Sorry to fill your inboxes, but we wanted to re-advertise. Emily Yeh has agreed to serve as discussant and we're hoping to make this a double header, so please contact us if you think you might have a paper to contribute!
***Apologies for cross postings***
2nd CFP: Non-Emergent Asias: Left behind by uneven development
Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), Los Angeles, April 9-13, 2013
Co-Organized by Melissa Y. Rock (Penn State University) and Matt Branch (Penn State University)
Discussant: Emily Yeh (University of Colorado)
“Emerging Asias,” one of this year’s AAG annual meeting themes, was chosen in response to three trends evident in contemporary Asia: “Its rapid (re)emergence as a center of the global economy; its enormous diversity as a region (Asia being a European geopolitical construct designating the land masses east of Europe, rather than a homogeneous region); and, within the heterogeneous sub-regions of Asia, the expanding differences in the livelihood possibilities of those who have come to live prosperously and those who live precariously.” (Sheppard 2012). These trends highlight Asia’s rising importance not only in the global economy, but also with respect to geopolitical positioning and development discourses. At the same time, it is important to analyze and examine the unevenness of development, beyond identifying the winners and losers (both human and non-human) at multiple scales, within these Emerging Asias.
This panel seeks to explore “non-emergent Asias,” those who have been or are being left behind, neglected, considered disposable, or ill-equipped to survive much less thrive in the local, national, regional or global economy. We endeavor to better understand the processes that are actively creating these disparities, which often arise as a direct result of other, emerging Asias. We seek papers that engage with the (discursive or material) creation of non-emergent Asias and their resultant struggles for social and environmental justice. This session will focus not just on the “who” but also the “how” and the “why” of the process of being left behind, whether it is at the level of the nation, the city, or the neighborhood.
We invite paper proposals that are based upon empirical fieldwork conducted in Asia, which call attention to and critically interrogate the realities of uneven development and their impact upon people, places and eco-systems that are not only concurrent but perhaps caused by these “Emerging Asias.”
Keywords: uneven development, social justice, environmental justice, political economy, Asia
Please send proposed titles and abstracts of up to 250 words to Melissa Y. Rock ([log in to unmask]) and Matt Branch ([log in to unmask]) by October 15th, 2012.
In memory of Neil Smith, may his life and work continue to inspire and motivate.
“In short, it is vital to analyse the new dynamics of equalization and differentiation that lead to different landscapes of unevenness at the beginning of the twenty-first century." (Progress in Human Geography, 2000, p. 273)
“... uneven development is the systematic geographical expression of the contradictions inherent in the very constitution and structure of capital" (Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space, 3rd Ed 2008, p. 4)