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2nd Call for papers: American Class Wars
Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting
24-28 February 2012, New York City
One hundred years ago, contributors to The Survey, a leading progressive publication, warned readers that, “actual class warfare exists in the United States” (Crawford 1999). The late 19th century had given middle-class readers of The Survey much to worry about. Working class uprisings were common in the United States from Homestead to Pullman. Nor would readers find comfort in the coming decade as miners in Colorado and Appalachia took up arms against their employers and bombs exploded on Wall Street and in Washington. While the working class periodically revolted, employers and the state treated them to the constant threat of violence. This came in the form of the private security forces maintained by corporations, but also in the daily violence of work.
Much has changed in the United States over the past hundred years and much has also stayed the same. While the threat of “actual class warfare” is muted, capital and the state still wage perpetual war on the working class. Across the US and the world, American lawmakers and their wealthy patrons threaten social safety nets, labor organizations, and democratically elected local governments. Meanwhile the same public-private partnership that is working to securitize cities at home is also engaged in covert and overt wars around the world. Yet, despite the persistent intensity of class war over the past century, the notion of "class" has become contentious and, "class-war," in the US, is language that only the Right mobilizes against the Left.
For these sessions we seek papers that interrogate the relationship between "class" and "war." We welcome histories, ethnographies, theoretical meditations, polemics, rants, and political strategies dedicated to understanding the elements and enduring relevance of American "class war"; the relationship between capitalism and war; how capitalism wages war on the working class; and how all war is class war.
Please submit abstracts by September 26th to:
Clayton Rosati at [log in to unmask], Bob Ross at [log in to unmask], and Patrick Vitale at [log in to unmask]