** On behalf of Laura Junka-Aikio, [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> **
CALL FOR PAPERS
Cultural Studies of Extraction
A Special Issue for the journal Cultural Studies
Editors: Laura Junka-Aikio (University of Oulu, Finland) and Catalina Cortes-Severino (Universidad Javeriana, Colombia)
The aim of this special issue of Cultural Studies is to encourage cultural approaches to the study of the myriad of conflicts, struggles and other phenomena that have risen in response to the ongoing intensification and expansion of extractivist industries and forms of exploitation. In addition to expanding the potential meanings of extractivism, we seek to bring analytical attention on the variety of popular responses that this extractive moment is generating globally.
In the narrow sense, extractivism refers to mass-scale industrial extraction of natural resources but more recently, scholars have begun to view extractivism in a much broader sense, as an ideological construct and a paradigm of severe exploitation which is characteristic of contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism at large, and which permeates almost all aspects of the society. Likewise, whereas extractivism has, in the past, been associated with colonial divisions between the "core" and the "periphery", today its geographies are increasingly complex: for instance the mining boom is currently dividing communities and raising Indigenous resistance in Scandinavia, and in the UK and the USA, it is white middle-class communities faced with hydraulic fracturing that are now countering colonial extraction policies literally underneath their own houses. Meanwhile in the Global South, extractive industries and neoliberal land-based development projects are provoking unseen levels of forced displacement, environmental destruction, and social divisions and disintegration - as well as courageous and complex resistance from Indigenous, peasant and black communities that are most affected.
Its centrality to contemporary power notwithstanding, Cultural Studies as a discipline has failed to engage this extractive moment actively. In scholarly and public debates, extractivism is addressed predominantly through economic, environmentalist and developmentalist discourses, and hence its benefits and costs to the society are considered primarily in relation to statistical and quantitative data.
By calling for cultural approaches to the study of extractivism and its discontents, this special issue seeks to encourage broader exploration of the multiple consequences, meanings, implications, affects, everydayness and resistances that the current conjuncture of neoliberal globalization, intensive exploitation and subjectivity might conceal, and to support efforts to think past extractivism. How could Cultural Studies as a political project help us understand the epistemologial, ontological and political stakes of the extractive moment, and imagine alternative futures? If extractivism is understood as a dominant paradigm of exploitation rather than in reference to a limited set of specific industries, what does it mean in different contexts, and what are the sites through which it might be studied and examined? How are contemporary extractivisms experienced, lived and resisted transnationally and in particular locations, through the practices of everyday life, through cultural and social production, affects and through outright protests and political struggles? In what ways is extractivism and resistance to it reflected in popular culture and the arts? What does a Cultural Studies of the extractive moment in world politics look like?
Suggested paper themes include, but are not restricted to:
- Colonialism, postcolonialism, and geographies of contemporary
extractivisms
- Extractivism as an ideology and a discursive formation
- Popular and cultural histories of extractivism
- Education and pedagogies of anti- or post-extractivism
- Extractivist exploitation and the mediations of class, gender,
ethnicity and race
- Artistic resistance and alliances against the extractive industries
- Other knowledges and alternatives to cultures of extraction
- Extractivism in urban spaces and cultures
- Branding extractivisms through popular culture
- Extractivism, gender and the politics of the body
- The cultural consequences of the extractive boom in particular
locations and/or regions
- Landscapes, soundscapes and other "scapes" of extraction
- Extractivism and time
- Extractivism, everyday life and subjectivities
- Alternative ecologies and culture-nature relationships
- Anti-extractivist resistances and neoliberalism
- Extractivism, translatability of local struggles, and transnational
resistance
- Academic extraction and appropriation of Indigenous, traditional and
other knowledges
In addition to academic articles (up to 9000 words), we welcome warmly a range of other contributions, such as visual essays, book reviews and reviews of artistic and other cultural productions that relate to the topics of this issue.
Please send preliminary abstracts of approximately 500 words, together with a short bio, to BOTH special issue editors by 13th April 2015. Also all general inquiries regarding the special issue should be directed to the issue editors at corteseverino(at)gmail.com<mailto:[log in to unmask]> (Catalina Cortes-Severino), and laura.junka-aikio(at)oulu.fi<mailto:[log in to unmask]> (Laura Junka-Aikio). The submission deadline for the final article manuscripts is 31 December 2015.
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