Apologise for cross posting
Regional Studies Association Global Conference 2012
Sustaining Regional Futures, 24th - 27th June 2012, Beijing, China
Call for papers for a session entitled:
Sustaining Whose Futures? Megaprojects, territorial politics and
social injustices
Organisers:
Yunpeng Zhang, PhD student, Institute of Geography, The University of
Edinburgh, UK, email: [log in to unmask]
Huifang Cong, PhD student, School of Built Environment, Heriot-Watt
University Edinburgh, UK email: [log in to unmask]
Xiang Feng, PhD, Managing Director of Sino-European Comparative Urban
Research Centre, Shanghai Normal University, China, email:
[log in to unmask]
Session Introduction
The ascendancy of neoliberal ideology worldwide witnessed a shift,
what David Harvey portrays, from managerialism to entrepreneurialism
in urban governance, prioritising policy concerns on competitiveness
and attractiveness of places to footloose capital investment over
social settlements on welfares and redistribution. A prominent
strategy of such entrepreneurial urbanism focuses on the production
and reproduction of spaces at various scales, or 'spatial fix' to use
Harvey's words, in order to exploit locational advantages.
Megaprojects are one of the spatial fixes. In this session, we advise
megaprojects include: large scale infrastructural projects, major
urban regeneration/gentrification programmes, new town development,
and one-time off mega-event such as Olympics or World Expo, etc. This
broad view of megaprojects is based on our conviction that the
spatial-temporal criteria of scale and the financial yardstick of cost
cannot be adopted as the defining features of megaprojects for the
firm connections of megaprojects with wider political-economic changes
and spatial (re)structuring, such as, inter alia, the shift towards
post-Fordism economy, the dominant power of fictitious finance
capital, the hegemony of neoliberalism, and state rescaling.
Whilst much academic input has been invested in examining the
contextual changes giving rise to megaprojects as an entrepreneurial
strategy and the impacts upon the city/region (often based on ex-ante
predications), theoretical polemics and empirical investigations have
overlooked the complicated process and the realpolitik of
territoriality in developing and managing megaprojects. Filled with a
plethora of celebratory accounts laying much weight on the
contribution of megaprojects to urban/regional economic development
and improvement of place images, existing scholarship fails to
highlight the inherent irrationalities and contradictions in
developing megaprojects and social inequalities and social injustices
generated and exacerbated by them, especially in non-western context.
What required are independent and critical examinations of the actual
impacts upon the city/region in general and the citizens in particular
as the latter are the human agents bearing the direct intended or
unintended consequences of megaprojects. More importantly, there is a
moral and ethical imperative to examine how megaprojects impact the
vulnerable populations such as the displacees, the migrant workers,
the urban poor, etc. Take the issue of displacement in China as an
example, millions of farmers were displaced and relocated in order to
develop the Three Gorges Dam and more than 18000 households gave away
their beloved homes and communities to make way for the Expo 2010,
however, existing studies seem oblivious to the impacts upon their
personal lives, families, and communities.
The proposed session provides an opportunity for critical contribution
from a wide range of disciplines such as sociology, anthropology,
geography, political sciences, and legal studies to offer
inter-disciplinary insights on the study of megaprojects. We ask
contributors to critically think about questions what kind of futures
megaprojects are promising; for whom such futures are created and
sustained, and whether the promised futures are well delivered. We
invite both theoretical exploration and empirical case studies from
different regions in the world on the following themes:
* The underlying logics of megaprojects ;
* The territorial politics and strategies in legitimating and
developing megaprojects;
* Legal and policy frameworks for land use in developing megaprojects;
* Evaluation of the impacts of megaprojects;
* Social injustices and social inequalities in megaprojects ;
* Involuntary displacement and forcible evictions caused by
megaprojects (policy frameworks, representations of displacement, and
mechanics of displacement process);
We welcome abstracts of 400-800 words along with paper titles and full
contact details of all participating authors to be submitted to
Huifang ([log in to unmask]) and Yunpeng ([log in to unmask] ) by
Monday 20 February 2012 (it is possible to extend the deadline to
Mondy 27 February 2012 ). Please see
http://www.regional-studies-assoc.ac.uk/events/2012/globalconf-june/abstract-submission.pdf for detailed instructions for abstract submission. Those submitting abstracts to this special session must also register for the conference via the RSA online registration website in order to be confirmed and included in the conference programme. The uploading of abstracts is inclusive of the online registration
process.
Yunpeng Zhang
PhD Candidate
Institute of Geography
University of Edinburgh
Drummond Street
Edinburgh EH8 9XP
Scotland, UK
Web: www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/s0977814
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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