[URBANTH-L]CFP: Spaces of Enclosure, AAG 2007

Colin McFarlane colin.mcfarlane at durham.ac.uk
Mon Oct 23 10:24:14 EDT 2006


Apologies for cross-posting...

With the deadline fast approaching, we have space for one or two
contributors in a sessions entitled 'Spaces of Enclosure' at the annual
Association of American Geographers (AAG) conference in San Francisco.
The session seeks to encourage dialogue between Geographers and
Anthropologists, and is linked to an 'author meet critics' panel session
on James Ferguson's 'Global Shadows'...

 

Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, San
Francisco, April 17-21, 2007

'Spaces of Enclosure: Neoliberalism-Modernity-Violence'

Organisers: Dr. Alex Jeffrey, Newcastle University; Dr. Colin McFarlane,
Durham University; Dr. Alex Vasudevan, University of Nottingham.

Building on recent critical scholarship by authors such as Retort
(2005), James Ferguson (2006) and Brennan and Ganguly (2006), this
session will explore the inter-articulation of neo-liberal norms and a
resurgent and violent form of geo-politics through the rubric of
'enclosure'.  'Enclosure' serves as an appropriately labile
historico-geographical formation that
speaks not only to the vagaries of primitive accumulation but also to
the recent recrudescence of an aggrandized mode of statist violence.
This echoes Retort's (2005) conception of 'enclosure' as the
'disembedding of basic elements of the species life-world from the
extraordinary matrix of social relations -- constraints, understandings,
checks and balances, rules of
succession [and] kinds of communal sanction against the exploiter'.
Consequently, we believe that this is a crucial moment to identify,
critique and resist acts of enclosure, and the violent modernity through
which such practices are formulated, rationalised and reproduced.

In order to explore this relationship between neoliberalism, modernity
and violence, we are looking to assemble a range of theoretically and/or
empirically sophisticated papers that engage with the notion of
'enclosure'.  As an indication of the potential themes of the session,
papers could:

- Explore the relationship between contemporary geo-political discourse
and primitive accumulation;
- Empirically illustrate the multiple sites and scales of 'enclosure'
including, for example, the role of bio-politics as a technology of
'enclosure';
- Engage historically and/or geographically with 'enclosure' as so many
habitations of the predicament of modernity;
- Re-examine 'enclosure' as a contingent and unstable set of practices
whose efficacy is subject to various forms of resistance. In so doing,
encouraging feminist, post-structural or antiracist critiques of
enclosure;
-  Explore the micropractices through which 'enclosure' comes to be
expressed, consolidated, and contested.

Please direct any enquiries to Alex (alex.jeffrey at ncl.ac.uk), Alex
(Alexander.Vasudevan at nottingham.ac.uk) and Colin
(colin.mcfarlane at durham.ac.uk).  Please send abstracts by November 8th.

Dr. Colin McFarlane

Lecturer in Human Geography

Department of Geography

Durham University

Science Laboratories

South Road

Durham

DH1 3LE

 

Tel: +44 (0)191 334 1959

Fax: +44 (0)191 334 1801

Email: colin.mcfarlane at durham.ac.uk

 

Dr. Alex Jeffrey
Lecturer in Human Geography
The School of Geography, Politics and Sociology
Newcastle University
The Daysh Building
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
NE1 7RU

Dr. Alex Vasudevan
School of Geography
The University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham
NG7 2RD

 

 



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