One of our paper presenters has dropped out at the
last minute so we're looking for one more paper to
round out these two sessions on "P/leisure in Africa"
at this year's AAG.
~~~~ Call for Papers ~~~~
Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting
March 4-8, 2003
New Orleans, Louisiana
P/leisure in Africa
Session organizers:
Glen Elder
Department of Geography
University of Vermont
[log in to unmask]
Natalie Oswin
Department of Geography
University of British Columbia
[log in to unmask]
Despite the overwhelming reality of economic decline;
despite unimaginable poverty; despite wars,
malnutrition, disease and political instability,
African cultural productivity grows apace. Since
Kwame Anthony Appiah made this observation in 1992
there has indeed been a flourish of examinations and
theorizations of African popular cultures [eg. Barber
(ed), 1997; Journal of Southern African Studies
special issue, 26(2), 2000; Nuttall and Michael (eds),
2001]. Cultural studies and political theory, however,
remain largely separate undertakings within African
studies and more generally. Accordingly, the mutual
constitution of the cultural and the political has
been left unexplored. These sessions (to be sponsored
by the AAGs Recreation, Tourism, and Sport, Africa,
GPOW and Sexuality and Space Specialty Groups) seek to
bridge this gap between the social sciences and
humanities via geographical ruminations on the topic
of p/leisure in Africa.
The politics of pleasure are often either celebrated
as the site of cultural hybridity and subversion or
despised as parasites on and promulgators of
inequitable political and economic configurations. We
begin from the understanding that neither position is
fully right nor wrong, that pleasure and enjoyment can
be simultaneously progressive and regressive,
democratizing and authoritarian, post-colonial and
neo-colonial. We invite participants to engage with
these themes in an attempt to complicate and clarify
theorizations of leisure space in Africa.
Papers of diverse theoretical approaches,
methodological strategies, empirical emphases, and
geographical locations that critically investigate
leisure/ pleasure in Africa as an embodied set of
cultural, economic, and political practices are
welcome. Participants are invited to engage with the
following themes:
Peddling pleasure, inventing Africa Glossy
nationalisms Neoliberalism as global gentrification
Memory, commemoration, and race Sex, race, class
and the city
Identity, difference, dollars Social movements and
capital flows Embodying appropriation
Interrogating Americanization The trouble with
normal
Democratic capital Rights struggles and the global
market
Resorting to nature Conservation and/of culture
Safari sightings/sitings
The economy of appearances Corporeality and the
empire of signs Optical exclusions Representation,
in/visibility, complicity
Aesthetic and musical appropriation, incorporation,
and resistance
The post-colonial, the post-colony, the post-modern,
and the popular Modernism on the margins Material
politico-culture
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com
|