Arctic Sacrifice Zones, CFP 2015 Nordic Geography Meeting, Tallinn, Estonia
PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY * APOLOGIES FOR CROSS POSTING* We are looking for one or two more abstracts for consideration in the following paper session at next summer's (June 15-19) Nordic Geographer's Meeting (NGM) in Tallinn, Estonia (Meeting Announcement attached). The deadline for abstract submission is Thursday, November 20th. Because time is of the essence, if you are interested we would ask that you please BOTH: 1) contact myself (Alec Brownlow, cbrow...@depaul.edumailto:cbrow...@depaul.edu) and/or Siri Veland (siri_vel...@brown.edumailto:siri_vel...@brown.edu) with your idea and/or abstract AND 2) upload your abstract at the following website (https://www.frens.info/index.php), identifying the below session as the appropriate landing spot. Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you. Our session's cfp appears below. Best, Alec Brownlow * Narratives of Sacrifice and (In-)Security in the North Organizers: Dr. Siri Veland (Environmental Change Initiative, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA) Dr. Alec Brownlow (Dept. of Geography, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA) The 'sacrifice zone' is a rhetorical trope coined in U.S. energy and national security policies during the Cold War to identify geographies of nuclear testing and ruin; it has since become a label for those places, communities, and landscapes that have been abandoned, ruined, or abused in the pursuit of some ostensibly 'greater good'. In state political discourse, the expression serves as a justifying narrative, whereby 'sacrifice' empowers, gives moral authority to, and foments public approval of those political institutions and economic agencies capable of ecological and social devastation on a massive scale. At the same time, the sacrifice zone is part and parcel to an imperialist agenda of economic, political, and cultural hegemony - one that is tolerant of, if tested by, the administration of state-approved violence towards its own population, landscapes, and resources. This may be particularly relevant in Nordic contexts, where narratives of sacrifice are increasingly embedded and reflected within energy, climate, and national security politics and rhetoric. This session seeks contributions that investigate the relationship between sacrifice and security policies, their nexus in processes of land use change, and critically examine the place of sacrifice zones in the North. * Alec Brownlow, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Geography DePaul University 990 W. Fullerton Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60304 Phone: 773.325.7876 Fax: 773.325.4590
EGSG cfp postings for AAG
Dear Professor Olds: It seems my access/email address to the EGSG is no-longer working or is obsolete (ECONOMICGEOGRAPHY-L@LISTSERV.UCONN.EDUmailto:ECONOMICGEOGRAPHY-L@LISTSERV.UCONN.EDU). Is this the case? In any case, I would like to post two cfps for the 2014 AAG to the EGSG listserv. May I send those to you; or, alternatively, will you please provide me with the correct listserv address? Many thanks Alec Brownlow ** Alec Brownlow Associate Professor DePaul University Department of Geography 990 W Fullerton Avenue Chicago IL 60614 773.325.7876 Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling ... (Melville)
CFP 2014 AAG - Sacrifice Security Discourse
*Apologies for Multiple Cross-Listings* Call for Papers. 2014 Annual Meeting of the Assoc. of American Geographers, Tampa, Florida. April 8-12, 2014 The Place of Sacrifice in Security Discourse and Geography Alec Brownlow, DePaul University, Department of Geography Harold Perkins, Ohio University, Department of Geography Sacrifice - of people, places, and things - is part and parcel to security geopolitics. Indeed, to a great degree, we in the west have come to expect security, widely conceptualized, to come with attendant costs. That is, a sacrifice whose destruction or loss, though perhaps publicly bemoaned, is ultimately and tacitly consented to by that same public as appropriate or necessary for the survival or perpetuation of some normatively derived, culturally identifiable and hegemonic greater good. Consider, for example, the nuclear 'sacrifice' of the U.S. inter-desert west and southwest - its communities, its resources, its landscapes, its social and ecological history - during the Cold War. The destruction by the state of this interior region - identified, labeled, and packaged as a 'national sacrifice zone' by the U.S. Department of Defense - was marketed by the state and consented to by a fearful and anxious public as a necessary and acceptable cost to keep the external threats of the Soviet Union and global nuclear holocaust at bay. Security seems, thus, a powerful political and ideological discourse; one that not only can demand and justify sacrifice, loss, and destruction (often at a tremendous spatial scale, human and environmental cost) but, indeed, conditions a culture of consent among the wider public; a consent, that is, to the sacrifice of others if not necessarily a consent to be sacrificed one's self. Security is a discourse that is both enabled by and dependent upon the exploitation of an imagined community that is itself socially constructed around and motivated by some perceived shared mutual interest or identity (e.g., nationalism, lifestyle, ideology); the consent to sacrifice largely stems from a fear that this interest or identity is vulnerable - a fear fomented by security narratives directly. Insofar as security narratives have multiplied and become increasingly diverse since the end of the Cold War and the global spread of a neoliberal political economy, an exploration into the geopolitics of security and the geographies and spaces of sacrifice is both timely and urgent. The purpose of this paper session is to more deeply explore and develop theory around the apparent relationship between security and sacrifice and its growing influence over social, political, economic, and environmental geographies at all scales. Our goal is not simply to identify examples of security through sacrifice, but to explore their dialectical tendencies at multiple scales, in diverse contexts, and in all of its socio-spatial complexity. For example: · What are the scalar implications for