CALL FOR PAPERS
Institute of Australian Geographers and New Zealand Geographical Society Joint Conference
30 June - 2 July 2014, Melbourne
Session title:
Surplus populations and the city
Organisers:
Dr Geoffrey DeVerteuil, Cardiff University, UK ([log in to unmask])
Dr Tom Baker, University of Newcastle, Australia ([log in to unmask])
Outline:
Of late, critical geographers have been turning their attention to Marx's concept of 'surplus populations', an unfortunate but increasingly necessary term (McIntyre, 2011). Surplus populations emerge from market and state failures to absorb them; they are unable to fully avail themselves of a consistent or living wage, and at the very bottom reaches, suffer from wagelessness and pauperism. Recent research has focused on their spatiality and everyday survival in the face of purported Agambenian abandonment to bare life and neoliberal exclusion (Li, 2010; Evans, 2011; Tyner, 2013). This proposed session is immersed in what Heynen (2006: 920) calls the "really radical geography", a "back to basics" approach about "recognizing that life depends on meeting material basic needs like food, water, shelter, etc.". One cannot transform the world without first securing - and ultimately anchoring, defending and protecting - the "material foundations necessary for human survival" (921); feminist scholars on social reproduction have been well aware of this for decades, but it is time to connect this literature explicitly to surplus populations, and especially their conspicuous visibility in cities.
We are seeking conceptually-driven, empirically-based papers that might cover the following topics:
. Work precarity and migrants
. Homelessness
. Geographies of urban poverty survival and wagelessness
. The governance and management of urban poverty
. The role of mediating and boundary institutions - the voluntary sector, informal community support
. Austerity urbanism, workfare state, carceral-assistential state
Abstract submission information:
Please submit abstracts to the conference website (http://iag2014.asnevents.com.au/) and indicate that you wish to be part of the 'Surplus populations and the city' session. Abstract submission opens shortly, with early bird registration closing 1st March (see website). Feel free to contact the session organisers if you have any queries.
References:
Evans, J. (2011) Exploring the (bio)political dimensions of voluntarism and care in the city: The case of a 'low barrier' emergency shelter. Health and Place 24-32.
Heynen, N. (2006) 'But it's alright, Ma, it's Life, and Life Only': Radicalism as Survival. Antipode 916-929.
Li, T. (2010) To make live or let die? Rural dispossession and the protection of surplus populations. In The Point is to Change it: Geographies of Hope and Survival in an Age of Crisis, eds. Castree, N. et al, 66-91.
McIntyre M (2011) Race, surplus population and the Marxist theory of imperialism. Antipode 43: 1489-1515.
Tyner, J. (2013) Population geography I: Surplus populations. Progress in Human Geography 37(5) : 701-711.
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