AAG Annual Conference New York 2012
24 -28 February 2012
Session: JUST DEVELOPMENT?
Final call for papers
Convenors:
Dr Bhaskar Vira, University of [log in to unmask]
Dr Philippa Williams, University of [log in to unmask]
We have had a good response to this proposed panel, and have extended the call to allow others to participate. See below for final deadlines for proposed participants.
This panel will explore the relationship between development and justice/injustice in the widest sense. Given the renewed intellectual engagement with the question of justice (Sandel 2009), particularly in developing world contexts and with regards to experiences of manifest inequalities (Nussbaum 2006; Sen 2009), grounded understandings of the experience, construction and realisation of justice/injustice require closer scrutiny. Amartya Sen’s theorisation of ‘comparative justice’ insists that justice does not start and end with institutional arrangements set in place to deliver utopian ‘just’ societies, but rather should take account of the lives people can actually lead: how justice is actually realised (or not) in everyday lives.
Within the social sciences there is a rich tradition of scholarship on justice and the city (Harvey 1973, 1996) and how notions of difference intersect experiences of injustice, and expectations towards justice within developed country contexts (Young 1990; Brown 1997; Merrifield and Swyngedouw 1997; Valentine 2003). Scholars have demonstrated that justice is highly contextual and contingent (Merrifield 1997) and that approaches to and principles of justice are time and space specific (Dikec 2001). Yet, discussions within development geography have tended to use relatively fixed conceptual notions of ‘justice/injustice’, which remain idealistic and abstract, and have eluded deconstruction on the ground.
It is hoped that papers on this panel will examine how justice/injustice is constructed and realised within and through different time-space experiences. How are notions of justice/injustice employed by often marginalised groups as points of articulation with the state and within society? How might such insights contribute to the ways in which justice might be advanced (or injustice reduced), rather than aiming only for perfectly, and often utopian or unrealisable, conceptions of just societies, as is sometimes the case in development policies and documents?
We welcome empirically grounded papers that address these themes, using a variety of approaches, which include but are not limited to:-
- Talking about justice/injustice;
- Challenging injustices: protest, action, discourse;
- Realising justice through active citizenship;
- Engaging the state - demanding justice;
- Solidarity, organising and activism in support of justice;
- Theorising justice/injustice in development.
Titles and abstracts (250 words) of proposed papers should be sent to Bhaskar Vira ([log in to unmask]) and Philippa Williams ([log in to unmask]) by September 15, 2011. Confirmation of acceptances will be conveyed to paper presenters immediately after September 15. In order to register the session with the AAG, we will need your personal PIN number no later than September 20, once you have registered your place at the conference.
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Bhaskar Vira
Department of Geography
Downing Place
Cambridge CB2 3EN
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Ph: +44 (0)1223 339823
Fax: +44 (0)1223 333392
http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/vira
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