AAG 2010 CFP on resilience - apologies for cross posting
Call For Papers
2010 Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting Washington, D.C., April 14-18, 2010
Special series organised by the Regional Studies Association. Contact: Arnoud Lagendijk ([log in to unmask])
Building regional and local resilience: International comparative perspectives
Organisers: Susan Christopherson (Cornell University), Sally Hardy (Regional Studies Association), Ed Feser (University of Illinois), Arnoud Lagendijk (University of Nijmegen), Andy Pike (Newcastle University, UK), Henry Yeung (National University of Singapore)
Worldwide regions and localities face a number of serious threats and disruptive events, including economic crisis, dangerous climate change, extreme weather events, rapid demographic flows, terror campaigns, bio-hazards, utility network disruption, and social and political unrest. Yet, impacts and responses vary widely. Across Europe, there is strong impact of EU competitiveness, cohesion and sustainability policies as well as state policies on the regional scope for action. Asia manifests strong variations between nations in the incentives and capacities provided for local and regional action. In the peculiarities of the US federal system, localities and regions are forced to be self-reliant within the bounds of state and federal regulation and an implicit regional policy driven by federal politics and spending. In addition, there are strong variations between localities within nations and states. In light of the current economic downturn, for instance, some regions cling on to traditional measures, such as subsidising manufacturing jobs and helping out foreign investors, while others embrace new forms of the 'knowledge' and 'creative economy'.
To what extent such measures meet success is not a matter of boilerplate solutions, but of the specific details with which they are conceptualised, developed and implemented. Debates are raging on all fronts. Theoretically, there is a move away from the strong focus on indigenous development, with its emphasis on local capabilities, towards a more relational approach to local and regional development. Policy development, on the other hand, is adopting more institutional approaches to policy learning and innovation, taking into account the political and regulatory differences between territories. Work on policy design and implementation, finally, is benefitting from new contributions on governance and networking. These debates now need to be attuned to the current challenges of financial instability, ecological threats, and social and political disruption. In tandem with conceptual work, moreover, much empirical work is done on the success and failures of concrete regional initiatives to meet changing economic conditions.
The Regional Studies Association organises a series of sessions bringing together contributions exploring the topic of regional resilience in a internationally comparative setting. Papers might examine topics including but not restricted to:
- Rethinking and reconceptualising resilience in light of the current global threats (economic, ecological, social, and political)
- Theorising 'resilience' from evolutionary and institutional perspectives
- Recovery and 'resilience': towards more durable regional and local economies?
- Transformations of local and regional governance structures in response to new threats
- Agents and institutions: Policy learning for resilience
- The effectiveness of regional crisis measures
- New forms of growth and industrial dynamics across different regions
- Financialization of regional crisis and responses
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Dr Arnoud Lagendijk
Nijmegen School of Management
Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning
Radboud University Nijmegen
PO Box 9108
6500 HK Nijmegen
Netherlands
