[URBANTH-L]CFP: Spatial Justice (Paris, France)
Angela Jancius
jancius at ohio.edu
Sun Mar 4 12:11:56 EST 2007
Call for Papers
SPATIAL JUSTICE
an international interdisciplinary conference
March 12-14, 2008, University of Paris X-Nanterre, France
Proposal Deadline: April 30, 2007
With the support of :
Gecko Laboratory (Géographie Comparée des Suds et des Nords, EA 375, Paris X
University, France)
Mosaïques Research Group (UMR LOUEST, CNRS/ Paris X University /EAPVS,
France)
UMR 5600, Environnement, Ville, Sociétés, CNRS-Jean Moulin University (Lyon
III University, France)
CUBES Laboratory (Centre for Urban and Built Environment Studies, University
of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)
Dipartimento di Pianificazione, Università Iuav di Venezia (Italy)
UCLA Social Sciences Division (USA)
Abstracts from a wide range of disciplines and professional affiliations are
welcomed and contributions will be accepted in the form of presentations,
round tables and posters. Collective contributions will also be considered.
The international scientific committee of the conference will examine all
proposals in May 2007.
The debate on justice is crucial to democratic societies, at all scales. The
context of academic rejection of metanarrative theories and the relativism
associated with postmodern deconstruction has, however, undermined a rich
engagement with this topic for some time. This process has been reinforced
by the rise of various social movements (feminist, ecologist or
anti-racist.) as well as the development of multiculturalism which has meant
that a range of key political players have been confronted with differing
concepts of what is "just" and "unjust". At the same time, in a rather
vexing development, some ultra-liberal discourses are increasingly ignoring
the issue of social justice. Paradoxically, social protest movements,
deconstructivist intellectual movements and neo-liberal economics discourses
have converged to contest the idea of a universal justice. This context
forms the basis of our exploration of the notion of spatial justice.
Spatial justice is the ultimate goal of many planning policies. This idea
has held such sway that some have even argued that planning and the search
for spatial justice are equivalent . The diversity of definitions of
"justice" (and of the possible "social contracts" that legitimate them),
however, has meant that the political objectives of planning can be quite
different and even contradictory. The idea of spatial justice has been taken
for granted to the extent that it is rarely questioned (particularly since
the work of Anglo-American radical geographers in the 1970s-1980s) and it is
often only defined negatively through the denunciation of spatial
unfairness. It has become essential therefore that the question of spatial
justice be reopened and freshly critiqued.
Two contrasting concepts of justice have polarized the debate. On the one
hand, John Rawls defines justice as fairness. His theory of justice is not
strictly egalitarian, but assumes the intrinsic equality of the value of
each individual. It justifies inequalities on condition that they maximise
the share of the least-favored members of society. He claimed that this
theory, relying on a hypothetical and non-historical processual
demonstration, guaranteed universal principles of justice. This concept of
justice is based on the individual. On the other hand, communitarians have
focused their definition of social justice on communities, whose rights
precede those of individuals. Justice has yet another meaning for marxists,
who pursue the suppression of all socio-economic inequalities. All of these
concepts of justice, though, hold a common assumption that justice is about
socio-economic equality or inequality and aims to reduce, suppress or
appease socio-economic inequality. In the 1990s, however, the philosophical
reflection on justice underwent a radical shift, as demonstrated in the work
of Iris-Marion Young . This author dismisses the idea of a universal notion
of justice in favour of identifying the specific forms of injustice that
affect certain social groups. She argues that the socio-economic dimension
was not sufficient to define justice: fair politics should pursue the
suppression of any kind of oppression. The five faces of oppression as
characterized by Young were soon taken up by David Harvey who, in a famous
article, analyzes how Young's work could be applied to urban policy. Thus,
assuming a processual definition of justice rather than a structural one, a
new conception of social justice emerged, that was based on the recognition
and affirmation of difference. This in turn led to planning policies that
sought to ensure the rights of different identity groups.
The conference will be organized around the six main themes that are
presented in the following sections. The objective of the conference is to
open discussion from all intellectual quarters at a range of scales.
What is spatial justice?
Rather than attempting to build further metanarrative notions of justice, it
is essential that the question of what constitutes justice be examined.
Although the binary opposition of structural and processual is still
central, have new theoretical developments emerged, allowing for the
reformulation of the question of spatial justice? In this context, is it
fruitful to revisit the classical theories?
Even if it is ambiguous, polysemous and perhaps threatened, the concept of
justice remains an essential, mobilizing political lever that is understood
and practiced in the everyday lives of citizens. It is equally obvious that
social inequalities do exist and that they are generally spatialized. We
would like to focus the discussion on the interaction between space and
society and the question of scale (from the micro-scale of domestic spaces
to the grand scale of the global) is crucial. At which spatial and social
scales can we formulate these debates? How are these scales linked? At the
same time, this central question calls for an examination of representations
(how and at which territorial level do people create a sense of belonging)
and political negotiation.
