We are looking for one more paper to complete our double session:
Final Call, AAG 2016, San Francisco:
Decentering the Frontier – Catch-all for dispossession or useful
analytical concept?
Organizers:
Maria Backhouse, Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Frank Müller, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Within the context of agro-industrial expansions, gentrification,
militarization and displacement in cities, as well as the capitalist
valuation of all elements – from bodies, creativity, nature, peace to
public goods and beyond – the frontier became a catch-all for enclosure
and the processes of dispossession. Widening its originally limited and
dualistic reference to settler colonization and geographical sites where
development and progress meet wilderness and traditional peoples, the
frontier can be conceptualized as an anti-dualistic analytical tool in
order to understand social change and conflicts (Peluso/Lund 2011: 668).
The concept of the frontier, rather than referring to static “limits” or
“borders”, should more significantly be regarded as a social dynamic in
the material and symbolic production of space.
The goal of our session is twofold:
Firstly, on a theoretical level, we would like to discuss the
ambivalence/s of this concept as well as its analytical potential. Such
reflections could focus on both Marxist interpretations of the frontier as
an expression of primitive accumulation and on (postcolonial) perspectives
on decentering of the frontier. The first provide some hints as to how to
conceptualize capitalist development beyond anti-Eurocentric and
anti-essentialist ideas. The latter in turn, draws our focus to the
complex informal and unstable socio-political interactions that contest
center-bound territorial sovereignty. Furthermore, we would like to
discuss how these different perspectives could be connected.
Secondly, on an empirical level we are interested in new or newly
contextualized, compared and analyzed cases of frontiers. We would like to
discuss the symbolic and material dimensions of new frontiers in the city,
agriculture, bodies, etc. by asking, what are the latest developments
about new frontiers? Are there other actors involved? What are the
possibilities for resistance and revolt in the dynamic space of the
frontier?
The purpose of this paper session is to explore these issues from all
relevant and beneficial perspectives. We have suggested several possible
topics and discussion questions below. These are intended as inspiration
rather than limitations and we invite contributions from all corners of
the social sciences and beyond.
Part I) Rethinking the frontier:
- How has the frontier been conceptualized in different Marxist readings?
- What perspectives have been developed by post-colonial or de-colonial
scholars on the frontier?
- How can these varied perspectives be connected?
- How does the frontier as an analytical tool connect and relate to
rural-urban divides?
- Which theoretical perspectives allow for understandings beyond the
exclusionary and segregating effects of frontiers in urban and rural
areas?
Part II) Empirical contributions on new frontiers:
- What are the latest developments about the new frontiers?
- How do negotiations, conflicts and processes of in- and exclusion
establish or contest frontiers?
- What are the common features of different frontiers and what are
possible explanations for these differences and similarities?
- Who are the drivers of these new frontiers?
- How is resistance articulated and manifested?
- What is the role of the state? How are the frontiers regularized? - How
do new legal frameworks shape or reshape new frontiers?
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION
If you would like to participate in the session, please submit an abstract
(250 words max) to: [log in to unmask]
LITERATURE
Peluso, Nancy; Lund, Christian (2011): New frontiers of land control.
Special Issue. Journal of Peasant Studies 38 (4), 667–681.
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Departamento de Geografia
crolar.org
Journal Editor
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Departamento de Geografia
crolar.org
Journal Editor
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