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CALL-FOR-PAPERS
Special Issue to be Submitted to Urban Studies:
“Naming Rights
and the Cultural Landscapes of Neoliberal Urbanism”
Guest
Editors:
Reuben Rose-Redwood, University of
Victoria
Jani Vuolteenaho, University of Turku
Craig Young, Manchester Metropolitan
University
Duncan Light, Bournemouth University
From the First Gulf Bank Metro Station
in Dubai, UAE, to the 1-800-ASK-GARY Amphitheatre in Tampa, Florida, a growing
number of city and state governments around the world are selling the naming
rights for public infrastructure and civic facilities to corporations and
wealthy elites. Proponents argue that the sale of naming rights offers an
innovative strategy to generate municipal revenue without raising taxes,
whereas critics maintain that naming rights programs commercialize, and thus erode
the democratic value of, public spaces. Since
the selling of naming rights has been a commonplace practice in the realm of professional
sports for decades, it is not surprising that a sizable body of literature has
examined naming rights sponsorships for sports stadia and recreational arenas (e.g.,
Boyd 2000; Bartow 2007; Leeds, Leeds, and Pistolet 2007; Blackshaw 2012). Yet, despite the proliferation of municipal
naming rights policies in recent years, very little urban scholarship has
critically examined the use of naming rights as a spatial strategy of
neoliberal urbanism (Rose-Redwood, Alderman, and Azaryahu 2010; Rose-Redwood
2011; Medway and Warnaby 2014; Light and Young 2015).
The
proposed special issue seeks to contribute to critical urban studies by
examining the political economy and cultural politics of urban naming rights. The
broader aim of this special issue is to explore how neoliberal policies are
remaking the cultural landscapes of contemporary cities through the privatization
of the spatial identities of public places. In doing so, our aim is to bring
together political-economic scholarship on entrepreneurial urbanism and the
neoliberal city (Hackworth 2007; Ward 2008) with contemporary research in
critical toponymy on the cultural politics of place naming (Berg and
Vuolteenaho 2009).
We
are particularly interested in showcasing scholarship that examines any of the
following themes:
· political
struggles over the planning, adoption, and implementation of urban naming
rights policies, programs, or agreements
· economic
outcomes of urban naming rights programs in cities of varying sizes
· the
cultural reception of commodified place names in everyday speech and the
spatial imaginaries of everyday urban life
· the
relation between urban naming rights and broader processes of neoliberal
urbanization
We
welcome both in-depth case studies and comparative urban analyses as well as
submissions that advance critical theorizations of naming rights from a variety
of disciplinary perspectives.
Abstract Submission: If you are interested in contributing to
this special issue, please submit your name, affiliation,
paper title, and a 200-word abstract to [log in to unmask] by no later than August 15.
Once
all abstracts have been received, a full Special Issue Proposal for this theme issue
will be submitted to the journal, Urban
Studies.
References
Bartow,
A. (2007). “Trademarks of Privilege: Naming Rights and the Physical Public Domain.”
UC David Law Review 40(1): 919-970.
Berg,
L. and Vuolteenaho, J., eds. (2009). Critical
Toponymies: The Contested Politics of Place
Naming. Farnham: Ashgate.
Blackshaw,
I. (2012). Sports Marketing Agreements:
Legal, Fiscal and Practical Aspects. The
Hague, Netherlands: Springer.
Boyd,
J. (2000). “Selling Home: Corporate Stadium Names and the Destruction of Commemoration.”
Journal of Applied Communication Research
28(4): 330-346.
Hackworth, J. (2007). The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology
and Development in American Urbanism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Leeds,
E., Leeds, M., and Pistolet, I. (2007). “A Stadium by Any Other Name: The Value
of Naming Rights.” Journal of Sports
Economics 8(6): 581-595.
Light, D. and Young, C.
(2015). “Toponymic Commodification: Exploring the Economic Dimensions of Urban Place Naming,” International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 39(3): 435-450.
Medway, D. and Warnaby, G.
(2014). “What’s in a Name? Place Branding and Toponymic
Commodification,” Environment and
Planning A 46(1): 153-167.
Rose-Redwood, R. (2011), “Rethinking the Agenda of Political Toponymy.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 10(1): 34-41.
Rose-Redwood, R., Alderman, D., and
Azaryahu, M. (2010). “Geographies of Toponymic Inscription: New Directions in
Critical Place-Name Studies.” Progress in
Human Geography 34 (4): 453-470.
Ward,
K. (2008). Entrepreneurial Urbanism.
London: Routledge.