Spatial justice and globalization
Does economic globalization lead to more socio-spatial inequalities and, if
so, at which scales? To what extent do these spatial inequalities amount to
injustice? The answer is not obvious, especially if viewed from an
historical perspective. Are globalization discourses an instrument to
justify and uphold inequities between different economies or is it possible
to ensure equity at the global scale despite the (increasing) differences
between countries and regions? Within this theme we will also examine the
impact of globalization discourses (on the necessity of global economic
competition, on multiculturalism.). Finally, does globalization present
opportunities for new forms of resistance and struggles for spatial justice
to emerge, especially at a global scale?
Spatial justice: identities, minorities
Young (1990) describes several forms of oppression which target particular
identity groups (minority groups). New forms of racism have constructed a
figure of the Other on cultural premises. The systemic violence associated
with the exclusion of these Others has a spatial dimension since frequently
each cultural group is assigned a particular territory. In many instances
these spatial dynamics may be less overt, for example, gender cannot be
analyzed in terms of residential segregation but, patterns of segregation
are nonetheless visible in the workplace or in terms of mobility. A spatial
approach does not merely entail a description of the distribution of
minorities in space, rather it enables an evaluation of how this
distribution is experienced. It then becomes possible to reflect on forms of
oppression which fall out of universalised notions of justice: positing that
all individuals are equal may in fact obscure many forms of identity-based
discrimination.
Environmental justice
"Environmental justice" emerged in the 1980's in North-American cities as
the spatial correlations between racial discrimination, socio-economic
exclusion, industrial pollution and vulnerability towards natural hazards
became more and more overt. In the poorer countries of the South, national
parks and other conflicts about natural resources have revealed the
ecological dimension of economic and political domination. As the global
ecological crisis has deepened, the emergence of the concept of sustainable
development has favoured a reflection on environmental equity. This concept
questions our ontological relationship to the world, and the possibility of
just policies which articulate with the needs of humanity - present and
future, local and global - and new forms of governance. As ecological
inequalities deepen, the politics of spatial ownership and control at
different scales has resulted in the co-existence of preserved spaces (for
the few) and zones of ecological exploitation. Could a reflection exploring
the relationships between ecological inequalities and justice contribute
towards establishing and building just environmental policies?
Spatial justice and segregation
Segregation has been widely discussed in the field of social sciences from a
range of theoretical perspectives, especially in geography. One of the key
unifying themes of this research (be it qualitative or quantitative) is that
segregation is inherently a spatial injustice. However, the link between
segregation and injustice should be examined more closely: is any
socio-spatial division of space - especially in cities - by definition
unjust? Both the injustice of the processes which produce segregation, and
the effects produced by segregation, should be challenged. In the same way
as we have questioned universalised notions of justice, the objective of the
socio-spatially mixed city, often considered as a "just city", must be
questioned: for instance, pre-industrial cities were much less segregated,
but were these more just than contemporary cities? Finally, does the
question of mobility require us to rethink the relationship between justice
and segregation?
What is a just territorial policy?
Is the function of public policies (planning, management.) to establish
spatial equity? Is their aim to treat all spaces equally? Are these issues
the pre-condition for- or even the definition of- spatial justice? Is a
"just" policy a policy which rebalances spatial inequalities, through some
forms of positive discrimination? Or, should "just" policies be
non-interventionist and allow spatial dynamics to balance processes such as
those of the market? If we question universalised claims to justice, is it
still possible or even desirable to build "just" and stable spatial
structures? Alternatively, should we focus on ways to establish flexible
regulation, with the aim of reducing spatial injustice in a responsive and
context driven manner, without privileging any particular (utopian) spatial
pattern? But, even if they can prove illusory, aren't the territorialized
images of the actions aiming towards justice a requirement of any action?
This questions the validity of the territorialisation of public policies
itself.
Conference organisers : F. Dufaux (Mosaïques-UMR LOUEST, University of Paris
X-Nanterre), P. Gervais-Lambony (Gecko, University of Paris X), S.
Lehman-Frisch (Mosaïques-UMR LOUEST, IUFM of Versailles), S. Moreau (Gecko
and Laboratoire Etude Comparée des Pouvoirs, University of Marne-la-Vallée),
M. Rubin (CUBES, University of the Witwatersrand).
Please send abstracts of no more than one page (in French or in English) to
the following e-mail address: Philippe.Gervais-Lambony at u-paris10.fr
Philippe Gervais-Lambony
GECKO Laboratory
University Paris 10 - Nanterre
200 avenue de la Republique
92001 Nanterre Cedex
FRANCE
Email: philippe.gervais-lambony at u-paris10.fr
Visit the website at http://www.justice-spatiale-2008.org/
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