CFP for a session/stream on 

‘Crises and contradictions of territorial economies and societies’

RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Edinburgh, 3 July - 5 July 2012 www.rgs.org/AC2012

Convenors: Jamie Gough (Sheffield University) Raju Das (York University, Toronto), Aram Eisenschitz (Middlesex University, London), Ozlem Celik (Sheffield University)

The dominant strand of economic geography since the 1980s has been the institutionalist approach, particularly prominent in the ‘new regional economics’.  This has looked for sources of economic productivity and innovation in non-market linkages between economic actors within and between territories, which can be a basis for strong competitiveness, and thus growth and stability, of territorial economies within a ‘globalised’ economy.  This offers the social democratic promise of benefits to both capital and labour, and is a basis for their cooperation.  This approach has occluded critiques of capitalism coming particularly from Marxism and radical heterodox economics.  The latter traditions emphasise the contradictory and conflict-ridden nature of all capitalist accumulation, not least the ways in which strong investment, ‘competitive success’ and growth undermine themselves; that is, these traditions emphasise the crisis tendencies of capitalism.  Such analysis was strong in radical geography of the 1970s, but has since been eclipsed. 

The crisis of global capitalism which emerged in 2007-8 has exposed the theoretical and political inadequacy of institutionalist approaches, and pointed to the relevance of Marxist and other heterodox economics.  In this session we wish to bring together papers which draw on these traditions to examine the contradictions and crises of territorial economies, that is, the social-spatial limits to capital.  Issues which might be addressed include, but are not limited to –

* overaccumulation within sectors/territories leading to devalorisation;

* imbalances between production and the reproduction of labour power in territory;

* disproportion between investment in production and the built environment;

* the contradictory relations between productive and financial capital in space;

* disruption of accumulation by class struggles within both production and reproduction (housing, transport, welfare services, household relations), and disruption by (associated) struggles in gender and ‘racial’ relations;

* disruptions of territorial economies produced by strong growth, congestion and inflation;

* how the state’s intervention into capital accumulation seeks to address crisis tendencies but thereby also reproduces them in new forms, that is, the contradictions, rather than the efficacy, of state interventions into territorial economies;

* in particular, the logics for, but disruption of, accumulation by neoliberalism.

We seek conversations on these issues with the radical (non-institutionalist) economic geography of the last decades.  In particular, we welcome contributions from ‘labour geographers’ on how workers’ organisation and actions have been intertwined with territorial and sectoral crises of accumulation; and contributions from the regulationist tradition which focus not only on sources of capitalist coherence but also on contradictions in accumulation and social reproduction. 

Given the lack of attention to contradiction and crisis in ‘geography’ in recent decades, we particularly welcome exploratory and speculative papers.  We are interested in papers with emphases from theoretical to empirical.  The historical scope of papers is not limited to the present global crisis.  We particularly welcome papers concerned with economic and social crisis in the Majority World. 

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words to [log in to unmask] by 30 January 2012.

Dr Jamie Gough

Senior Lecturer,

Department of Town and Regional Planning,

University of Sheffield,

Sheffield, S10 2TN,

England

0114 222 6909