Call for Papers
Urbanism and marginality in the Global South
AAG Annual Meeting in New Orleans, April 10-14, 2018
Organizer: Aparna Parikh, Penn State
Chair: Azita Ranjbar, Ohio State
Discussant: Kate Derickson, University of Minnesota
Deadline for Papers/ Panel Proposals: October 13, 2017
Sponsoring Specialty Groups: Urban Geography Specialty Group, Asian Geography Specialty Group, Geographic Perspectives on Women
This session will investigate relationships between neoliberal urbanization and marginal labor in the Global South. The production and maintenance of neoliberal spaces depends on a variegated labor force, large numbers of whom are marginalized and rendered invisible in narratives of modernization. This session aims to focus on research examining narratives of differentially marginalized workforces to reveal contradictions within processes of neoliberal urbanization in numerous global contexts.
Feminist scholars have long examined intimate, everyday experiences as starting points to unravel the workings of global capitalism (see, for example Wright 2006; Katz 2001; Peake and Rieker 2013). These examinations suggest that “not only do global processes enact themselves on local ground but local processes and small scale actors might be seen as the very fabric of globalization” (Freeman 2001 in Mountz and Hyndman 2006, emphasis in original). This session seeks to focus on research analyzing experiences of this “fabric” to reveal the embedded particularity of neoliberalism in a certain location (Brenner and Theodore 2002), as well as its implications for other contexts. Possible themes for this session include, but are not limited to:
Through these themes, this session hopes to investigate how everyday processes of marginalization can illuminate the workings of global structures of oppression; as enacted through capitalist, patriarchal and racist systems.
Please email enquiries and abstracts (250 words) to Aparna Parikh ([log in to unmask]) by October 13. Authors will be notified by October 20, and must register for the conference and submit their abstracts through the AAG website by the October 25 deadline to be added to the paper session.
Works cited:
Brenner, Neil, and Nik Theodore. 2002. “Cities and the Geographies of ‘actually Existing Neoliberalism.’” Antipode 34 (3): 349–379.
Derickson, Kate D. 2015. “Urban Geography I: Locating Urban Theory in the ‘urban Age.’” Progress in Human Geography 39 (5): 647–657.
Herod, Andrew, and Melissa W. Wright. 2002. Geographies of Power: Placing Scale. Blackwell Malden, MA.
Katz, Cindi. 2001. “Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction.” Antipode 33 (4): 709–728.
McFarlane, Colin, and Jennifer Robinson. 2012. “Introduction—experiments in Comparative Urbanism.” Urban Geography 33 (6): 765–773.
Mountz, Alison, and Jennifer Hyndman. 2006. Feminist Approaches to the Global Intimate. JSTOR.
Peake, Linda, and Martina Rieker. 2013. “Rethinking Feminist Interventions Into the Urban.” Interrogating Feminist Understandings of the Urban, 1.
Pratt, Geraldine, and Victoria Rosner. 2012. The Global and the Intimate: Feminism in Our Time. Columbia University Press. http://books.google.com/books?
Rao, Vyjayanthi. 2006. “Slum as Theory: The South/Asian City and Globalization.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30 (1): 225–32. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2006.
Roy, Ananya. 2005. “Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning.” Journal of the American Planning Association 71 (2): 147–58. doi:10.1080/01944360508976689.
Roy, Ananya, and Aihwa Ong. 2011. Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global. Vol. 41. John Wiley & Sons.
Varley, Ann. 2013. “Postcolonialising Informality?” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 31 (1): 4–22. doi:10.1068/d14410.
Wright, Melissa. 2006. Disposable Women and Other Myths of Globalization. London: Taylor and Francis.