Zarecor, Marie Alice L’Heureux, Steven Harris, Vladimir Kulic

A Nyugaton túli urbanizáció: posztszocialista városkutatási konferencia

Lesz egy városkutatási konferencia a kelet-(közép-)európai térségről és a posztszocialista város kérdéséről.

Dear colleagues,

We invite abstracts for our stream at the RC21 conference ‘Resourceful Cities’ to be held in Berlin, 29-31 August 2013:

Urbanism beyond the West: Comparing Accelerated Urban Change in Eastern Europe and the Global South

Convenors: Monika Grubbauer (Darmstadt University of Technology) and Joanna Kusiak (University of Warsaw)

In the search for new models of urbanism, attention is now being shifted towards non‐Western cities. Yet the urban dynamics of post‐socialist Eastern Europe are largely disregarded in the recent literature on global urbanism with its focus on the North‐South axis. Although the cities of Eastern Europe and the Global South have been theorized as radically different, the former being described as “under‐urbanized” and the latter as “over‐urbanized”, we propose to include Eastern Europe in what Ananya Roy calls “new geographies of theory”. In cities of both regions the intense socio‐material transformations of recent years have been highly uneven, normatively guided by foreign aid programs and neoliberal policy agendas. In both cases we can also observe new forms of “insurgent” or “messy” urbanism emerging in reaction to new inequalities and arbitrary politics. Despite substantial (i.e. infrastructural) differences, we claim that comparing cities of Eastern Europe and the Global South may both re‐open the regionally biased debate on the “post‐socialist city” and contribute to the broader discussion on global and comparative urbanism. This session invites contributions comparing major phenomena of urban change in both regions as well as papers theorizing the post‐socialist city in global terms. Following the question of how patterns emerging from accelerated urban change can be treated as resources for new models of urbanism, we suggest the following topics:

• new inequalities and new solidarities
• accelerated socio‐material change as a challenge for sustainable urban policy
• reshaping relations of property and new property forms
• changing urban form and infrastructures of daily life
• foreign policy aid and its discontents
• urban informality and marginality
• ethnographies of urban society between neoliberal dreams and dystopian reality
• the notion of “chaos” and its use in the global urbanism debate

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 31 January 2013. Please send your abstracts (300-500 words) to abstracts[at]rc21[dot]org and the session organizers Monika Grubbauer (grubbauer[at]stadtforschung[dot]tu-darmstadt[dot]de) and Joanna Kusiak (jkkusiak[at]gmail[dot]com).

Please contact us for any questions. More information on the conference and the submission of abstracts can be found on www.rc21.org/conferences/berlin2013.

Egy 1971-ben megrendezett konferencia emlékei: nyugaton

Arról a bizonyos, 1971-ben megrendezett konferenciáról, amelyet még Enyedi György szervezett:

„Our conversation began in 1971 in a noisy reception hall in Budapest. Anne Buttimer enjoyed seeing the quotations from textbooks in quantitative geography contract into a real person. On my side I was happy to be able to apologize for not having rendered an account of Swedish social geography that Anne had asked for in a letter, sometime in the early sixties. The following day we went for a walk. Human nature being as it is, it was not long until I selfishly began preaching ’time-geography’, using an envelope and the sandy park way to explain my graphs and what I believed they were good for.

Anne had just finished a paper on Vidal de la Blache’s geography, and we agreed that his central concept of genre de vie was a common ground where our interests met. I also became convinced that Anne had great sympathy for the general direction of my efforts to grasp ongoing processes in their evolving context. An older scholar as much as a younger one likes to be understood and appreciated. I was glad to have won a proselyte.

But with Anna Buttimer one must be prepared for the unexpected.

Everyone is familiar with a situation like this. Summer evening after a warm day: well known near things and sounds as night comes on. Suddenly a flash of light engraves sharp contours up to a distant horizon. You find yourself in the midst of a landscape with depths that routine daytime preoccupations have prevented you from seeing. To see them is revealing and alarming. One fine day some years after Budapest Anne said to me that the worldview depicted in my kind of diagrams reminded her of a ’dance macabre’. I felt a startling flash of light. I was alarmed. My whole effort had for decades been to work towards a holistic view of geography which should be able to catch evolving life.”

