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Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers Conference 2007, San Franscisco Reassessing Sovereignty: Contemporary Dialogues on Geographies of Security Organizers: Oliver Christian Belcher (University of Kentucky), Lauren Martin (University of Kentucky), Stephanie Simon (University of Kentucky) In this session, we consider the current institutional practices and discourses of security in what has been deemed the 'post-9/11 world.' Since September 11th, 2001, policy-makers, scholars, and general publics around the world have seriously reevaluated the efficacy of the state in securing populations against perceived threats of terrorism. The world has witnessed an unprecedented re-fortification of regional and national boundaries, an intensification of regulatory regimes in relation to flows of immigrants, an increase in domestic and global surveillance systems that track bodily and financial movements, an uncustomary development of the military concept of 'preemptive strikes,' and the relativization of both domestic and international law that separates citizens from 'enemy-combatants' and allows the use of torture, all of which occur under the rhetorical auspices of 'security.' Alongside of these policy shifts, we have also witnessed a renewed theoretical focus in academia on the concepts of 'sovereignty,' 'law' and 'exception,' and their relation/contrast to the Foucaultian concerns of 'governmentality,' 'biopower,' and 'security.' In this vein, we seek papers that evaluate theories of power in terms of the expansion of security practices within the context of the so-called 'war on terror.' In this session, we wish to explore the productive tensions between different theorizations of the state, power, political action, and citizenship in relation to these problematics of 'security.' Particularly, we are looking for papers that critically evaluate the implications of this shift of theorizations for 'space' in geography. Paper topics include, but are not limited to: -governmentality and security -surveillance of public and/or private space -security as a biopolitical strategy - spatialization of the exception -neoliberalism and the state -security as a 'culture of exception' -the role of 'sovereignty' in domestic and international security -the strategies and technologies of "homeland security" -power/knowledge in the 'war on terrorism' -the relationship between torture, security, law, and/or sovereignty -the geopolitics of security -security and Empire -militarization of public space -political resistance post-9/11 -border security/militarization -security and diaspora studies -security and gender, race, and/or class -the role of the military in security -feminized and/or masculinized bodies -tensions between international and domestic security -role of geographic knowledge in homeland security Any questions, comments, concerns, expressions of interest, and abstracts can be directed to Oliver Christian Belcher: [log in to unmask] Please send your expression of interest by October 12th, 2006. Abstracts by October 20th, 2006. -- Oliver Christian Belcher MA Student Department of Geography University of Kentucky Miller Hall Room 8 859.257.8237 Blog: meanswithoutend.blogspot.com "Oliver Belcher is no better than the Muslim Terrorists that he supports." Brad Mitchell, Kentucky Kernel, 9/21/06