sacrifice under different security narratives and regimes? How, for example, do security discourses at national, global, regional, or urban scales translate into or correspond with the scale of any accompanying or proposed sacrifice? · How do security and sacrifice work dialectically to construct scale? · What are the nature and the geography of consent to sacrifice? How are these constructed? How are they resisted? · How is the security-sacrifice relationship taking shape and/or manifesting itself under different security regimes and narratives - for example, climate security, energy security, environmental security, border security, identity security, etc.? · What is the contingent nature of the security-sacrifice relationship across space and over time? · How has the security-sacrifice relationship transformed under neoliberalism? · What is the institutional structure and identity of respective security discourses and how do these influence the politics and identities of sacrifice? · Among different security discourses, how is sacrifice enabled and made legitimate? What identities, communities, and/or sensibilities are appealed to? · How are 'the sacrificed' determined, framed, and justified? How are they 'othered' as appropriate and/or normative sacrificial subjects under different security discourses and regimes? · How are the 'spared' determined, framed, and justified? How are they positioned, and how do they position themselves, vis-à-vis 'the sacrificed'? · What, who, and where are the normative sacrificial subjects under different security regimes? If you are interested in participating in this session, please notify us (cbrow...@depaul.edu or perki...@ohio.edu) of your interest and tentative title as soon as possible, and send an abstract by October 31st. Accepted participants will then be expected to register and submit their abstracts online
CFP 2014 AAG - Theorizing Sacrifice in Geography
*Apologies for Multiple Cross-Listings* Call for Papers: AAG Meeting, April 8-12, 2014 Session Title: Putting the Sacrifice in Sacrifice Zones Organizers: Alec Brownlow, Dept. of Geography, DePaul University, cbrow...@depaul.edu; Harold Perkins, Dept. of Geography, Ohio University, perki...@ohio.edu Sacrifice zones are increasingly well-documented, yet persistently under-theorized. Typical accounts of sacrifice zones include industrial, extractive, or military activities that render certain locations dangerous for communities who do not reap the rewards of those damaging activities. Occupants made to suffer are predominantly ethnic and racial minorities, though increasingly there is awareness in environmental justice studies that sacrifice zones are also correlated with lower class white communities, too. While the primary scale at which sacrifice is documented is the region, areas as small as individual urban neighborhoods are also considered sacrificed. Thus sacrifice as a spatial concept includes everything on a scalar continuum from something as large and nebulous as Appalachia to something as small and specific as the Manchester neighborhood in Houston, Texas. A common narrative throughout these varying accounts is the idea that human health and environmental quality in individualized contexts are 'given up' for the betterment of some much larger whole, often society or the economy broadly defined. Examples include energy production, jobs, economic expansion, and militarization. These are but a few of the reasons why a 'few people in some far flung location' are harmed in the name of 'progress for everyone'. Certainly these kinds of accounts of sacrifice zones have been crucial to the success of the environmental justice movement and have provided those who study environmental justice in academia much to consider. However, in this paper session we seek to build on these contributions to expand our understanding of the geographies of sacrifice. Specifically, we are keen to include papers in this session that further theorize the notion of sacrifice in relation to the spatiality of sacrifice zones. Rather than a flat ontology of sacrifice zones as bounded/discreet regions, this session is aimed at elaborating how sacrifice is produced, legitimated, contested, and even de-centered discursively and materially through space and time. In other words, how is sacrifice made spatially explicit through the everyday and extraordinary events that unfold and make up our lives in a predominantly capitalist world. In keeping, we seek papers that push beyond the commonly understood spatialities of sacrifice and in so doing elucidate how the notion of sacrifice pervades our existence and how its specter is imbued in commonsense notions of our world and our place in it. By extension we are interested in papers that explore how the notion of sacrifice is constitutive of, and potentially subversive to, hegemonic socio-political formations under capitalism. Theoretically innovative topics are especially welcome. Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to: 1. Sacrifice and the (laboring, sick, gendered) bodily/family scale 2. Sacrifice and its role in the formation of capitalist hegemony; and/or sacrifice and the struggle toward non-capitalist counter-hegemonies 3. Sacrifice and (social, political, cultural) identity 4. Considerations of sacrifice as a multi-scalar process of production and consumption 5. Labor politics in relation to the concept of sacrifice. 6. The 'everyday' in relation to sacrifice/ living in a sacrifice zone 7. Sacrifice and the exercise of state power (military, economic expansion, etc) 8. Collective versus individualized notions of sacrifice and their political import. 9. Sacrifice in relation to various forms of environmental governance. 10. Sacrifice, sovereignty, and bare life If you are interested in participating in this session, please notify us (cbrow...@depaul.edu or perki...@ohio.edu) of your interest and tentative title as soon as possible, and send an abstract by October 31st. Accepted participants will then be expected to register and submit their abstracts online at the AAG website by to November 15th, 2014 so there is sufficient time to register the session. ** Alec Brownlow Associate Professor DePaul University Department of Geography 990 W Fullerton Avenue Chicago IL 60614 773.325.7876 Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling ... (Melville)
