Second CFP – Senses of (in)justice - Deadline Oct. 15th
Call for Papers
FAAEE 2017 València (September 5-9)
Organizers
Marc Morell (Universitat de les Illes Balears) and Irene Sabaté (Universitat de Barcelona)
Please submit paper abstracts by October 15th on the online system provided at:
http://congresoantropologiavalencia.com/
Original version available in Spanish at:
Proposals in Spanish, Catalan or English are welcome. Be aware that we expect most of the papers to be read in Spanish. Hence, some knowledge of the language would be useful in order to follow subsequent discussions.
SENSES OF (IN)JUSTICE:
INDEBTEDNESS AND URBAN SPACE IN TIMES OF CRISIS
Outline
The living standards of broadly-based social groups have severely worsened during the global economic crisis originated by the financial crash of 2008. This situation has contributed decisively to a deep class restructuring accompanied by legitimising responses based on austerity measures by state authorities, as well as those imposed at supra-s and sub- state level.
This panel proposes an interpretation of these worsening effects of the economic crisis, and of the policies designed to cope with them; and we do so from a social justice perspective (Harvey 1973, Fraser 2008, Merrifield and Swyngedouw 1997, Young 1990) and, particularly, from the socially situated perceptions of justice or injustice of the social groups concerned. We suggest that the injustice felt by part of a population that believes its rights have been breached, is causing the rupture of moral economy principles while originating a crisis of legitimacy at the core of the system of governance. Furthermore, in certain circumstances different forms of reaction are being articulated both at the scale of domestic strategies and in the field of collective action, which share a common claim to restore moral justice.
With the aim of building on our previous work on the making of class in urban society (Morell 2015) and the resurgence of forms of moral economy linked to mortgage indebtedness (Sabaté 2016), the panel papers will focus on two interrelated areas of inquiry: spatial justice and financial justice, framed within the anthropological debates - and those of other related disciplines - on the production of space and/or the conceptualization of the social relations involved in the practice of debt and credit.
On the international social sciences scene there has been a proliferation of work that relates these two meanings of (in)justice, such as accumulation by dispossession (Harvey 2003), financialisation (Aalbers 2008, Fine 2010), financial expropriation (Lapavitsas 2009), economy of debt (Lazzarato 2011) or “creditocracy” (Ross 2014). In the Spanish State, authors like Naredo and Montiel (2011) or López and Rodríguez (2010) have also shed light on the consequences of the penetration of financial capital into both the urban space and basic resources such as housing. However, with the exception of some work that refers to the years previous to the crisis (Franquesa 2013, Palomera 2014), it is difficult to find ethnographically situated research that links financial and spatial dynamics, and that also focuses on the perceptions of justice and injustice by the people who are involved, and by potentially resisting social groups.
This call for papers is thus open to contributions that deal with one or a combination of the following themes:
. Dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, and feelings of collective grievance linked to urban segregation.
. Resistance to the forceful displacement of populations disregarded within the processes of accumulation of real estate and financial capital.
. Provisioning tactics by social groups affected by the dispossession of their urban spaces of reproduction.
. Different projects of social emancipation developed by various groups that aim to live outside of the real estate and financial dynamics.
. Experience of housing finacialization, and of the financialization of other basic resources of provisioning by domestic groups.
. Popular perception of the alliances set among real-estate capital, financial capital and the urban and state political elites.
. Role of the State in implementing redistributive justice measures among territories.
. Forms of identification as reactions to a lack of state provision in specific urban areas.
. Domestic strategies against over-indebtedness and attitudes against the obligation of repaying debt.
. Re-signifying debts as illegitimate and claims for them to be restructured or forgiven.
. The moral criticism of the practices of banking companies and other components of the “creditor class” during the years of the bubble and the crisis.
. Governance and disciplining of popular classes via debt and the capitalist production of space.
. Definition of conventional finances, understood as guilty or responsible for the current crisis, in contrast with ethical finances, understood as antidotes for potential future crisis.
Far from delving into the common places that maintain the concept of social justice as one of the pillars of any society that takes pride in being democratic, this panel seeks to inquire into the different scenarios that make this idea of social justice a process that is constantly redefined. By exploring the issues highlighted here, we seek to respond to the different accounts that maintain social justice as a potential field for the recognition and reparation of social inequalities which appear to be inherent to the system, and that are presented and represented in everyday life as a form of injustice:
Where does justice come from? What forms does it adopt? What relative weights do the claims of redistribution and recognition have in relation to spatial injustice and financial injustice? How does injustice help class configuration and re-configuration in terms of the diverse social groups that we research? In what terms is the social justice represented? How does it question the State as responsible for restoration of justice? What answers are articulated against this injustice? How is social justice practiced? What contradictions does it entail? Are there different notions of (in)justice depending on the variety of subjects involved? Is there a conflict among them? Do the same actors use different concepts depending on how circumstances vary?
In conclusion, departing from these different themes, we aim to contribute to current debates on social justice in a historic moment of economic, social and political crisis that requires a special commitment from anthropology and the other social sciences in their task of describing, interpreting and explaining (in)justice with the aim of giving sense to reality.
Areas of work
1. Urban society and its place in the current capitalist system.
2. Social justice as a field of struggle for hegemony in the context of real estate financialization and its immediate consequences.
3. Processes of commoditisation, capitalization and financialization of urban spaces.
4. The role of the state in the social reproduction of housing under financial capitalism.
5. Class dynamics of social exclusion in the built environment and relations of debt and credit.
6. Social movements denouncing spatial and financial injustice.
Bibliography
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Fine, B. (2010) “Neoliberalism as financialisation”, in: Saad-Filho, A. and Yalman, G.L. (eds)
Economic Transitions to Neoliberalism in Middle-income Countries, Abingdon: Routledge.
Franquesa, J. (2013) Urbanismo neoliberal, negocio inmobiliario y vida vecinal. El caso de Palma, Barcelona: Icaria.
Fraser, N. (2008) “La justicia social en la era de la política de la identidad: redistribución, reconocimiento y participación”, Revista de Trabajo 4(6):83-99.
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Harvey, D. (2003) “La acumulación por desposesión” in El nuevo imperialismo, Madrid: Akal.
Harvey, D. (1996) Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, Cambridge (Mass.): Blackwell.
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Merrifield A. and Swyngedouw, E. (1997) “Social justice and the urban experience” in Merrifield, A. and Swyngedouw, E. (eds) The Urbanization of Injustice, London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Morell, M. (2015) “When space draws the line on class” in Carrier, J.G. and Kalb, D. (eds) Anthropologies of Class: Power, Practice and Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Palomera, J. (2014) “Reciprocity, Commodification, and Poverty in the Era of Financialization”, Current Anthropology 55(9):105-115.
Ross, A. (2014) Creditocracy and the Case for Debt Refusal, New York and London: OR Books.
Sabaté, I. (2016) “The Spanish mortgage crisis and the re-emergence of moral economies in uncertain times”, History and Anthropology 27(1): 107-120.
Young, I.M. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.