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Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, San Francisco, April 17-21, 2007
'Spaces of Enclosure: Neoliberalism-Modernity-Violence'
Organisers: Dr. Alex Jeffrey, Newcastle University; Dr. Colin McFarlane, The Open University; Dr. Alex Vasudevan, University of Nottingham.
Building on recent critical scholarship by authors such as Retort (2005), James Ferguson (2006) and Brennan and Ganguly (2006), this session will explore the inter-articulation of neo-liberal norms and a resurgent and violent form of geo-politics through the rubric of 'enclosure'. 'Enclosure' serves as an appropriately labile historico-geographical formation that speaks not only to the vagaries of primitive accumulation but also to the recent recrudescence of an aggrandized mode of statist violence. This echoes Retort's (2005) conception of 'enclosure' as the 'disembedding of basic elements of the species life-world from the extraordinary matrix of social relations -- constraints, understandings, checks and balances, rules of succession [and] kinds of communal sanction against the exploiter'. Consequently, we believe that this is a crucial moment to identify, critique and resist acts of enclosure, and the violent modernity through which such practices are formulated, rationalised and reproduced.
In order to explore this relationship between neoliberalism, modernity and violence, we are looking to assemble a range of theoretically and/or empirically sophisticated papers that engage with the notion of 'enclosure'. As an indication of the potential themes of the session, papers could:
-- Explore the relationship between contemporary geo-political discourse and primitive accumulation;
-- Empirically illustrate the multiple sites and scales of 'enclosure' including, for example, the role of bio-politics as a technology of 'enclosure';
-- Engage historically and/or geographically with 'enclosure' as so many habitations of the predicament of modernity;
-- Re-examine 'enclosure' as a contingent and unstable set of practices whose efficacy is subject to various forms of resistance. In so doing, encouraging feminist, post-structural or antiracist critiques of enclosure;
-- Explore the micropractices through which 'enclosure' comes to be expressed, consolidated, and contested.
Please direct any enquiries to Alex ([log in to unmask]), Alex ([log in to unmask]) and Colin ([log in to unmask]). Please send abstracts by October 16th.
Dr. Colin McFarlane
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Geography
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
Dr. Alex Jeffrey
Lecturer in Human Geography
The School of Geography, Politics and Sociology
Newcastle University
The Daysh Building
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
NE1 7RU
Dr. Alex Vasudevan
School of Geography
The University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham
NG7 2RD
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