(Torsten Hägerstrand, Foreword. In: Anne Buttimer and Tom Mels (eds.) By Northern Lights: On the Making of Geography in Sweden, 2006, pp. XI) 

Szerintem ez két szempontból is nagyon tanulságos lehet (ezeket nem most gondoltam ki):

1. Hägerstrand "modelljeinek" magyar interpretációja miatt: az időföldrajzot pl. nem alkalmazták (szemben a kvantitatív-modernista diffúzió elmélettel), és "modellként", nem pedig a kvalitatív kutatás kibontásával, a szerző eredeti kontextusának, céljainak megfelelően lett bemutatva;

2. a konferencia elhelyezésének, a "nyugati" tudás és intellektuális kapcsolatok kibontakozatlanságának, hatástalanságának lokális, magyar kontextusa miatt.

Összeomlás után - a poliptól a valódi demokráciáig

Huh, majdnem lemaradtam erről... Magyar Polip konferencia! :) Ma 14 órától kezdődik, lehet online követni. A Milla, a Védegylet és a Heinrich Böll Stiftung szervezi.

"Magyarországon a demokratikus átmenet első évtizedének végén, az ezredforduló táján konszolidálódott a kapitalista demokrácia politikai és gazdasági rendszere. A politika szférájában ez elsősorban azt jelentette, hogy létrejött egy egységes ideológiák, hatalmi reflexek, érdekek mentén működő politikai osztály, amely az elmúlt 15 évben lépésről lépésre szűkítette be a demokratikus kormányzás terét. Az autoriter kormányzás átláthatatlan és korrupt struktúrái elfecsérelték az ország szellemi és anyagi erőforrásait, és képtelenek voltak kezelni a magyar gazdaság, szociális rendszerek, oktatás és egészségügy krónikus válságát. Az új demokratikus civil mozgalmak elsődleges célja az ország életét megbénító antidemokratikus struktúrák lebontása. E struktúrákat tárja fel a Magyar Polip projekt."

Szocialista és poszt-szocialista urbanizáció AAG szekció

Nos, találtam egy másik nagyon érdekes AAG szekciót is, amely a szocialista és poszt-szocialista urbanizáció kérdésével foglalkozik, és ahogyan olvashatjátok az összefoglalóban: úgy általában. Tehát mind a jelenlegi "szocialista" rendszerek városaival, mind a múltbeli "szocialista" rendszerek, kormányok városfejlesztésével, a 20. századi urbanizációs ideológiák hagyatékával is foglalkozni akarnak, és eleve a "szocializmus" jelentését átfogóan a szociáldemokráciától az államszocializmusig értelmezik. A felhívás azért is különösen izgalmas - azon túl, hogy a térségünk ebben a kérdésben közvetlenül érintett -, mert azt írja, hogy a neoliberalizmus válságára adott válaszként újabb alternatívákat kell keresnünk, ennek érdekében pedig a szocialista modellek hagyatékának kritika újraértékelése szükséges. Szerintem ez egy elég problematikus vállalkozás, talán jól mutatja a "nyugati" akadémiai baloldaliság ellentmondásos viszonyulását az ún. "szocialista modellekhez", tehát hogy meg akarnak belőle tartani valamit, mégis tudják, hogy nem szabad átállni a sötét oldalra (hiszen "történtek csúnya dolgok" stb.). A valós probléma inkább az, hogy a (mondjuk weimari) szociáldemokráciának már nagyon kevés köze volt a (mondjuk bolsevik/szovjet) államszocializmushoz, még ha a 20. század modernizmusában részben átfedésben is vannak, amely a szerzők figyelmének középpontjában van.

Call for Papers

Association of American Geographers

Los Angeles 9 -- 13 April 2013

"Socialist and post-Socialist Urbanisms: Critical Reflections; Comparative

Perspectives"

Douglas Young, York University, Toronto

Lisa Drummond, York University, Toronto

Urban life in the 21st century has been shaped in quite significant ways by the thoughts, practices, ideologies and social organization of the 20th century. We seek papers that focus on the urban legacies of 20th century socialism and explore their impact on urban policy, spatial form and everyday life in the 21st. With the neoliberal model of city-building appearing to be in crisis mode and new approaches to urban issues urgently needed, we consider the possibility that a critical reassessment of the legacies of socialist models could provide valuable lessons for urban policy makers and citizens alike.

