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Apologies for cross-posting, we’re now looking for a final paper to complete this session; Second CFP AAG 2010 Geographies of Tolerance Call for papers Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington, April 14-18, 2010 Geographies of tolerance Sponsored by the Political Geography Speciality Group and the Ethics, Justice and Human Rights Speciality Group. Organised by Helen Wilson (Durham University), Ruth Healey (University of Chester) and Jonathan Darling (University of Manchester) In recent years there has been a growing interest in the workings of tolerance as a political discourse - concerned with forms of difference, equality, identity, civic cohabitation and justice. Whilst growing fundamentalisms, refugee crises, concerns over uncontrolled immigration and threats to national security and modern secular societies have apparently challenged the widespread promotion of tolerance as a national quality, political issues such as segregation and social inequality are increasingly framed as matters of prejudice that demand a tolerant response (Brown 2006). Tolerance is therefore attached to a range of sites and objects – cultures, races, sexualities, lifestyles, religions and so on, yet whilst it is generally perceived to be a common good and virtue, such attachment and its uncritical promotion has received considerable scrutiny. Tolerance can be the permission and acceptance of practices despite disapproval of them; a mask that works to control violence and/or a concept that renders its subject deviant (Gibson 2007, Galeotti 2002). Rather than simply an individual ethic and practice, Brown in particular, demands that we consider how tolerance functions as a political discourse of state regulation and social organisation, that we question what kind of social subject it produces and what habits of civic cohabitation and orientation it might promote? Who is given the right and power to tolerate and who is marked as being in need of tolerance? Do those marked as ‘in need’ desire to be tolerated? And how do such desires and impositions map onto contemporary geographies of exclusion, inequality and prejudice? This session is interested in the multiple sites and workings of tolerance, how it might regulate identity and difference, inform judgements and everyday encounters, make distinctions between bodies and be experienced across a range of geographical scales and settings. To this end, we invite papers addressing tolerance in a variety of different ways and at different scales - Some possible areas might include, but not be limited to; • The role of tolerance in constructing place • The relationship between tolerance and the construction of identity and/or subjectivities • How tolerance might be performed and experienced in everyday encounters • Conceptual engagements with tolerance as a political discourse • The shifting nature of tolerance across geographical scales and settings • How tolerance is, and might be, promoted • The limits and conditions, of tolerance • The relation between ideas of tolerance, charity and civic virtue • The promotion of tolerance as a lifestyle • The uses of tolerance to the state • The objects of tolerance • The relationship between tolerance and modalities of power Expressions of interest from potential contributors should be sent to Helen Wilson ([log in to unmask]), Ruth Healey ([log in to unmask]), and Jonathan Darling ([log in to unmask]) in the form of an abstract acceptable to the AAG of 250 words or less ( http://aag.org/annualmeetings/2010/papers.htm#abstracts) by 21st October 2009. References Brown (2006) Regulating Aversion : Tolerance in the Age of Identity, Princeton University Press Galoetti (2002) Toleration As Recognition. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press Gibson (2007) ‘‘Abusing our hospitality’. Inhospitableness and the politics of deterrence’ in Molz, J. and Gibson, S. (eds) Mobilizing hospitality : the ethics of social relations in a mobile world. Aldershot, Ashgate