Apologies for cross postings
Second Call for papers
AAG 2011: Seattle, Washington
Please Circulate
Geographies of Alienation
Alienation is a theme that cuts across several strands of critical/radical social theory and social philosophy. In many of these traditions, the concept is understood in close relation to myriad material conditions including the mode of production, forms of social and/economic mediation, the state, or the routine practices of everyday life. As these material conditions continue to change, presumably so too should our understanding of alienation.
This paper session will explore a potentially broad range of related questions. In what ways are theories of alienation (along with parallel theories of abstraction, ideology, and reification) ripe for renewed appraisal? In particular, how can geography be central to such a renewed appraisal? In other words, how do changing configurations of space and spatialization—in both theory and practice—intersect with or enrich theories of alienation? Finally, (how) might our understandings of the intersections between space and alienation present opportunities to identify common ground shared between disparate strands of radical politics (or factions of critical geography for that matter)?
Topics could include but are not limited to:
Alienation and changing divisions of labor
Alienation and excess
Alienation and everyday life
Social space and reification
Ideology and space
The metropolis and mental life: urban social relations 100 years on
Society of the spectacle, increasingly berserk
Ethnographies of alienation
Please contact Christian Anderson at [log in to unmask] with ideas, questions, interest, and/or brief abstracts by October 15th.
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