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Dear Colleagues, Still looking for a couple of contributions for the below Call For Papers - if anyone is interested please submit an abstract by Thursday 18th February. 'Governing the spaces between care and abandonment: Regulating the spatial politics of deprivation in austere times' for the RGS-IBG 2016 Annual Conference. The session is sponsored by the Political Geography Research Group. Please send to Samuel Strong ([log in to unmask]) ----- *Governing the spaces between care and abandonment: Regulating the spatial politics of deprivation in austere times* Call For Papers, RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London, 30th August – 2nd September, 2016 *Session sponsored by the Political Geography Research Group* Session Convener: Samuel Strong (Department of Geography, University of Cambridge) [log in to unmask] *Session Outline* Ongoing cuts to social security and spending in the United Kingdom represent the most intense affront to state-sponsored forms of care and intervention since the birth of the Welfare State (Hamnett, 2014; Krugman, 2015). It has been argued that the policies and cultural politics of austerity have fundamentally altered the social contract between state and citizens as part of a broader process of neoliberalisation (Blyth, 2013; Castree, 2006). Alongside this material and discursive re-positioning of the state have been articulations of civil society and communities in taking up this burden as part of a 'Big Society' (Dowling and Harvie, 2014). Such developments warrant critical and empirical attention, in regards to lived experiences of deprivation, ontologies and epistemologies of poverty, and how we might begin to theorise these emergent biopolitics. This session seeks to examine the implications of such developments at a variety of scales. What forms of hybridised institutions of care have filled in the spaces between survival and abandonment? What are the prerogatives and objectives of these institutions, and how are decisions between care and abandonment decided upon, exercised and narrated? What everyday lived politics punctuate those being serviced when navigating such landscapes of care? How are those receiving support affected, and what role do such encounters play in the resistance and construction of neoliberal governmentalities? Theorisations of social abandonment (such as Agamben, 1998) have been heavily criticised both within and outside geography for being bereft of the political (Fitzpatrick, 2001), the lived experience of abandonment (Lemke, 2005), the importance of intersecting identities (Ong, 2006), and for portraying those in the process of being abandoned as void of agency (Rabinow and Rose, 2006). Crucially, the spaces between abandonment and survival are porous, in constant states of becoming, and highly regulated and intervened in (Cadman, 2010). The burgeoning literature on precarity as both a lived experience and a structural process illustrates the importance of such critical accounts (Butler, 2004; Standing, 2011). Understanding how decisions over inclusion and exclusion are being made, negotiated and assayed are vital if geographers are to conceptualise the spatial politics of social abandonment further. In this sense, social abandonment, at least to the extent it has been theorised thus far, is lacking in conceptual and empirical clarity. Geographers have a key role in developing empirically rich and theoretically critical accounts of these processes in order to contemplate the broader impacts of contemporary austerity as a form of neoliberal statecraft. Possible topics for papers include: · What emergent institutional and community forms of intervention are governing the spaces between care and abandonment? · What role do food banks, health support groups, anti-poverty programmes, community groups, faith-based organisations (and so on) play alongside the ongoing interventions of statutory services including schools, job centres, hospitals and social services? · How is this emergent landscape of care stitched together, and at what scales? · What are the aims, objectives and practices of care and abandonment emerging within and between these institutions? · What are the everyday lived geographies and encounters which such institutions engender? · How do those being serviced navigate this emergent landscape, how are they affected and what are the broader implications of these encounters for the construction and negotiation of neoliberal governmentalities? *Instructions for contributors* Abstracts of a maximum of 300 words should be sent to Samuel Strong ( [log in to unmask]) by Thursday 18th February. The format of the session will be the presentation of 4 selected papers, lasting 20-5 minutes each. *References* Agamben, G. (1998): *Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life; *Stanford: Stanford University Press. Blyth, M. (2013): *Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea*; Oxford: Oxford University Press. Butler, J. (2004): *Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence*; London: Verso. Cadman, L. (2010): "How (not) to be governed: Foucault, critique, and the political"; *Environment and Planning D: Society and Space *28(3), 539-556. Castree, N. (2006): "From neoliberalism to neoliberalisation: Consolations, confusions and necessary illusions"; *Environment and Planning A* 38(1), 1-6. Dowling, E. and Harvie, D. (2014): "Harnessing the social: State, crisis and (Big) Society"; *Sociology *48(5), 869-886. Fitzpatrick, P. (2001): "These mad abandon'd times"; *Economy and Society *30(2), 255-270. Hamnett, C. (2014): "Shrinking the welfare state: The structure, geography and impact of British government benefit cuts"; *Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers *39(4), 490-503. Krugman, P. (2015): "The austerity delusion"; in *The Guardian *April 2015, accessed January 2016; http://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion Lemke, T. (2005): "'A zone of indistinction': A critique of Giorgio Agamben's concept of biopolitics"; *Outlines: Critical Social Studies *7(1), 3-13. Ong, A. (2006): *Neoliberalism as Exceptions: Mutations of Citizenship and Sovereignty*; London: Duke University Press. Rabinow, P. and Rose, N. (2006): "Biopower today"; *Biosocieties *1, 195-217. Standing, G. (2011): *The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class; *London: Bloomsbury Academic. -- Sam Strong, BA MPhil ESRC Doctoral Training Candidate in Geography University of Cambridge http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/strong/