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**Postgraduate conference announcement and call for abstracts**
Americas Research Group, Newcastle University
‘Defining resources in the Americas: policies and politics’
Venue: Newcastle University, UK
Date: Thursday, 11th March 2010
Keynote: TBC
Call for Papers
The notion of resources (social, cultural and natural), is highly complex and its
uses are always being reconfigured in historically and geographically specific
locations. Social and power relations have played a critical role in our
understandings of the meanings and boundaries of resources across time and
space.
The Americas are particularly pertinent sites to frame debates around these
issues, both because of their historical and present-day geo-political
positions. In the last two decades, there has been renewed interest in
academic and policy focused research, in the socio-political and economic
history of the region. Specifically, recent work has examined the connections
between social stratification, poverty, political power and economic strategy ,
and the role of resources, structures and institutions on welfare, economic
growth, development and sustainability.
This postgraduate conference aims to contribute to these debates by
exploring the diverse definitions of resources (social, cultural and natural) and
their uses in the Americas, in a friendly and informal environment. We
welcome papers and posters from Masters and PhD students across diverse
fields of study and disciplines that focus on the Americas (North America, Latin
America and the Caribbean) and address, but are not limited to, the following
themes:
Social and cultural resources: how are they defined, (re)defined and used?
National discourses and policies
Indigenous peoples’ social and political movements
Development, neo-liberalism and emerging alternatives
Cultural and social capital, migration and tourism
Institutional and global structures (WB, IMF, WTO, NAFTA, UNESCO, UN)
Exploration and exploitation of natural resources
Transnational corporations and natural resource extraction
Role of the state, national and international actors
Land ownership, displacement and migration
Political economy and new forms of colonialism
Environmental change, toxic imperialism
Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words to: Gisela Zapata,
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Deadline: 27th January 2010
For further information about the Americas Research Group, please visit our
website at:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/niassh/americas/
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