Critical Geographies of Culture and Power in the global South
Proposed panel for Association of American Geographers meeting,
Las Vegas 22-27 March 2009
In recent years, peoples and regions in Latin America, Africa, Oceania and
Asia have experienced profound transformations in livelihoods, citizenship
and the meanings of development. Under the sign of ongoing material
re-workings of economies and polities with the exigencies of neoliberalism
and global economic restructuring, cultural meanings and power relations
have taken a number of context-specific yet patterned directions. With
democratization and the introduction of new rights regimes
(multiculturalism, gender rights etc), the nature of access to public space
and resources has been recast within and across state borders. The
meanings, form and geographies of protest have been re-worked in response
to these economic and political shifts, just as social relations have been
re-signified in terms of bodily, gendered, and ethnic interactions. Across
the sub-disciplines of development, political and social geography,
critical geographers have been actively documenting and analyzing these
transformations informed by a rich set of conceptual and theoretical
frameworks including – but not limited to -- postcolonialism, foucauldian
approaches, and postmarxism. In order to document and reflect upon these
empirical and theoretical transformations, this panel deliberately sets out
construct a forum within which to discuss these transformations
comparatively and in terms of grounded theory.
The panel invites papers addressing the meanings, institutions and
contested power relations arising in specific locations or contexts.
Theoretical and empirical papers are welcomed, examining all aspects of the
ways reworked political and economic geographies are changing the nature of
culture and power. Papers might like to consider one of the following
themes, although other themes are welcome:
- Patterns of citizenship and its impact on rights
- Gendered power and new forms of culture
- Forms of multiculturalism, and multiethnicities
- Transformations in forms of belonging and nationalism
- The objectives and types of development proposed and practiced
- Discursive and practical framing of protest
Panelists will be encouraged to promote informed and grounded debate about
the crosscutting transformations occurring at different spatial scales and
in different regions.
Authors are invited to submit a title and brief abstract (not more than 250
words) to the session organizer, Sarah Radcliffe on [log in to unmask] by 1
October, at the latest.
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Sarah A Radcliffe
Department of Geography
University of Cambridge
Downing Place
Cambridge CB2 3EN Tel:+01223-333399 Fax: +01223-333392
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