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For those of you researching and writing on the geographies of social movements... Apologies for cross-posting Complex Geographies of Post-Crisis Social Movements Royal Geographical Society Annual Meeting, 2010, London, September 1-3 Maarten Loopmans, Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, [log in to unmask] <blocked::mailto:[log in to unmask]> Walter J. Nicholls, Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, [log in to unmask] <blocked::mailto:[log in to unmask]> The present crisis has coincided with an upsurge of interest in contentious politics to which geography has much to contribute. This geographical literature on social movements has drawn on well established concepts like place, territory, scale, and networks to interpret the spatial constitution of social movements. The practice of focusing on one set of processes over others (e.g. scale, place, or networks) has permitted scholars to closely examine on how they contribute to shaping the spatiality of social movements. However, focusing on each of these processes in relative isolation of the others has resulted in a polarizing debate over which process, in the last instance, is the most important one for structuring the spatiality of social movements. Several scholars have sought to resolve this problem by suggesting that specific processes play distinctive yet complementary roles in the geographic constitution of social movements (Leitner et al 2008). This perspective shifts the analytical focus to the particular ways in which different spatial processes intersect in ways to generate geographically complex social movements. In addition, Tilly's (2008) 'Contentious Performances' opens up new arenas for geographical debate on contentious politics by shifting the focus from the analysis of movements to their spatially and historically constituted strategies and actions. This session aims to apply these theoretical advances to study social movements responding to (directly and indirectly) to the multiple crises of capitalism. The economic, political, and moral crises of capitalism have sharpened a variety of grievances, triggering a plurality of resistances, rebellions, and large scale mobilizations across the political landscape. These include populist movements of the left and right, struggles over global warming, mobilizations by undocumented immigrants, and struggles to resist gentrification and neoliberal urbanization. The major aim of the session is therefore to discuss how recent theoretical advances in geographic can be applied to understand the spatiality of these and other social movements. We invite theoretical and empirical papers to examine these issues. Topics may include but are not limited to: - Theoretical reflections on (political) geography concepts contributing to social movement theory -Empirical explorations of the geographies of contentious performances -Empirical analyses on the spatial constitution of social movements under conditions of crisis If you are interested, please submit an abstract of one page or less by email to the organizers of the session, before 15 february 2009. Kind regards, Walter Nicholls Assistant Professor of Sociology University of Amsterdam