Putting the Sacrifice in Sacrifice Zones, 2014 AAG CFP
*Apologies for Cross-Postings* Call for Papers: AAG Meeting, April 8-12, 2014 Session Title: Putting the Sacrifice in Sacrifice Zones Organizers: Alec Brownlow, Dept. of Geography, DePaul University, cbrow...@depaul.edumailto:cbrow...@depaul.edu; Harold Perkins, Dept. of Geography, Ohio University, perki...@ohio.edumailto:perki...@ohio.edu Sacrifice zones are increasingly well-documented, yet persistently under-theorized. Typical accounts of sacrifice zones include industrial, extractive, or military activities that render certain locations dangerous for communities who do not reap the rewards of those damaging activities. Occupants made to suffer are predominantly ethnic and racial minorities, though increasingly there is awareness in environmental justice studies that sacrifice zones are also correlated with lower class white communities, too. While the primary scale at which sacrifice is documented is the region, areas as small as individual urban neighborhoods are also considered sacrificed. Thus sacrifice as a spatial concept includes everything on a scalar continuum from something as large and nebulous as Appalachia to something as small and specific as the Manchester neighborhood in Houston, Texas. A common narrative throughout these varying accounts is the idea that human health and environmental quality in individualized contexts are 'given up' for the betterment of some much larger whole, often society or the economy broadly defined. Examples include energy production, jobs, economic expansion, and militarization. These are but a few of the reasons why a 'few people in some far flung location' are harmed in the name of 'progress for everyone'. Certainly these kinds of accounts of sacrifice zones have been crucial to the success of the environmental justice movement and have provided those who study environmental justice in academia much to consider. However, in this paper session we seek to build on these contributions to expand our understanding of the geographies of sacrifice. Specifically, we are keen to include papers in this session that further theorize the notion of sacrifice in relation to the spatiality of sacrifice zones. Rather than a flat ontology of sacrifice zones as bounded/discreet regions, this session is aimed at elaborating how sacrifice is produced, legitimated, contested, and even de-centered discursively and materially through space and time. In other words, how is sacrifice made spatially explicit through the everyday and extraordinary events that unfold and make up our lives in a predominantly capitalist world. In keeping, we seek papers that push beyond the commonly understood spatialities of sacrifice and in so doing elucidate how the notion of sacrifice pervades our existence and how its specter is imbued in commonsense notions of our world and our place in it. By extension we are interested in papers that explore how the notion of sacrifice is constitutive of, and potentially subversive to, hegemonic socio-political formations under capitalism. Theoretically innovative topics are especially welcome. Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to: 1. Sacrifice and the (laboring, sick, gendered) bodily/family scale 2. Sacrifice and its role in the formation of capitalist hegemony; and/or sacrifice and the struggle toward non-capitalist counter-hegemonies 3. Sacrifice and (social, political, cultural) identity 4. Considerations of sacrifice as a multi-scalar process of production and consumption 5. Labor politics in relation to the concept of sacrifice. 6. The 'everyday' in relation to sacrifice/ living in a sacrifice zone 7. Sacrifice and the exercise of state power (military, economic expansion, etc) 8. Collective versus individualized notions of sacrifice and their political import. 9. Sacrifice in relation to various forms of environmental governance. 10. Sacrifice, sovereignty, and bare life If you are interested in participating in this session, please notify us (cbrow...@depaul.edu or perki...@ohio.edu) of your interest and tentative title as soon as possible, and send an abstract by October 31st. Accepted participants will then be expected to register and submit their abstracts online at the AAG website by to November 15th, 2014 so there is sufficient time to register the session. ** Alec Brownlow Associate Professor DePaul University Department of Geography 990 W Fullerton Avenue Chicago IL 60614 773.325.7876 Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling ... (Melville)
CFP: Sacrifice Zones: a Critical Geography
** Apologies for Cross-Posting ** Sacrifice Zones: a Critical Geography Call for Contributors to an Edited Volume [i] Co-Editors: Alec Brownlow (DePaul University) and Harold Perkins (Ohio University) The expression, Sacrifice Zone, stems from the Cold War and was used by government and military officials in the U.S. to describe those territories (e.g., stretches of the American west, Bikini atoll, etc.) forever alienated in the wake of nuclear testing and production. As crafted and deployed at the time, the expression, National Sacrifice Zone, was packed with the patriotic symbolism and moral justification believed necessary to win public support for such vast devastation; geographies (regions, landscapes, and ecosystems) whose sacrifice (i.e., annihilation) were necessary, if awful, costs in the name of democracy, freedom, and the American way. More recently, the expression is being applied in like manner to those regions of macroscale resource extraction (e.g., coal extraction by mountain top removal in Appalachia) whose sacrifice (i.e., social, cultural, and environmental devastation), according to the dominant ideological narrative, are necessary, if awful, costs in the name of U.S. industrial competitiveness, rural jobs, and energy independence - the latter made all the more intense by a post 9-11 xenophobic populism directed at oil producing countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In and of itself, and as the above examples suggest, as historically contrived the sacrifice zone is a political and economic device whose viability and justifying power are dependent upon and enabled by a geo-political bogeyman (Communism, Islam, etc.) whose very existence is constructed into a public threat (real or otherwise) that empowers, gives moral authority to, and foments public approval of those political institutions (e.g., Department of Defense, Department of Energy, etc.) and their industrial affiliates (e.g., Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, Big Coal, Big Oil, etc.) capable of ecological and social devastation on a massive scale. At the same time, the sacrifice zone is part and parcel to an imperialist agenda of economic, political, and cultural hegemony - one that is tolerant of, if tested by, the administration of state-approved violence towards its own population, landscapes, and resources. Writing in the early 90s, Mike Davis was among the first to dig beyond the patriotic rhetoric and expose the racist (Native American peoples and lands were disproportionately poisoned) and cancerous legacy behind the National Sacrifice Zone policy and discourse in the post-Cold War American west.