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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