Apologies for cross-posting. Please find below a call for papers for
the RGS-IBG 2013. Deadline extended until February 3rd.
Final CFP RGS-IBG Conference London 28-30th Aug 2013
Organisers: Rory Rowan (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Ross
Adams (London Consortium / The Bartlett School of Architecture,
University College London)
Sponsored by History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group at RGS
Eschatology and World Politics
This session seeks to examine the influence of apocalyptic and
eschatological conceptions of historical time on world politics and
the various ways that these understandings of history are
‘spatialised’ in both spatial imaginaries and political practices.
There has been much discussion in recent years about the ‘return of
religion’ with the growth of world religions and their rising
influence on world politics, from the sway of the Christian Right in
the United States to the impact of militant Islam in a number of
areas. We aim to investigate what role eschatological thought has
played in shaping the spatial imaginaries of religious groups and
their influence on world politics. At the same time representing
historical change in terms of apocalyptic events has become a dominant
trope in popular mediums such as film, literature, video games and
comic books. These popular mediums act as an important register for
understanding the relationship between eschatological thought and
geopolitical imaginaries that shape, and are shaped by, the threat of
political and environmental catastrophe.
Following the argument made by Carl Schmitt and others that key modern
political concepts represents secularized versions of theological
concepts, we seek to explore the shadow eschatological thought casts
on the fundamental categories of modern (geo)political thought and the
ways in which world politics have been conceived. Whilst the process
of secularization by which Christian, Jewish and Islamic, theological
concepts have been transformed in to secular concepts in modern
political thought has been remarked upon in the field of ‘political
theology’ the implicit and explicit relationship between such ideas
and the political organization of space and geopolitical imaginaries
has yet to be fully explored. We believe that political theology is an
area of thought that deserves serious attention from geographic
perspectives especially in relation to the realm of world politics.
We welcome both theoretical and empirical papers engaging the
relationship between eschatological thought and the politics of space
in the broadest sense. Possible areas of investigation might include,
but are not limited to:
Political theology and world politics
Geopolitics and apocalyptic thought
The return of religion and eschatological politics
Climate Change and apocalyptic thought
Eschatology and the history of geographic thought
Modernisation and secularisation
Eschatology and urban studies
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Rory Rowan
([log in to unmask]) and Ross Adams ([log in to unmask])
by 3rd February 2013.
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