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.edu<mailto: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
