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Call for papers AAG Annual Meeting, Boston, April 15-19, 2008 Organizers: Bongman Seo, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan Christian Zeller, Institute of Geography, University of Berne, Switzerland For registration details see AAG website at http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/2008/papers.htm Geographies of Financialization: Another Fixes or New Stage of Global Capitalism? Neoliberal financial policies and resulting institutional changes since the mid 1980s have led to massive capital flows across ever flattening institutional space of global finance. However, geographers have reassured the importance of geography in the affairs of global finance through their studies of persisting global hierarchies in the networks of financial centers, the importance of localized social networks and physical proximity in producing financial knowledge, contested landscapes of corporate governance models, and dynamics of on-and off-shore financial centers. Meanwhile, little attention was paid to structural transformations at the broader scale, i.e. the ways in which contemporary capitalism has been (re)constituted by the works of financial capital at different scales. Global reach of the concentrated financial capital enabled the appropriation of surplus value on an international scale. Simultaneously, the size and speed of financial flows have however destabilized global accumulation regime, resulting in recurrent crises even in core economies (e.g. recent sub-prime debacles in the US and beyond) as well as peripheries. It is also important to examine the ways in which these workings of finance capital have been institutionalized despite not-so-positive outcomes it has produced so far. At a different level, concentration of capital in the hands of institutional investors has facilitated the introduction of a shareholder value-driven governance system, transforming working conditions for workers. Individuals are also consumed by opportunities offered by finance capital. This has resulted in increasing income gap between the rich and the poor (between individuals and places) as the share of financial income out of the total income has risen. Through these changes, finance capital perpetuates and reproduces uneven development across different spatial scales. Despite recognition of these issues by geographers, academic lacuna in this arena seems too large to offer a decent credit. Regulation economists recently argued that these changes are meant to be the emergence of a finance-led accumulation or growth regime (e.g. Aglietta, Boyer, Chesnais, Coriat). Or they could be parts of the jigsaw puzzle that leads to spatio-temporal fixes? (Harvey) Through this session we want stimulate a renewed critical political economy of finance and uneven development. We would like to invite papers in the following, but not limited to, subjects. - Finance Capital and Uneven Development - Finance Capital and Crises - Pension Fund Capitalism and Global Justice - Financialization and Corporate Governance - Financialization and International Division of Labor - Financialization and Urban Development - Innovation and Finance Capital - Finance Capital and New Imperialism - Reversing Financialization? The main purpose of the session is to discuss social and spatial consequences of the increased importance of financial accumulation and to exchange ideas for a critical research agenda. Key words: finance, institutional investor, uneven development, accumulation, crises, spatio-temporal fixes, neoliberalism. Please send your paper title and abstract (less than 250 words) no later than October 22 to one of the following co-organizers: Bongman Seo, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Economic Geography Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University 2-1 Naka, Kunitachi Tokyo 186-8601, Japa Phone: 81-42-580-8956 Fax: 81-42-580-8965 [log in to unmask] Dr. Christian Zeller, Ph.D. Senior Assistant (Lecturer) Institute of Geography Economic Geography and Regional Studies University of Berne Hallerstrasse 12 CH-3012 Bern Tel. +41-31-631 85 56 Fax. +41-31-631 85 11 [log in to unmask]