Actually existing socialism has taken many forms ranging from social democracy to repressive state socialism. The common thread of the 'social' that runs through them all is a commitment to the modernist idea of universal progress, a desire to create a socially de-differentiated society, and a heightened degree of state intervention in processes of city-building and urban governance. We seek papers that explore urban areas representing some of those variations of socialisms as well as variations in their fates. These could be cities that are socialist today, cities in countries that are transitioning to market socialism, post-socialist cities, and cities in neo-liberalizing former social democracies.

We particularly welcome papers that will contribute to the development of comparative perspectives (for example, Asia and Europe) if not within individual papers then from the sum of papers on the panel as a whole.

Papers could explore a wide range of topics including urban planning, housing, social policy, community development, local politics, economic restructuring and political ecology.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Douglas Young (dogoyo[at]yorku[dot]ca) and Lisa Drummond (drummond[at]yorku[dot]ca) by 8 October.

Poszt-neoliberalizmus? AAG szekció

Aki ismeri, vagy netalán már volt az Association of American Geographers gigakonferenciáján (nekem még nem volt szerencsém), az tudja, hogy minden bizonnyal ez a legnagyobb, és valószínűleg a legszínvonalasabb földrajzos konferencia, amelyre évente több ezer ember érkezik és ad elő, és rengeteg nagyon érdekes szekció kerül meghirdetésre. Az ezévi konferencia is izgalmasnak ígérkezik, és bár az összes szekció felhívását nyilván igen strapás (és értelmetlen) lenne megosztani, most egyikükre mégis felhívnám a figyelmet, mert különösen megtetszett. Mégpedig azért, mert egy általános kérdésfeltevést képez a neoliberalizmus működésének jelenéről, illetve a 2008-2009-es válság okozta átalakulásáról, tehát bárki számára hasznos lehet, aki a neoliberalizmusról szóló kurrens diskurzussal kívánna megismerkedni.

Association of American Geographers

2013 Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA

Call for Papers

Session Title: Postneoliberalism? Neoliberal regulation in the continuing crisis: opportunities for change or just more of the same?

Session organizers:

Hugh Deaner, University of Kentucky

Christopher Oliver, University of Kentucky

Neoliberalism is in crisis - or even "dead" - so say a number of academics, editorialists, and public intellectuals (Dumenil and Levy 2011; Klein 2008; Krugman 2009; Magdoff and Foster 2009; Smith 2011; Stiglitz 2008; Wallerstein 2008).  Some argue that neoliberalism's demise represents opportunities to push social regulatory policy in the direction of new and more effective forms of managed capitalism (e.g., Keynesian approaches) (Krugman 2009, 2012; Magdoff and Foster 2009; Stiglitz 2010), thereby reversing the four decade-long movement towards unfettered market-based regulation. While these claims are sometimes monolithic in nature, in other instances writers have made even more grandiose proclamations that the on-going global economic crisis has created new opportunities for changing social regulatory frameworks and, more generally, that a unique historical moment has unfolded offering  various potentialities for forging a new ideological framework to social governance (e.g. Klein 2008).

Critical geographers (and critical social scientists) also have attempted to take up these issues: some argue for a possible "postneoliberal" turn, while others question the efficacy of such concepts; and still others ask whether such a transition - or radical re-envisioning - of the various neoliberal forms of social regulation is even possible (Brenner, Peck, and Theodore 2010a, 2010b; Harvey 2009; Hobsbawm 2008; Peck, Theodore, and Brenner 2009; Smith 2011).  Whether or not neoliberal forms of social regulation have entered their "zombie" phase, or if changes can lead - or have led- to new forms of counter-neoliberalization is an important - and empirical - question (cf. Brenner, Peck, and Theodore 2010; Fine 2010; Harman 2010; Peck 2010). Further, whose neoliberalism (and to what end and what consequence) is of equal import (cf. Harvey 2009).

