 |
 |
Dear all, Apologies for cross-posting ... Annual Association of American Geographers Conference, Las Vegas, 22-27 March 2009 Paper session: The making of urban fringe economies Organizers: Kevin Ward (Geography, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, UK) and David Wilson (Geography, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) Over the last thirty years fringe and shadow economies have grown rapidly in some of the poorest urban neighbourhoods of the industrialized world. A stroll around many of the US’s and the UK’s inner cities reveals a proliferation of its leading edges -- check cashers, pawnbrokers, payday lenders, rent-to-own stores, social service organisations, and temp staffing companies -- acting as ‘boundary institutions’ to financial and labour markets. They now dominate these urban landscapes as they produce spaces of predation, offering shoddy and overpriced goods and services, trapping workers in low-pay jobs, and exacerbating poverty and deprivation of struggling people. As a subset of neo- liberal economies, they are now generally sanctioned and accepted amalgams that are bolstered by prevailing norms, values, sentiments, and legal codes. In this context, they constitute an institutional infrastructure that shapes the way in which contemporary urban landscapes of dystopia and exclusion come to exist in the way that they do. The firms in these industries have served to enforce and deepen the systemically uneven features of capitalism while they have experienced high rates of growth that has allowed them to open new stores in more and more low-income communities. Yet, despite their presence in the life of a growing number of citizens very little is known about them. This session welcomes papers that contribute to a fuller understanding of these issues. Authors are invited to submit a brief abstract (not more than 250 words) to the session organizers Kevin Ward ([log in to unmask]) and David Wilson ([log in to unmask]) by Friday October 3rd at the latest. _______________________________________________________ [log in to unmask] An urban geography discussion and announcement forum List Archives: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/URB-GEOG-FORUM Maintained by: RGS-IBG Urban Geography Research Group UGRG Home Page: http://www.urban-geography.org.uk