CALL FOR PAPERS
AAG Boston, USA 15th-19th April 2008
Organisers: Julie MacLeavy, Bristol University and John Harrison,
Loughborough University
New State Spatialities
Geographical analyses of political economy have traditionally sought to
interrogate the scalar terrains of the contemporary state. Concrete
studies have probed the institution of Keynesian welfare states at a
primarily national scale, focusing in particular on the post-war economic
boom period, and their recent (although not always complete) succession by
post-national regimes, which may be characterised by Schumpterian economic
policies and workfarist social policies.
In such studies, scholars have asserted that spatial scale is deeply
intertwined with the successful coordination of political-economic
activity, which has led – in the field of political-economic geography at
least – to a broader focus on the ‘processes’ involved in the production
of spatial scale(s) and the associated geographies of rescaling.
Neil Brenner’s (2004) work, for instance, describes the emergence and
institutionalisation of ‘new state spaces’ in which the primacy once
afforded to the nation-state as the site and/or scale at which economic
management is conducted, social welfare delivered, and political subjects
are treated as national citizens is being challenged, and a new a new
territorial politics of economic development is emerging in and through a
series of transitions in the regulation and governance of contemporary
capitalism.
These sessions will enquire into the value of representing the spatiality
of the state through the framework employed by Brenner and other strategic-
relational state theorists in light of recent debates about the
conceptualisation of spaces/scales in human geography. These include:
- human geography with or without scale (cf. Jonas, 2006; Jones, J.P et
al. 2007, Marston et al., 2005);
- state rescaling (Brenner, 2004; Brenner et al., 2003) or beyond state
rescaling (Mansfield, 2005); and,
- non-territorial/networked/relational (Geografiska Annaler, 2004) or
territorial/ networked/relational conceptualisations of spatiality (Jones
and MacLeod, 2004)
We would welcome papers that attempt to understand the strategic interplay
of flows, processes, connections, structures, networks, agencies and
institutions in producing new strategic sites/spaces in the geography of
capitalism after-Fordism, as well as more provocative think-pieces that
challenge or defend the foundations upon which the framework of ‘new state
spaces’ has been constructed.
Potential topics/themes of interest might include (but are not limited to):
* Papers that interrogate what the state is/ask whether there is a ‘state’;
* Research which employs the framework of ‘new state spaces’ empirically;
* Perspectives on the need (or not) to recover the ground set by Brenner
following the relational turn and the scale debate;
* Theoretical interventions and/or empirical studies that seek to advance
new ways of conceptualising state spatiality.
Expressions of interest from potential contributors should be sent to
Julie MacLeavy ([log in to unmask]) and John Harrison
([log in to unmask]) in the form of an abstract acceptable to the AAG
(see http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/ 2008/papers.htm#abstracts) by
Friday 5th October 2007.
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