Waiting
Call for Papers for the 2009 Association of American Geographers Annual
Meeting, March 22-27, Las Vegas
Organizers:
Craig Jeffrey, University of Washington
Geraldine Pratt, University of British Columbia
We all wait. As Henri Lefebvre argued, waiting is a prominent feature of
modern everyday life. In the second half of the twentieth century, in
particular, the increasing regimentation and bureaucratization of time in
the West, combined with the growing reach of the state created multiple
settings - such as bus stands, clinics and offices - in which people were
compelled to wait (Moran 2008). Papers in this proposed session might
examine these everyday spaces of waiting, including the politics that
emerges in places such as the queue (Corbridge 2003). We are also interested
in papers that consider the apparent proliferation of contexts in which
people wait for years or whole lifetimes. Of course, there is nothing new
about prolonged waiting. But Bayart (2007) has persuasively argued that varied populations are increasingly being forced to live in limbo. Papers in this session might discuss elite, subaltern or middle class experiences of chronic waiting; the causes of prolonged waiting; pathways out of limbo; vernacular conceptualizations of waiting; and spatialized cultural, social and political projects that emerge within communities in wait.
These foci should not be seen as restrictive, and we welcome papers from
scholars who approach waiting from other perspectives and contributions from
people who had not previously thought of their research in terms of waiting
but who are interested in shared discussion around this idea. For example,
papers might also investigate how waiting might be theorized within
geography and related disciplines (e.g. Bissell 2007), the limits of waiting
as a basis for reflecting on politics and subjectivity formation, historical
geographies of waiting, waiting as a methodology, architectures of waiting,
or waiting and academic professional practice (Bourdieu 2000).
Please send a title and if possible also a short abstract to Craig Jeffrey
at [log in to unmask] by October 4th if you are interested in this topic,
and please forward this message to others who might be interested.
Dr. Craig Jeffrey
Associate Professor in Geography and International Studies
University of Washington
Department of Geography Box 353550
Seattle, WA 98195
USA
Phone 001 206 543 5870
Fax 001 206 543 3313
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