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Dear colleagues, Please find below the call for paper for the session "The political materiality of cities" of the forthcoming AAA - American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting (November 29-Dec. 3, 2017, Washington). Abstracts, of 250 words, and a brief bionote should be sent by e-mail to Rivke Jaffe ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) and Francesca Pilo’ ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>). The deadline for abstract submissions is Wednesday, 15 March 2017. For more information about the AAA meeting see http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/. With all best wishes, Rivke Jaffe, University of Amsterdam Francesca Pilo', University of Amsterdam CALL FOR ABSTRACTS Session at the AAA - American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting Washington, DC, November 29-Dec. 3, 2017 The political materiality of cities How might a focus on materiality help us understand the relation between the urban and the political differently? Anthropologists have long understood cities as important political arenas and as key sites in the formation of political communities that are not limited to systems of representative democracy. This work has shown how urban politics is located across diverse sites, from official government buildings to the space of the street, and in a range of everyday practices and more spectacular events. In recent years, increasing attention has gone to the role of non-state actors – from social movements and corporations to churches and criminal organizations – in urban governance and negotiations of citizenship. This session seeks to extend this work by exploring the role of non-human entities in urban politics. Drawing on the “material turn” in anthropology and related disciplines, we are particularly interested in analyzing how citizenship is assembled through relations between humans and various forms of urban technology, infrastructure, housing, biophysical flows, nonhuman animals, and consumer products. We want to understand when, how and why urban matter becomes political, and urban politics become material. What insights can be gained by directing ethnographic attention to the socio-material coproduction of urban politics, and the practices and norms that are central to this process? What role do different material entities play in enabling, limiting and mediating forms of political community? How are different objects – from walls and roads, to water networks and utility bills – central to political subject formation, both within and beyond the nation-state? This session invites contributions that combine ethnographic and theoretical explorations on urban politics, citizenship and materiality to address such questions. The papers in this session will be the starting point for a special issue. Please email your abstract of no more than 250 words, accompanied by a brief bionote, to the organizers: - Rivke Jaffe, University of Amsterdam [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> - Francesca Pilo’, University of Amsterdam [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> The deadline for abstract submission is March 15.