[ii] Since then, several scholars have revisited and recast the sacrifice zone concept as the systemic policy and spatial pattern of environmental injustice, whereby minority populations, communities, and landscapes are disproportionately contaminated (or sacrificed) in the name of capitalist accumulation.[iii] Most recently, journalists Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco have considerably broadened the concept, both geographically and topically, to encompass without geographic or demographic restrictions those areas in the country that have been offered up for exploitation in the name of profit, progress, and technological advancement.[iv] As co-editors of the proposed volume, we are compelled by the possibilities for application and critical geographical inquiry that this latter definition of the term infers. All the while acknowledging the history and utility of the sacrifice zone in normative and critical discourse, it is our intention in this volume to broaden the concept beyond its spectacular and regional origins so as to identify and emphasize the myriad, more obscure and mundane geographies of sacrifice whose loss (destruction, victimization, exploitation, etc.), though perhaps less spectacular, is no less contrived as necessary, appropriate, and justified in the name of ideological expansion. Specifically, we aim in this volume to 'open up' the sacrifice zone concept and its critique to include a multi-scalar and international analysis of those geographies (to include, inter alia: bodies, social groups, populations, communities, neighborhoods, cities, landscapes, regions, and socio-ecological systems) identified as expendable (i.e., available for sacrifice) in the name of economic, political, and/or technological hegemony. Insofar as we believe that sacrifice has likely acquired more nuanced expression and application in this neoliberal age of expanding austerity and social disinvestment, we are especially keen to identify and uncover examples of those places and spaces that, in essence, constitute the 'new' geographies of sacrifice? The purpose of proposed volume is manifold: * to explore in more detail, using a wide variety of case studies, the idea and the suitability of sacrifice to critical geographical thinking and scholarship; * to
Final cfp: Sacrifice Zones
My apologies for multiple postings. Please distribute widely! We are one participant short of producing three successful paper sessions on the topic of Sacrifice Zones. Interested parties should be in touch asap! Sacrifice Zones Call for Papers: 2013 Annual AAG Meeting, Los Angeles, CA April 9-13, 2013 ‘Sacrifice’ (Oxford English Dictionary) The destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the sake of something having, or regarded as having, a higher or a more pressing claim; the loss entailed by devotion to some other interest; also, the thing so devoted or surrendered. To permit injury or ruin to the interests of (a person) for the sake of some desired object. The expression, Sacrifice Zone, has been widely applied to identify and describe those geographies (environments, landscapes, regions) poisoned, destroyed, and forever alienated in the wake of decades of macroscale resource extraction (e.g., mountain top removal in West Virginia) and experimentation (e.g., nuclear production and testing during the Cold War).[i] The expression suggests the politics and the geographies of disposability and expendability insofar as it captures the state’s discriminatory powers in matters of life and death, productivity and obsolescence, and its permissiveness of economic, ecologic, social, and cultural ruin and violence in the name of ideological hegemony qua corporate profit, industrial and technological innovation, and military strength. The purpose of this paper session is to revisit the concept of the Sacrifice Zone in an attempt to thoughtfully and critically broaden its identity beyond its environmental origins and to more fully consider and debate its applicability to social injustices existing at different scales (from the global to the body) and in different places, spaces, and locations in this age of expanding austerity, identity politics, disinvestment, and economic mobility. What, in essence, constitute the ‘new’ geographies of sacrifice? The purpose of this paper session is manifold: • to explore in more detail, using case studies, the idea and the suitability of sacrifice to critical geographical thinking and scholarship; • to identify theoretical precursors and begin the process of developing an identifiable theory of sacrifice in geography; • to explore the many institutions, faces, and facets of sacrifice as it unfolds, and has unfolded, in different places and at different spatial scales; • to explore sacrifice as central tenet (material and discursive) of neoliberalism and globalization; The goal is to emerge with a more nuanced applications and more theoretically robust understandings and interpretations of sacrifice and sacrifice zone than have been developed in past adoptions of the expressions. To this end, this cfp casts a wide net, both thematically and discursively, inviting for participation those contributions that directly speak to or are informed by the concept of ‘sacrifice’ in field research (case studies) and explanation/interpretation (theory-building). Please send all inquiries, abstracts, and expressions of interest to Alec Brownlow (cbrow...@depaul.edumailto:cbrow...@depaul.edu) ASAP!
