*Apologies for cross-postings*
CALL FOR PAPERS
Association of American Geographers 2008 Annual Meeting
April 15-19, Boston
Locating the American Military-Industrial Complex
Organizers: Matthew Farish and Patrick Vitale, University of Toronto
Since President Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address, the term
"military-industrial complex" has come to stand for the dangerous
relationship between defense contractors and the American armed
forces. As the recent documentary Why We Fight demonstrates, this
relationship endures in even more blatant forms and has profound
consequences at all scales. Scholarship on the subject also endures,
albeit sporadically, and has added other participants, including
universities, think tanks, prisons, and the media, to the
military-industrial nexus.
Building on Trevor Barnes's Geoforum lecture at the 2007 Annual
Meeting, we seek papers addressing the spatial dimensions of the
military-industrial complex, understood broadly, as it has solidified
in the United States since the Second World War. From case-specific
local studies with wider implications to forays into the global
archipelago of American militarism, and from historical analyses to
contemporary interventions, these presentations will, we hope, share
an attention to material landscapes and lived experiences, and thus
give the study of the military-industrial complex a less abstract
geographical and historical character.
Paper topics might include:
- Area institutes, think-tanks, and geographical intelligence
- 'Black sites' and hidden geographies
- Cultural geographies of 'the gunbelt'
- Economic geographies of defense contracting
- Ethnographies of military and military-industrial communities
- Labor geographies of the military-industrial complex
- Spaces of military science
- Struggles over military landscapes
- The 'base world' and military globalization
- The Boston region as a crucible of militarism and anti-militarism
Please send a title and short abstract (250 words maximum) by October
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