In regard to these concerns, we ask the following: Since the emergence of the 2007-2008 crisis, has there been a shift in the form, content, and practices of neoliberal institutions of regulatory governance? And if so, has this change served to lessen or diminish the role of market-based strategies of regulation, or has change merely furthered existing forms of neoliberal governance (e.g., "zombie" neoliberalism) - or has this change strengthened or even emboldened new forms of neoliberal regulatory practices (cf. Peck, Theodore, and Brenner 2012).

We seek papers that explore these issues through a number of possible theoretical and conceptual perspectives and substantive themes:

a)  Theoretical discussions which examine the consequences or potentialities of various forms of restructuring within neoliberal regulatory approaches - whether global, regional, national, or local- and what, if any, effect the current and on-going crisis has played (or is playing) in restructuring these conditions (e.g., Is a Polanyian "double movement" taking place - or can it take place - within this crisis and under the current social regulatory conditions?);

b) Conceptual-based illustrations of changes in neoliberal forms of governance through detailed comparative work of varying scales and scope (e.g., Has the current crisis led to a dramatic shift in conceptual understandings of post-Fordist regulation?);

c)  Single or comparative empirical-based case studies that chart shifts in neoliberal forms of regulatory governance (e.g., How has the current crisis effected the regulation of housing markets in the US and Europe?).

Though the range of possible substantive themes for the papers is open, some potential areas of work might include:

• Neoliberalization/financialization of nature
• Green economy policy and practices
• Governance and sustainability practices
• Urban policy including regulation of fiscal policy
• Housing policy and the regulation of mortgage markets
• The regulation of financial markets
• The rise (and fall) of shadow banking
• Labor market regulation
• Legal regulation of markets
• Economic policy changes and their effects
• Education policy including public-private partnerships or marketization of educational instruction
• The Euro crisis and the crises in Spain and Greece (and other countries)

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to Hugh Deaner at hugh[dot]deaner[at]uky[dot]edu <mailto:csol222[at]uky[dot]edu> by October 15, 2012.

References:

Brenner, Neil, Nik Theodore, and Neil Brenner. 2010a. "After neoliberalization?" Globalizations. 7: 327-345.

_____. 2010b. "Variegated neoliberalization: Geographies, modalities, pathways. Global Networks. 10: 1-41.

Dumenil, Gerard and Dominique Levy. 2011. The Crisis of Neoliberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Fine, Ben. 2010. "Zombieeconomics: The Living Death of the Dismal Science." In The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism: The Collapse of an Economic Order. Pp. 153-170. London: Zed Books.

Harman, Chris. 2010. Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.

Harvey, David. 2009. "The crisis and the consolidation of class power: Is this really the end of neoliberalism?" Counterpunch. Available at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/03/13/is-this-really-the-end-of-neoliberalism/. Accessed September 28, 2012.

Klein, Naomi. 2008. "Wall street crisis should be for neoliberalism what fall of Berlin Wall was for communism." Lecture at the University of Chicago. Available at: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/6/naomi_klein. Accessed September 23, 2012.

Krugman, Paul. 2009. Return to Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

_____. 2012. End This Depression Now. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

Hobsbawm, Eric. 2008. "Is the intellectual opinion of capitalism changing?" Today program, BBC Radio. Available at:http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7677000/7677683.stm. Accessed September 24, 2012.

Magdoff, Fred and John Bellemy Foster. 2009. The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences. New York: Monthly Review.

Peck, Jamie. 2010. "Zombie neoliberalism and the ambidextrous state." Theoretical Criminology. 14: 104-110.

Peck, Jamie, Nik Theodore, and Neil Brenner. 2009. "Postneoliberalism and its Malcontents." Antipode. 41: 94-116.

_____.2012. "Neoliberalism resurgent? Market rule after the Great Recession" The South Atlantic Quarterly. 111:265-287.

Smith, Neil. 2011. "Cities after neoliberalization?" Paper available at: http://neil-smith.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Neil.Smith_.AfterNeoliberalism.pdf. Accessed September 20, 2012.

Stiglitz, Joseph. 2008. "The end of neoliberalism?" Available at: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-end-of-neo-liberalism-. Accessed October 1, 2012.

____. 2010. Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Shrinking of the World Economy. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2008. The demise of neoliberal globalization. Available at: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2008/wallerstein010208.html. Accessed September 27, 2012.