Inaugural Nordic Geographers Meeting, 10-14 May 2005, Lund, Sweden
http://www.ngm.cc
Call for papers
THE NORTH IN THE NEW EUROPE
Cities, regions and states at Europe’s last frontier
In recent decades, far-reaching processes of political and economic
restructuring, with profound spatial impacts, have irreversibly changed
the face of what is now known as the New Europe. The fall of the Berlin
Wall, the subsequent opening towards Eastern Europe, the rise of Berlin as
Germany’s new capital, the enlargement of both the European Union and the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the permeability of formerly fixed
borders, the formation of subnational and transnational regions and the
hollowing-out of the national state have fundamentally altered Europe’s
geography and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
Transformations in the North provide an excellent empirical background to
excavate the newly emerging European geography. The North is one of the
European spaces par excellence where the spatial characteristics of
the ‘New Europe’ can be observed and analysed. Arguably no other region in
contemporary Europe provides a sharper and more dense picture of the
withering away of Cold War political-military boundaries and their
immediate replacement with razor-sharp socio-economic boundaries, the
simultaneous hollowing-out and revival of national states and nationalism,
experimental forms of regionalism and transborder co-operation, the
contested nature of EU membership, the questioning of the traditional
distinction between centre and periphery, new forms of migration and
trafficking, the shift from territorial forms of government to multi-
scaled governance, and the emergence of multiple extra-territorial
networks that by-pass traditional, territory-based, political powers. The
North can be described as a laboratory for novel European geographies,
an “experiment in postmodern territoriality”, or “Europe’s last frontier”
(Medvedev, 2001)
This call welcomes papers that analyse the changing political, economic
and/or cultural position of northern cities, regions and national states
in the New Europe.
The following themes can be addressed:
-Interurban and interregional competition in northern Europe
-National states, nationalism and the European Union
-Changing conceptions of North and South, East and West, centre and
periphery
-Baltic Sea Region integration
-The changing role of national capital cities in the New Europe
-The place of transition economies in the North
-The changing nature of borders and border regions, cross-border
cooperation and conflicts
-Socio-economic divisions and uneven development in the North
-New political spaces in the North
-Contemporary meanings and imaginations of ‘the North’
The call is open to participants from the Nordic countries and further
afield. Submissions from Central and Eastern Europe are warmly welcomed.
Ph.D students are encouraged to present their intermediate research
findings (we kept conference fees for Ph.D students as low as possible).
Papers should be in English and can contain empirical findings or be of a
more theoretical nature. There are plans to publish a selection of papers
in a journal theme issue.
If you are interested in participating in this conference session, please
send an abstract of no more than 200 words to Guy Baeten preferably before
December, 20th. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any
questions.
Guy Baeten
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Tel (0046) (0)46 222 8404
Fax (0046) (0)46 222 8401
University of Lund
Department of Social and Economic Geography
Sölvegatan 10
22 362 Lund
Sweden
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