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*apologies for cross-posting* Call for papers: *Geographical perspectives on anti-racism* Association of American Geographers annual meeting April 17-21, 2007, San Francisco. Organisers: Peter Geoghegan (University of Edinburgh), David Howard (University of Edinburgh) Scholarship on the social construction of race has highlighted ‘the relational and situated construction of ethnic and racial identities’ and undermined essentialised notions of biological difference (Nash, 2003). Through such critical engagement this work has provided powerful arguments against racist discourse and practice. However, racism, and racial discrimination, remains an everyday part of people’s lives in contemporary society. Efforts to address these issues take a number of forms and operate at a number of levels. Public policy and legislation aimed at combating racial discrimination and inequality has been introduced in many societies. Beyond government structures and policies anti-racism operates in, and animates, the voluntary and community sector and grassroots organisations. While political leaders may proclaim the value of diversity and the social and economic benefits of harmonious ‘race relations’, grassroots political activists are mobilizing around ‘race’ and racial discrimination, while larger NGOs like Shelter and Barnardos include race relations within their remit. Despite the rise of Islamophobia and hostility to new migration flows in Western societies, even far-right parties reject the term racist and the myth of historical opposition to racism has emerged as part of the national imaginary of many modern nation states. The narrative of Britain’s fight against fascism and the abolition of slavery in the US have become familiar tropes. The term ‘anti-racism’ has multiple, and often contested meanings but still retains some descriptive utility. Anti-racism ‘operates in a wide arena’ (Lloyd, 2002), in a multitude of spaces and places and through a variety of different mediums and the importance of a geographical engagement with these spaces has been highlighted (Bonnett, 2000). However, there has been a lack of geographical understanding of how, where and why anti-racism develops in different ways in different places. This session seeks to address this concern by bringing together empirical and theoretical engagements with the range of discourses and practices which might broadly be termed anti-racist. Papers could include, but not be limited to: -Anti-racist activists and spaces of alternative politics. -The historical and contemporary relationship between discourses of anti-racism and nationalism. -Voluntary and community sector anti-racism.. -Politics of recognition and the relationship between anti-racism and identity politics. -The politics of consultation. -Race Relations and public policy/institutional practice. -Critical multiculturalism and anti-racism. -Citizenship, belonging and anti-racism. -Migration, mobilities and emerging spaces of anti-racist practice. -Anti-racism in 'non-Western' contexts. Please send an expression of interest, title and abstract to [log in to unmask] before Monday October 16th or contact me with any questions/queries. Full details of the conference can be found at http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/SF2007/index.cfm. peter geoghegan, postgraduate research student, Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh, EH89XP tel: (0131) 650 2528