Call for papers:
Geographical perspectives on anti-racism
Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting April 17-21, 2007,
San Francisco.
Organisers: Peter Geoghegan (University of Edinburgh) and David Howard
(University of Edinburgh)
Scholarship on the social construction of race has highlighted ‘the
relational and situated construction of ethnic and racial identities’
and undermined essentialised notions of biological difference (Nash,
2003). Through such critical engagement this work has provided powerful
arguments against racist discourse and practice. However, racism, and
racial discrimination, remains an everyday part of people’s lives in
contemporary society. Efforts to address these issues take a number of
forms and operate at a number of levels. Public policy and legislation
aimed at combating racial discrimination and inequality has been
Introduced in many societies. Beyond government structures and policies
anti-racism operates in, and animates, the voluntary and community sector
and grassroots organisations. While political leaders may proclaim the
value of diversity and the social and economic benefits of armonious ‘race
relations’, grassroots political activists are mobilizing around ‘race’
and racial discrimination, while larger NGOs like Shelter and Barnardos
include race relations within their remit. Despite the rise of
Islamophobia and hostility to new migration flows in Western societies,
even far-right parties reject the term racist and the myth of historical
opposition to racism has emerged as part of the national imaginary of many
modern nation states. The narrative of Britain’s fight against fascism and
the abolition of slavery in the US have become familiar tropes.
The term ‘anti-racism’ has multiple, and often contested meanings but
still retains some descriptive utility. Anti-racism ‘operates in a wide
arena’ (Lloyd, 2002), in a multitude of spaces and places and through a
variety of different mediums and the importance of a geographical
engagement with these spaces has been highlighted (Bonnett, 2000. However,
there has been a lack of geographical understanding of how, where and why
anti-racism develops in different ways in different places. This session
seeks to address this concern by bringing together empirical and
Theoretical engagements with the range of discourses and practices which
might broadly be termed anti-racist.
Papers could include, but are not limited to:
-Anti-racist activists and spaces of alternative politics.
-The historical and contemporary relationship between discourses of
anti-racism and nationalism.
-Voluntary and community sector programmes
-Politics of recognition and the relationship between anti-racism and
identity politics.
-The politics of consultation.
-Race Relations and public policy/institutional practice.
-Critical multiculturalism and anti-racism.
-Migration, mobilities and emerging spaces of anti-racist practice.
-Anti-racism in 'non-Western' contexts.
Please send a proposed title and abstract by Monday October 31st, 2006 to
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Full details of the conference can be found at
http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/SF2007/index.cfm.
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