[URBANTH-L]CFP: AAA Panel on Globalization and "Risk"

[Anne Galvin]

Hi All,

We are in the process of putting together a panel for the upcoming AAA
meetings based roughly on the abstract pasted into this message below my
signature.

If you are interested in participating in this panel, please send us a
paper abstract as soon as possible and by March 29th, at latest. 
Abstracts can be sent to my e-mail address (Galva835 at newschool.edu) and
I will then share them with Suzanne.

Thanks and we look forward to hearing from you.  

Best, 
Anne Galvin, Ph.D., New School for Social Research and
Suzanne Simon, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor, School for
International Training

Panel Abstract:

In the contemporary global moment, the withdrawal of
> national states from the public sphere has become
> commonplace as neoliberal ideologies with concomitant
> social policies and economic measures have been
> sweepingly adopted. Under these reforms, the state has
> been forced by international monetary institutions
> such as the IMF and the World Bank, or in the name of
> "global competitiveness," to withdraw provision of a
> social safety net previously provided to citizens by
> various state based regimes including populism, social
> democracies, communism and socialism. Economic
> controls such as import substitution are now, under
> the shadow of free market capitalism, considered
> unacceptable forms of "protectionism".  As the social
> security provisions of previous decades are
> systematically dismantled, or disintegrate, it has
> become common to witness citizens, civil society or
> "traditional" networks step into the public sphere to
> assume the burden of care abandoned by the state. In
> some cases, this produces notions of a vibrant "civil
> society" and in other cases, it looks like a
> resurgence of much celebrated "tradition."  Practicing
> Social Scientists have recently directed significant
> energy toward establishing methods to identify and
> quantify "risk" indicators for populations in jeopardy
> of slipping between the cracks of these privatized
> welfare measures.  Here, the phrase "at risk" has
> become an identifying label for marginalized segments
> of national populations who are usually targeted for
> economic and social self improvement through
> "training" or reincorporation into the general
> population via the establishment of new types of
> "community."    In this session, we seek to
> investigate these changes in the distribution of care,
> as the "redistribution", or possibly, "consolidation",
> of "risk" onto populations saddled with the burdens of
> scarcity as national citizenries are retooled as
> "entrepreneurs of themselves."