AAG 2017 Boston (April 5-9, 2017)
Call for Papers
Session theme: The politics of contemporary consumption: rethinking
“consumer subjectivity”
Session organizers: Jacob Miller (University of Arizona) and Sunčana Laketa
(University of Zurich)
Since the Frankfurt School and various approaches to “post-modern” consumer
cultures, scholars have explored the politics of consumer subjectivity in a
variety of compelling ways. Although work since the “cultural turn”
recognizes the ethics of affirming the “creativity” of consumers against
the manipulative power of producers (Zukin 2004), more recent approaches
complicate such a position by conceptualizing subjectivity as one force
among many others that shape geography and consumption practices. Moreover,
the power of producers is now seen to target the registers of everyday life
that inform and shape what appear to be our autonomous or creative
subjectivities. Recent theories of affect, emotion and diverse theories of
assemblage or “more-than-human” geographies have questioned the privileging
of subjectivity in everyday life and in spaces of consumption in particular
(Pyyry 2016; Lee 2015; Healy 2014; Coll 2013; Beckett 2012; Roberts 2012;
Rose et al. 2010; Zwick and Denegri Knott 2009; Puar 2007). What happens to
the politics of subjectivity in the wake of this new exciting work in
geography and beyond? This session intends on bringing together diverse
researchers interested in the politics of contemporary consumption and the
status of “consumer subjectivity” in the context of today’s “experience
economy” and its uneven spatiality. Topics might include:
* the politics of urban landscapes, architecture and retail
design
* financial subjectivity and debt
* the biopolitics of consumption: from commodification of
“experience” to disaster capitalism and the securitization of cities
* embodiment, technology and the “real-time digitally enhanced”
world
* more-than-human, affective, emotive and non-representational
landscapes of consumption
* psychoanalytic approaches to consumption
* political ecology of consumption and the Anthropocene: from
energy consumption to the politics of ecosystem services
* socio-cultural dimensions of climate change
* ethical consumption and alternative economies
* food geographies and the political ecology of food
* geopolitical violence, (post)conflict and consumption
* leisure and tourist geographies
We are also open to other topics, so please send us your abstract by
October 5, to both Jacob Miller ([log in to unmask]) and Sunčana
Laketa ([log in to unmask])
References
Coll S (2013) “Consumption as biopower: Governing bodies with loyalty
cards” *Journal of Consumer Culture *13 (3) 201-220
Beckett A (2012) “Governing the consumer: technologies of consumption”
*Consumption
Markets & Culture*, 15:1, 1-18
Healy, Stephen (2014) "Atmospheres of consumption: Shopping as involuntary
vulnerability." *Emotion, Space and Society* 10: 35-43.
Lee, Kah-Wee (2015) "Technical frames of affect: Design-work and brand-work
in a shopping mall" *Geoforum* 65: 403-412.
Roberts, T. (2012) “From ‘new materialism’ to ‘machinic assemblage’: Agency
and affect in IKEA” *Environment and Planning A*, 44, 2512–2529. doi:
10.1068/a44692
Rose, G., Degen, M., and Basdas, B., (2010) “More on *“*big things*”*:
Building events and feelings” *Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers*, Vol. 35, 334*–*349.
Puar J (2007) *Terrorist Assemblages. Homonationalism in Queer Times* Duke
University Press, Durham and London
Pyyry, Noora (2016) "Participation by being: Teenage girls' hanging out at
the shopping mall as ‘dwelling with’[the world]." *Emotion, Space and
Society* 18: 9-16.
Zukin, Sharon (2004) *Point of purchase: How shopping changed American
culture*. Psychology Press.
Zwick D and Denegri Knott J (2009) “Manufacturing Customers: The database
as new means of production” *Journal of Consumer Culture* 9 (2) 221-247
