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Apologies
for cross postings.
Final
call for papers: ‘Who’ are the
gentrifiers in contemporary urban and rural space?'
Co-convened
by Darren P. Smith ([log in to unmask]) University of
Brighton, UK, Wendy Shaw ([log in to unmask])
University of New South Wales, Australia, and Joanna Sage ([log in to unmask]),
University of Brighton, UK
Annual
Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Las Vegas, Nevada
March
22-29, 2009
2009
marks the silver jubilee of Damaris Rose’s (1984) seemingly prophetic
comment that conceptualisations of gentrifiers will need to be continually
refined and disaggregated, in light of the inherent dynamism of gentrification
processes. Over the last three decades, Rose’s assertion has
been consistently substantiated by the identification of more diverse
‘geographies of gentrification’ (Lees,
2007). As deeper levels of the socio-spatial plurality of contemporary
global gentrification are identified (Atkinson and Bridge, 2005), it is
pertinent and timely to revisit Rose’s assertion. Recent studies,
undoubtedly, confirm that historical representations of prototypical
gentrifiers (e.g. Filion, 1991) are narrow and out-dated. Yet such
dominant imagery continues to hold currency in some media and policy
discourses. Indeed, it can be argued that critical perspectives of
‘who’ and ‘what’ constitutes a gentrifier may have gone
astray on the radar of scholars of gentrification. This is surprising
given the use of new terms to describe gentrifiers (e.g. financifiers,
super-gentrifiers, studentifiers and greentrifiers) within studies of
gentrification. At the same time, there may be merit in revisiting the
value of the relevance of particular dualisms (e.g. producer versus consumer)
for conceptualising contemporary gentrifiers, for instance the role of
‘occupier gentrifiers’ (N. Smith, 1992) within expressions of
‘positive gentrification’ and ‘new build’
gentrification. We therefore seek papers which explicitly engage with
such issues, and which draw upon empirical studies of gentrification, to
challenge the conceptual boundaries of ‘who’ and ‘what’
constitutes the modern-day gentrifier in critical ways.
Please
send expressions of interest to the session organisers, and/or forward an abstract by October 25th 2008.