Final CFP AAG 2013: Sacrifice Zones
** Apologies for Cross-Posting ** One more paper is sought to complete two paper sessions on the topic of Sacrifice Zones at next year's AAG Meeting in Los Angeles. Please send all inquiries, abstracts, or questions to Alec Brownlow (cbrow...@depaul.edumailto:cbrow...@depaul.edu) by Wednesday October 17th. The cfp appears below. Sacrifice Zones Call for Papers: 2013 Annual AAG Meeting, Los Angeles, CA April 9-13, 2013 'Sacrifice' (Oxford English Dictionary) The destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the sake of something having, or regarded as having, a higher or a more pressing claim; the loss entailed by devotion to some other interest; also, the thing so devoted or surrendered. To permit injury or ruin to the interests of (a person) for the sake of some desired object. The expression, Sacrifice Zone, has been widely applied to identify and describe those geographies (environments, landscapes, regions) poisoned, destroyed, and forever alienated in the wake of decades of macroscale resource extraction (e.g., mountain top removal in West Virginia) and experimentation (e.g., nuclear production and testing during the Cold War).[i] The expression suggests the politics and the geographies of disposability and expendability insofar as it captures the state's discriminatory powers in matters of life and death, productivity and obsolescence, and its permissiveness of economic, ecologic, social, and cultural ruin and violence in the name of ideological hegemony qua corporate profit, industrial and technological innovation, and military strength. The purpose of this paper session is to revisit the concept of the Sacrifice Zone in an attempt to thoughtfully and critically broaden its identity beyond its environmental origins and to more fully consider and debate its applicability to social injustices existing at different scales (from the global to the body) and in different places, spaces, and locations in this age of expanding austerity, identity politics, disinvestment, and economic mobility. What, in essence, constitute the 'new' geographies of sacrifice? The purpose of this paper session is manifold: * to explore in more detail, using case studies, the idea and the suitability of sacrifice to critical geographical thinking and scholarship; * to identify theoretical precursors and begin the process of developing an identifiable theory of sacrifice in geography; * to explore the many institutions, faces, and facets of sacrifice as it unfolds, and has unfolded, in different places and at different spatial scales; * to explore sacrifice as central tenet (material and discursive) of neoliberalism and globalization; The goal is to emerge with a more nuanced applications and more theoretically robust understandings and interpretations of sacrifice and sacrifice zone than have been developed in past adoptions of the expressions. To this end, this cfp casts a wide net, both thematically and discursively, inviting for participation those contributions that directly speak to or are informed by the concept of 'sacrifice' in field research (case studies) and explanation/interpretation (theory-building). Please send all inquiries, abstracts, and expressions of interest to Alec Brownlow (cbrow...@depaul.edumailto:cbrow...@depaul.edu) by Wednesday, October 17th, 2012. [i] see, for example, Shulman, S. 1992. The Threat at Home: Confronting the Toxic Legacy of the US Military. Beacon Press; Davis, M. 1993. 'Dead West: Ecocide in Marlboro Country'. New Left Review 49-73; Fox, J. 1999. Mountaintop Removal in West Virginia: an Environmental Sacrifice Zone.' Organization Environment 12:163-183.
CFP: Sacrifice Zones, 2013 AAG
Apologies for x-postings: Sacrifice Zones Call for Papers: 2013 Annual AAG Meeting, Los Angeles, CA April 9-13, 2013 'Sacrifice' (Oxford English Dictionary) The destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the sake of something having, or regarded as having, a higher or a more pressing claim; the loss entailed by devotion to some other interest; also, the thing so devoted or surrendered. To permit injury or ruin to the interests of (a person) for the sake of some desired object. The expression, Sacrifice Zone, has been widely applied to identify and describe those geographies (environments, landscapes, regions) poisoned, destroyed, and forever alienated in the wake of decades of macroscale resource extraction (e.g., mountain top removal in West Virginia) and experimentation (e.g., nuclear production and testing during the Cold War).[i] The expression suggests the politics and the geographies of disposability and expendability insofar as it captures the state's discriminatory powers in matters of life and death, productivity and obsolescence, and its permissiveness of economic, ecologic, social, and cultural ruin and violence in the name of ideological hegemony qua corporate profit, industrial and technological innovation, and military strength. The purpose of this paper session is to revisit the concept of the Sacrifice Zone in an attempt to thoughtfully and critically broaden its identity beyond its environmental origins and to more fully consider and debate its applicability to social injustices existing at different scales (from the global to the body) and in different places, spaces, and locations in this age of expanding austerity, identity politics, disinvestment, and economic mobility. What, in