Call for Papers: 8^th International Conference of Critical Geography, 2019

19^th-23^rd April 2019

Athens, Greece

Theme: Urban Contestation

Panel: Everyday Politics of the Urban: Reconceptualising Social Movements

Panel Convenors: Raktim Ray, Spyridon Logothetis and Aditya Mohanty

The urban is essentially becoming the apostle for capital accumulation and subsequent dispossession of the people at the ‘margins of the state’. Margins’ can be conceptualised as sites for operationalisation of heterogeneous practices of conflict politics (Das and Poole, 2004). As a counter mechanism, people at the ‘margins of the state’ practice various forms of conflict politics to alter the hegemonic sociospatial relations. ‘The heterogeneity of practices can be identified in ‘ordinary spaces of negotiations’ (Anjaria, 2011) or ‘quite encroachment’ of urban spaces (Benjamin, 2008; Bayat, 2004) or through insurgency (Holston, 2009). These practices establish everyday politics as pivotal for ‘contentious politics’ which counter and unsettle hegemonic socio-spatial relations (Leitner et al., 2008; Scott, 1989). This panel aims to focus on everyday politics to reconceptualise social movements. By doing so, it unsettles the binary formation of revolutionary/ passive dichotomy of the politics of the people at the ‘margins of the state’ (Bayat, 2004). The panel also acknowledges the state as an active agent to reshape the contentious politics and aims for an engaged pluralism of understanding social movements. The panel welcomes papers from academics and activists on the following topics:

§  Everyday urban politics of negotiations, resistance and insurgency

§  Plurality of urban actors and spaces of participation

§  ICT, surveillance and everyday resistance in digital worlds

§  Counter politics of everyday state

§  Transversality and modalities of social movements

Please send the expression of interest/ abstracts of maximum 250 words by 29^th September 2018 to Raktim Ray ([log in to unmask]). The ICCG deadline is 30^th September 2018. All entries must contain a title, the name/s and email address/es of author/s and affiliation/s.

Further Readings:

Anjaria, J.S., 2011. Ordinary states: Everyday corruption and the politics of space in Mumbai. Am. Ethnol. 38, 58–72.

Bayat, A., 2003. Globalization and the Politics of the Informals in the Global South, in: AlSayyad, N. and Roy, A. (Eds.), Urban informality: Transnational perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia. Lexington Books, Lanham, pp.191-245.

Benjamin, S., 2008. Occupancy urbanism: Radicalizing politics and economy beyond policy and programs. Int. J. Urban Reg. Res. 32, 719–729.

Das, V., Poole, D., 2004. State and Its Margins: Comparative Ethnographies, in: Das, V., Poole, D. (Eds.), Anthropology in the Margins of the State. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 3–33.

Holston, J., 2009. Insurgent Citizenship in an Era of Global Peripheries. City Soc. 21, 245–267.

Leitner, H., Sheppard, E., Sziarto, K.M., 2008. The spatialities of contentious politics. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 33, 157–172.

Scott, J.C., 1989. Everyday Forms Of Resistance. Copenhagen J. Asian Stud. 4, 33–62.