RGS-IBG 2010, 1-3 September
Geographical Political Economies of Incarceration
Sponsored by the Political Geography Research Group of the RGS (PGRG)
Conveners: Dr. Nick Gill, Lancaster University and Dr. Deirdre Conlon, Emerson
College, Boston
This session invites contributions examining the geographical political
economies of contemporary spaces of incarceration and carceral practices. As
globalisation and neo-liberalisation proceed and pressures continue to mount
for the participation of nation-states in an increasing variety of supra-national
fora, carceral spaces are becoming increasingly internationalised,
transnationalised and/or extra-legal. As these exceptional circumstances
become the norm in prisons, prison-like settings, and beyond, the political
economic implications demand attention.
We encourage submissions that explore the following questions:
- How have trends towards tighter security, greater powers of surveillance
and governmentality blurred the boundary between prison and non-prison
spaces? What new forms of incarceration traverse the city, utilise urban
spaces in new ways, and produce novel carceral experiences within or outside
city-spaces?
- As the prima facie reduction in the desirability of direct, blunt, coercive
state controls gives way to imperatives that secure volitional allegiance to
capitalist or neo-liberal projects in developed countries, how have prisons—as
traditional sites of state coercion—enlisted softer, more subtle,
governmentalised forms of power that produce the will towards compliance
among inmates and prison staff alike?
- As mobility develops in the twenty first century in complex and inequitable
ways, how does the state-sanctioned confiscation of mobility respond? In
what ways has the regulation and subjugation of migrants produced a need to
innovate in terms of migrant detention, how has this need been met, and what
relation does it have to wider carceral practices?
- Have national carceral practices followed similar patterns of international
policy take-up, as well as patterns of homogenisation and differentiation
evident in other policy arenas? If not, why not?
- How have changes in carceral technologies, practices, cultures, economies
and sociologies produced new methodological challenges for researchers of
carceral spaces?
In addition, we welcome contributions that draw upon:
theories of mobility, theories of ethics in relation to the behaviour of states,
spatially sensitive strategic-relational approaches to the state, comparative
policy analysis, analyses that draw on governmentality or biopolitics
frameworks, surveillance and security literatures, as well as activist, action-
research and human rights based work.
Please submit abstracts of 250 words to Nick Gill [log in to unmask] and
Deirdre Conlon [log in to unmask] by January 31st 2010. We also
welcome enquiries and ideas.
Dr Nick Gill
Lecturer in Geography
Lancaster Environment Centre
Lancaster University
Lancaster
LA1 4YQ
Tel. +44 (0)1524 510266
Fax. +44 (0)1524 510 269
[log in to unmask]
http://www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/contacts/staff/Nick_Gill
Communications Officer, Political Geography Research Group of the RGS/IBG
http://polgrg.wordpress.com/
Member of Lancaster University's Centre for Mobilities Research management
board
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