essence, constitute the 'new' geographies of sacrifice? The purpose of this paper session is manifold: * to explore in more detail, using case studies, the idea and the suitability of sacrifice to critical geographical thinking and scholarship; * to identify theoretical precursors and begin the process of developing an identifiable theory of sacrifice in geography; * to explore the many institutions, faces, and facets of sacrifice as it unfolds, and has unfolded, in different places and at different spatial scales; * to explore sacrifice as central tenet (material and discursive) of neoliberalism and globalization; The goal is to emerge with a more nuanced applications and more theoretically robust understandings and interpretations of sacrifice and sacrifice zone than have been developed in past adoptions of the expressions. To this end, this cfp casts a wide net, both thematically and discursively, inviting for participation those contributions that directly speak to or are informed by the concept of 'sacrifice' in field research (case studies) and explanation/interpretation (theory-building). Please send all inquiries, abstracts, and expressions of interest to Alec Brownlow (cbrow...@depaul.edumailto:cbrow...@depaul.edu) by Monday, October 8th, 2012. [i] see, for example, Shulman, S. 1992. The Threat at Home: Confronting the Toxic Legacy of the US Military. Beacon Press; Davis, M. 1993. 'Dead West: Ecocide in Marlboro Country'. New Left Review 49-73; Fox, J. 1999. Mountaintop Removal in West Virginia: an Environmental Sacrifice Zone.' Organization Environment 12:163-183. ** Alec Brownlow Associate Professor DePaul University Department of Geography 990 W Fullerton Avenue Chicago IL 60614 773.325.7876
2nd CFP - Sacrifice Zones
'Sacrifice' (Oxford English Dictionary) The destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the sake of something having, or regarded as having, a higher or a more pressing claim; the loss entailed by devotion to some other interest; also, the thing so devoted or surrendered. To permit injury or ruin to the interests of (a person) for the sake of some desired object. The expression, Sacrifice Zone, has been widely applied to identify and describe those geographies (environments, landscapes, regions) poisoned, destroyed, and forever alienated in the wake of decades of macroscale resource extraction (e.g., mountain top removal in West Virginia) and experimentation (e.g., nuclear production and testing during the Cold War).[i] The expression suggests the politics and the geographies of disposability and expendability insofar as it captures the state's discriminatory powers in matters of life and death, productivity and obsolescence, and its permissiveness of economic, ecologic, social, and cultural ruin and justification of violence in the name of ideological hegemony qua corporate profit, industrial and technological innovation, and military strength. The purpose of this paper session is to revisit the concept of the Sacrifice Zone in an attempt to thoughtfully and critically broaden its identity beyond its environmental origins and to more fully consider and debate its applicability to social injustices existing at different scales (from the global to the body) and in a variety of places, spaces, and locations in this age of expanding austerity, identity politics, uneven development, and economic mobility. What, in short, constitute the 'new' geographies of sacrifice? The purpose of this paper session is manifold: * to explore in more detail, using case studies, the idea and the suitability of sacrifice to critical geographical thinking and scholarship; * to identify theoretical precursors and begin the process of developing an identifiable theory of sacrifice in geography; * to explore the many institutions, faces, and facets of sacrifice as it unfolds, and has unfolded, in different places and at different spatial scales; * to explore sacrifice as central tenet (material and discursive) of neoliberalism and globalization; The goal is to emerge with a more nuanced applications and more theoretically robust understandings and interpretations of sacrifice and sacrifice zone than have been developed in past adoptions of the expressions. To this end, this cfp casts a wide net, both thematically and discursively, inviting for participation those contributions that directly speak to or are informed by the concept of 'sacrifice' in field research (case studies) and explanation/interpretation (theory-building). Please send all inquiries, abstracts, and expressions of interest to Alec Brownlow (cbrow...@depaul.edumailto:cbrow...@depaul.edu) by Friday, October 5th, 2012. [1] see, for example, Shulman, S. 1992. The Threat at Home: Confronting the Toxic Legacy of the US Military. Beacon Press; Davis, M. 1993. 'Dead West: Ecocide in Marlboro Country'. New Left Review 49-73; Fox, J. 1999. Mountaintop Removal in West Virginia: an Environmental Sacrifice Zone.' Organization Environment 12:163-183. ** Alec Brownlow, PhD DePaul University Department of Geography 990 W Fullerton Avenue Chicago IL 60614 773.325.7876 [i] see, for example, Shulman, S. 1992. The Threat at Home: Confronting the Toxic Legacy of the US Military. Beacon Press; Davis, M. 1993. 'Dead West: Ecocide in Marlboro Country'. New Left Review 49-73; Fox, J. 1999. Mountaintop Removal in West Virginia: an Environmental Sacrifice Zone.' Organization Environment 12:163-183.
