Dear Colleagues,
Please find below a CFP for the forthcoming*EURA conference* 'City
lights. Cities and citizens within/beyond/notwithstanding the crisis',
*Turin (Italy), 16-18 June 2016* (http://www.eura2016.org/).
*500-word abstract**s* should include title, keywords, name of the
author(s), affiliation and full contact details, and should be sent to
both Michele Lancione ([log in to unmask]) and Elisabetta Rosa
([log in to unmask])*no later than Thursday, 26 November.
*A PDF of this CfP can be downloaded at the following link:
http://www.michelelancione.eu/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2015/11/EURA-2016_Committed-Positioning.pdf
All best,
Michele and Elisabetta
*Committed Positioning. Politics, activism and ethnographic encounters
in the contemporary city. *
Michele Lancione, University of Cambridge ([log in to unmask])
Elisabetta Rosa, Aix-Marseille University
([log in to unmask])
We enter the field and have not a clue about the people standing in
front of us. We have read about them – the people and spaces we have
decided to ‘study’ –, and perhaps we have met them previously, but now
things have changed. Set down in the mists of the field, we are now
faced with the possibility of encounter: things can go wrong; people may
not understand us and we may not understand them, and ethnography may
suddenly cease to be an exciting exploration and turn into a painful
and stressful endeavour. In its most basic form, positioning might be
understood as the negotiation of this encounter: a fragile process
characterised by unbalanced power, criss-crossed by all sorts of ethical
implications. But at another, deeper level, positioning is first and
foremost about questioning the meaning and relevance of that encounter.
Namely: why have we decided to enter the field in the first place? Why
have we done it here, with these people and spaces? Why, in other
worlds, do we do ethnography and what do we aim to achieve with it?
These questions are anything but a novelty. In geography, they have been
discussed for decades by scholars interested in bringing to light the
responsibilities, meaning and potential associated with the ethnographic
encounter (Caldeira 2009; Cloke et al. 2000; Herbert 2000). Positioning
has thus been understood as matter of announcing oneself in the field
(McDowell 1992); as a form of reflexivity (Cloke et al. 2000); as a
matter of objectivity about the scope and limit of knowledge (Haraway
1988); as aiming to establish ‘constitutive negotiations’ (Rose 1997),
and as a way to fictive distinction between ‘researcher’ and
‘researched’ (Butz and Besio 2009). Expanding these lines of thinking,
scholars have advocated in favour of an action-oriented form of
ethnography (Katz 1994), where the boundaries between activism and
academia blur (Routledge 1996), and in favour of a research approach
oriented towards the production of radical actions and outputs, through
the use of creative methodologies as well (Eshun and Madge, 2012). Our
Call for Papers sets out to explore the role of positioning in making
ethnography more relevant to the people and spaces it studies. We argue
that radical, engaged, meaningful ethnography does not come naturally,
but arises out of what we might call a ‘committed’ form of positioning:
a relational oeuvre that requires time, involvement and adaptation; that
involves stress, joy and a psycho-emotional burden, but that most of all
calls for a strong political ethos to fuel the action/research process
(Lancione, forthcoming).
We are interested in exploring the link between positionality and urban
ethnographic research/activism. We are looking for papers that freely
and openly discuss the limits on and opportunities for pursuing
political agendas through ethnographic work, questioning the role of
positioning in doing so, and recounting (on the basis of first-hand
experience as well) the personal difficulties encountered in making
urban ethnography matter. We welcome in particular interdisciplinary,
creative and non-academic contributions, as well as contributions from
under-represented groups. Abstracts should cover one or more of the
following points:
* The intersection between positioning and urban politics
* The intersection between positioning and activism/research
* Theory of positionality in – and from – the urban South
* Theory of positionality in – and from – gender studies
* Radical urban ethnography – and radical urban ethnographers – today
* What kind of methodology for what kind of positioning?
* The physical, emotional and psychological burden of committed
positioning
* Case studies showing details (limits and achievements) of committed
positioning
500-word abstracts should include title, keywords, name of the
author(s), affiliation and full contact details, and should be sent to
both Michele ([log in to unmask]) and Elisabetta
([log in to unmask]) no later than Thursday, 26 November.
--
Michele Lancione
Urban Studies PostDoctoral Fellow
Department of Geography
University of Cambridge
Downing Place
Cambridge
CB2 3EN, UK
Books Review Editor
City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action
Honorary Associate, UTS, Sydney (Australia)
www.michelelancione.eu
