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CALL FOR PAPERS: RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2018, Cardiff, 28-31 August 2018 Abstract submission deadline 14th Feb From informal to formal housing: analysing interactions between space, memory, and identity through lived experiences of the settlers Using place as an analytical construct, the session aims at understanding lived experiences of the settlers. During the last few decades, there has been an emphasis on assigning land titles and homeownership to the poor (c.f. de Sotto, 2000). Despite shortcomings with the tenure security argument (c.f. Mahadevia, 2010; Fernandes, 2002), a growing shortages in housing for the poor and an availability of new forms of external investments (Lemanski et. al., 2017) has resulted in a proliferation of state-driven mass-housing programmes in the cities of the global south (Croese et.al., 2016). In the context of these developments, the session aims at discussing the interactions between space, identity and memory. In particular, the session welcomes studies that investigate the following questions. 1) How meanings and practices are produced and consumed in space. This not only involves understanding creation of meanings in place, it also necessitates understanding practices that do not conform to the expectations of place i.e. the role of (formal) place in constructing moral geographies (Cresswell, 1999). For instance, the role of repetitive mundane every activity - everyday practices (de Certeau, 1984) - in creation of meanings and that of formal housing in proliferation of certain (middle-class) values (Ferguson and Gupta, 2002, p.989; Erwin, 2017, p.86) has been widely discussed. 2) How production of memories and places are inherently interlinked. For instance, certain feature of informal housing such as auto-construction mechanism (Holston, 2008), social networks, participation, solidarity, social trust, social control, and also the material conditions, are also associated with individual and collective memories. Such memories, in turn, affect how settlers experience the formal housing. Salcedo (2010), Mosselson (2017), and Charlton and Meth (2017), among others, reveal diverse narratives that represent both moments of change and possibility as well as difficulty, inequality, and marginalisation with the formal housing. Such narratives are shaped by the (current) use of place and by (past) memories (Jones and Garde-Hansen, 2012). 3) What role does place construction (and maintenance of boundaries) plays in the creation of gendered identities. For instance, Pratt’s (1999) research with domestic workers criticises the notion of ‘home’ that conveys an image of a peaceful and meaningful refuge by bringing in issues of gendered experience and power relations at home. Similarly, Charlton and Meth (2017), in their research on state housing in Johannesburg and Durban bring out issues of domestic violence and intra-family violence. 4) And lastly, how does place affects citizenship practices. Formal housing plays a significant role in shaping ideas of citizenship – through state recognition, recognition of political parties and that of city authorities. Salcedo (2010), and Charlton and Meth (2017), for instance, share evidences of a politics of recognition in the state-subsidised housing. References: 1) Charlton, S. & Meth, P. (2017). Lived experiences of state housing in Johannesburg and Durban. Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa 93(1), 91-115. Transformation. Retrieved February 6, 2018, from Project MUSE database. 2) Cresswell, T 1999, Place : A Short Introduction, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, Chicester. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [6 February 2018]. 3) Croese, S, LR Cirolia and N Graham (2016) ‘Towards Habitat III: confronting the disjuncture between global policy and local practice on Africa’s “challenge of slums”’, Habitat International 53. 4) de Certeau, M., 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984th ed. University of California Press, Berkley, Los Angeles and London. 5) De Soto, H (2000) The Mystery of Capital. New York: Basic Books. 6) Erwin, K. (2017). ‘You make a home out if it, you make a place of it’: some unexpected narratives from a social housing estate in Durban. Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa 93(1), 68-90. Transformation. Retrieved February 6, 2018, from Project MUSE database. 7) Ferguson, J., Gupta, A., 2002. Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality. American Ethnologist 29, 981–1002. 8) Fernandes, E (2002) ‘The influence of de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital’, Land Lines 14(1) 9) Jones, O., Garde-Hansen, J., Hansen, J.G.-, 2012. Geography and memory : explorations in identity, place and becoming. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire. 10) Lemanski, C. & Charlton, S. & Meth, P. "Living in state housing: expectations, contradictions and consequences." Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, vol. 93 no. 1, 2017, pp. 1-12. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/trn.2017.0000 11) Mahadevia, D. (2010), Tenure Security and Urban Social Protection Links: India. IDS Bulletin, 41: 52–62. doi:10.1111/j.1759-5436.2010.00152.x 12) Mosselson, A. (2017). ‘It’s not a place I like, but I can live with it’: ambiguous experiences of living in state-subsidised rental housing in inner-city Johannesburg. Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa93(1), 142-169. Transformation. Retrieved February 6, 2018, from Project MUSE database. 13) Pratt (1999). Geographies of Identity and Difference: Marking Boundaries in Massey, D., Allen, J. and Sarre, P. eds. Human Geography Today Polity, Cambridge 151-168. 14) Salcedo, R. 2010. The Last Slum: Moving from Illegal Settlements to Subsidized Home Ownership in Chile. Urban Affairs Review 46, 90–118. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087410368487 Please send expressions of interest/abstracts (250-300 words) and a title by the 14th of February 2018 to: Vidya Sagar Pancholi ([log in to unmask]) Best wishes, Vidya Sagar Pancholi PhD Student, Urban Studies and Planning The University of Sheffield, Teaching Fellow, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London