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Alcohol, Poverty and the City - Call for Papers, Association of
American Geographers, Annual Meeting, New York, 23-28 Feb, 2012.
Session Organisers: Clare Herrick (KCL), Sue Parnell (UCT) and Mary
Lawhon (UCT)
Session abstract:
The study of drink, drinking and drinkers has long been a concern of
social scientists who have variously interrogated the historical context
of drinking “problems”, the changing dynamics of the night-time economy,
policy, public health, ascriptions of morality, addiction, social
disorder, violence and crime. In more recent years, geographical
approaches to alcohol have started to ask questions of the role of space
and place in defining and shaping drinking practices and outcomes.
However, such work has overwhelmingly been situated in the Global North.
In 2010, all member states of the WHO ratified the Global Strategy to
Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol. In so doing, they signaled a profound
shift in alcohol’s conceptualization as a problem and, furthermore, the
geographical delineations of risk and risk-taking. In short, the Global
Strategy demonstrates that drinking can no longer simply be understood
as a problem of excess or irresponsibility in North America or Europe,
but rather a more complex amalgam of consumption behaviours and
processes that are rooted in inequalities and have profound
developmental dynamics. In transposing alcohol and other behavioural
risks onto the terrain of poverty and development, the Strategy also
opens up the possibility of rethinking how we, as social scientists,
conceptualize drink, drinkers and drinking themselves. In so doing, it
also lays bare the dearth of research exploring the dynamics of drinking
in poor places, in both the Global North and South. This is especially
true in urban locales where political economic drivers clash with
definitive sets of vulnerabilities embedded in city environments.
This session therefore seeks to interrogate the multitudinous ways in
which alcohol (as material good, risky behaviour or pleasurable
activity) intersects with poverty and development. While the Global
Strategy primarily situates drinking as a health issue, this session
aims to go beyond this to question the broader ways in which drink,
drinking and drinkers are situated and situate themselves in poor spaces
in cities of both the Global North and South. The session conveners
therefore welcome papers on a wide range of empirical and conceptual
approaches that go, in a sense, ‘beyond alcohol’, and might include (but
are not limited to):
· Studies of lived experience
· Political ecology
· The role of institutions and urban regulation
· Historical accounts
· The role of violence
· The significance of/for homelessness
· The significance of/ for worklessness
· The role of gender relations
· The role of economic factors.
· Health agendas
· Discourses of personal responsibility, choice etc
· Environmental determinants of behaviour and risk
Please send abstracts to Clare Herrick ([log in to unmask], Sue
Parnell ([log in to unmask]) and Mary Lawhon ([log in to unmask])
by August 31st, 2011.
--
Dr Clare Herrick Lecturer in Human Geography Department of Geography
King's College London Strand WC2R 2LS UK Telephone: 02078481735 Email:
[log in to unmask]
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