CFP: Sacrifice in Geography
My apologies for multiple cross-postings. Please distribute widely. Call for Papers: Sacrifice in Geography 2013 Annual AAG Meeting, Los Angeles, CA April 9-13, 2013 Alec Brownlow DePaul University Department of Geography Chicago, IL 60614 In its original usage, the expression, Sacrifice Zone, was adopted to describe those macrogeographies (landscapes and regions) that were poisoned, destroyed, and forever alienated in the wake of decades of nuclear production and testing during the Cold War.[i] The expression suggests the politics and the geographies of disposability insofar as it captures the state's discriminatory powers in matters of life and death, productivity and obsolescence, and its permissiveness of economic, ecologic, social, and cultural ruin in the name of ideological hegemony qua military strength. Most recently, journalists Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco, in their book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012, Nation Books) revisit the expression and update its definition to more appropriately reflect its post-Cold War identity, arguing that, in the U.S., the power to decide and to dictate geographical dispensability and ruin rests less today with the governing and military arms of the nation-state than it does within the offices of corporate America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce insofar as the latter have been and continue to be enabled and ennobled by neoliberal pro-corporatist politics and policies at all levels of government. Sacrifice and destruction in the name of military might and 'national security' are, today, replaced by the same in the name of corporate profit. Significantly, Hedges and Sacco re-orient the scope of the sacrifice zone from the regional scale of nuclear disaster to emphasize landscapes (e.g., urban, agricultural), collectivities (e.g., communities, neighborhoods, reservations), and social groups (race, gender, ethnicity) left un- or under-explored in earlier studies; they, too, have broadened the definition of sacrifice and ruin from their ecological origins to include social destructions that are consequent to the sacrificed condition- e.g., crime, addiction, suicide, etc. In short, they have helped to introduce the concept of 'sacrifice' into the language of social and environmental justice and into the arena of critical geographical thinking and inquiry. [1] see, for example, Seth Shulman's The Threat at Home: Confronting the Toxic Legacy of the US Military [1992 Beacon Press] and Mike Davis's 'Dead West: Ecocide in Marlboro Country' [1993, New Left Review]). 'Sacrifice' (Oxford English Dictionary) The destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the sake of something having, or regarded as having, a higher or a more pressing claim; the loss entailed by devotion to some other interest; also, the thing so devoted or surrendered. To permit injury or ruin to the interests of (a person) for the sake of some desired object. The purpose of this paper session is manifold: * to explore in more detail, using case studies, the idea and the suitability of sacrifice to critical geographical thinking and scholarship; * to identify theoretical precursors and begin the process of developing an identifiable theory of sacrifice in geography; * to explore the many institutions, faces, and facets of sacrifice as it unfolds, and has unfolded, in different places and at different spatial scales; * to explore sacrifice as central tenet (material and discursive) of neoliberalism and globalization; The goal is to emerge with a more nuanced applications and more theoretically robust understandings and interpretations of sacrifice and sacrifice zone than have been developed in past adoptions of the expressions. To this end, this cfp casts a wide net, both thematically and discursively, inviting for participation those contributions that directly speak to or are informed by the concept of 'sacrifice' in field research (case studies) and explanation/interpretation (theory-building). Please send all inquiries, abstracts, and expressions of interest to Alec Brownlow (cbrow...@depaul.edumailto:cbrow...@depaul.edu) by Friday, October 5th, 2012. ** Alec Brownlow, PhD DePaul University Department of Geography 990 W Fullerton Avenue Chicago IL 60614 773.325.7876
CFP West Lakes AAG, DePaul University, Chicago
* Apologies for Cross-Posting * West Lakes AAG 2011 DePaul University, Chicago, 10-12 November 2011 Call for Papers The program committee welcomes papers on any topic in Geography or allied disciplines. Organized sessions are also welcome. Membership in the Association of American Geographers is not mandatory for participation in or attendance at this meeting. We strongly encourage student participation. Instructions for Presenters Abstracts Participants in the 2011 West Lakes Division Annual Meeting who would like to present a paper or poster, or organize a panel session, must submit an abstract of 250 words or fewer that provides a brief overview of the objectives, methods, and conclusions of the presentation. Abstracts must be submitted by September 30, 2011 via the conference website (https://lascollege.depaul.edu/WLAAG2011). Abstracts will not be edited; authors are responsible for any spelling, grammatical, and typographical errors. Paper Presentations Each paper presentation will be limited to 20 minutes for presentation and discussion. The session chair will be responsible for overseeing the timely presentation of papers. A digital projector will be available in each meeting room; however, presenters must furnish their own laptop. Poster Presentations The poster session provides opportunities for individual discussion with poster authors. Posters should contain mostly visual and graphic information; text should be limited to brief statements. Posters should be clearly legible from a distance of four feet and displayable on a 4' (wide) x 3' (tall) panel surface. Panel Sessions Panel sessions typically consist of four to five participants. These sessions are 80-minute discussions among the panel and audience members. Formal presentations are not to be part of panel sessions. If you are organizing a panel session, please indicate this in your on-line registration and contact Euan Hague (eha...@depaul.edu) by the registration deadline of September 30, 2011 with details of the participants. Organized Sessions Paper sessions are limited to four presentations. Students and faculty are encouraged to plan organized sessions focusing on a specific topic or sub-discipline. If you would like to submit an organized session, please indicate this in your on-line registration and contact Euan Hague (eha...@depaul.edu) by the registration deadline of September 30, 2011 with details of the participants and their paper titles. For questions or further information, please contact (after 1 August): Euan Hague Chair, WLAAG 2011 DePaul University, Department of Geography 990 W. Fullerton Avenue, ste.4300 Chicago, IL 60614 Email: eha...@depaul.edu Tel: 773-325-7669 Web: http://las.depaul.edu/geography Facebook: DePaul Geography * Alec Brownlow, Ph.D. Department of Geography DePaul University 990 W. Fullerton Avenue Chicago, IL 60614 phone: 773-325-7876 -Original Message- From: Discussion list for Feminism in Geography [mailto:geog...@lsv.uky.edu] On Behalf Of Amy Trauger Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2011 7:03 PM To: geog...@lsv.uky.edu Subject: Re: query for gender and geography undergrad syllabi Hi everyone! Jennifer Fluri and I just published an article in the Geography of Higher Education on an exercise we use in our gender and geography courses that might be of interest. You can preview it and access it here ://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03098265.2011.552105 Tiffany, send me a compiled list of the syllabi and I will happily post to the website and share the link on the listserve. Amy From: Discussion list for Feminism in Geography [geog...@lsv.uky.edu] on behalf of Sapana Doshi [sdo...@email.arizona.edu] Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 1:18 AM To: geog...@lsv.uky.edu Subject: Re: query for gender and geography undergrad syllabi Hi Tiffany and all, Thanks so much for all of your responses. Some contributions were sent just to me. I was planning to send out a compilation of syllabi from contributors who were comfortable sharing to the wider group. But the uploading option would be much better. I'll send that compilation on to Tiffany for the GPOW site. Thanks again, Sapana On Jun 29, 2011, at 3:38 PM, Tiffany Muller wrote: Hello Sapana and all, Thank you for re-opening this query, and thanks to JP for responding. I put forth a call to collect syllabi on gender geography and/or feminist geography, loosely defined, a while back. It may have suffered from the same mid-summer timing, but I didn't receive much response from that query. (Ann Oberhauser's response to that initial query is located below. Jennifer Mandel also submitted syllabi, which I would be happy to pass on, but I have not attached them here in case they would be stripped by the listserv. Please contact me directly if you would like copies of these.) Following Sapana, I'd like to put forth a call for anyone who is willing to share their
CFP West Lakes AAG, DePaul University, Chicago
* Apologies for Cross-Posting * West Lakes AAG 2011 DePaul University, Chicago, 10-12 November 2011 Call for Papers The program committee welcomes papers on any topic in Geography or allied disciplines. Organized sessions are also welcome. Membership in the Association of American Geographers is not mandatory for participation in or attendance at this meeting. We strongly encourage student participation. Instructions for Presenters Abstracts Participants in the 2011 West Lakes Division Annual Meeting who would like to present a paper or poster, or organize a panel session, must submit an abstract of 250 words or fewer that provides a brief overview of the objectives, methods, and conclusions of the presentation. Abstracts must be submitted by September 30, 2011 via the conference website (https://lascollege.depaul.edu/WLAAG2011). Abstracts will not be edited; authors are responsible for any spelling, grammatical, and typographical errors. Paper Presentations Each paper presentation will be limited to 20 minutes for presentation and discussion. The session chair will be responsible for overseeing the timely presentation of papers. A digital projector will be available in each meeting room; however, presenters must furnish their own laptop. Poster Presentations The poster session provides opportunities for individual discussion with poster authors. Posters should contain mostly visual and graphic information; text should be limited to brief statements. Posters should be clearly legible from a distance of four feet and displayable on a 4' (wide) x 3' (tall) panel surface. Panel Sessions Panel sessions typically consist of four to five participants. These sessions are 80-minute discussions among the panel and audience members. Formal presentations are not to be part of panel sessions. If you are organizing a panel session, please indicate this in your on-line registration and contact Euan Hague (eha...@depaul.edu) by the registration deadline of September 30, 2011 with details of the participants. Organized Sessions Paper sessions are limited to four presentations. Students and faculty are encouraged to plan organized sessions focusing on a specific topic or sub-discipline. If you would like to submit an organized session, please indicate this in your on-line registration and contact Euan Hague (eha...@depaul.edu) by the registration deadline of September 30, 2011 with details of the participants and their paper titles. For questions or further information, please contact (after 1 August): Euan Hague Chair, WLAAG 2011 DePaul University, Department of Geography 990 W. Fullerton Avenue, ste.4300 Chicago, IL 60614 Email: eha...@depaul.edu Tel: 773-325-7669 Web: http://las.depaul.edu/geography Facebook: DePaul Geography
FCP: Cities Synecdoche (looking for two papers!)
Apologies for Cross-Posting We are looking for two more papers to round out a second session. If interested or if you have questions, please be in touch asap. Cities and Synecdoche 'Synecdoche', as defined by Webster's New World Dictionary, is a figure of speech in which a part is used for a whole, an individual for a class, a material for a thing, or any of the reverse of these. In Geography, we find this especially in representations and discussions of scale where, for example, 'the city' is (mis-)represented using phenomena and patterns better understood and analyzed at local or regional scales ... or vice versa. Place-marketing and other entrepreneurial endeavors - branding, for example - have made ample use of synecdoche in the interest of economic development and investment. 'Best Places' claims and categorizations are, almost by necessity, derived from scale-specific data that are hardly universal to the 'place' at hand. This is especially true for cities, for whom 'best' (or 'worst') place-branding (either self-generated or by others) has taken on increasing competitive significance. To this end, it seems, synecdoche is increasingly vital to projects of accumulation and - by extension - uneven development and thus potentially rife with inter- or intra-scale contradictions and the potential for conflict and injustice. For this paper session, I invite papers that explore the complexities of synecdoche at the Urban Scale, and that attempt to reveal its implications (be they positive or negative) for those 'other' scales (e.g., communities, environments, households, people, and places) abstracted within it and from which it is emergent. I encourage participation from a breadth of ideological and theoretical orientations, sub-disciplinary interests, and international perspectives. Please send abstracts and (if appropriate) PIN# to Alec Brownlow (cbrow...@depaul.edu) asap. Thank you. Alec Brownlow, Ph.D. Department of Geography DePaul University 990 W. Fullerton Avenue Chicago, IL 60614 phone: 773.325.7876 fax: 773.325.4590
