Open Call for Participation

7th International Conference of Critical Geography
‘Precarious Radicalism On Shifting Grounds: Towards a Politics of Possibility’

26-30 July 2015  |  Ramallah, Palestine | www.iccg2015.org<http://www.iccg2015.org>


ANNOUNCEMENT

The sense of revolutionary times triggered by recent events such as the Greek revolts, the Indignados and Occupy movements, as well as the Arab uprisings and the Idle No More protests in Canada, has been gradually overshadowed by a wave of virulent and violent responses by both state and global powers. Although these and other struggles have captured our imagination, an anxious feeling of being in a permanent state of crisis seems to have taken over as we observe an increase in and normalization of socio-economic and spatial inequalities and political repression against the population. This regression, which takes the form of a rise on authoritarianisms, revanchists’ responses, encroachment of fundamental rights, precarity of subsistence, social relations, employment, or the consolidation of populist right wing and fundamentalist movements, is to a large extent eclipsing and undermining the political space and fundamental work of individuals, communities and movements around the world. It certainly is a precarious time for radicalism. This grim landscape inevitably raises crucial questions about the current moment and its prospects. Are we witnessing and experiencing a fundamental historical shift? If so, how are we to interpret this transition? Or can these times be transformed into a moment of political possibility by reconsidering and/or expanding existing paradigms as well as by reconnecting solidarities and struggles?

The aim of the 7th International Conference of Critical Geography (ICCG 2015) is to provide an inclusive venue for the discussion of these and other themes that examine the geographies of critical social theory and progressive political praxis. Despite the significance of the issues at stake, we hope to create a fun, engaging and friendly atmosphere that welcomes a wide array of scholars, activists, artists, organizers and others interested in critical socio-spatial praxis. The conference will be held in Palestine, a rich context for critical geographers and others to observe first hand, learn about, and engage with the human, political and economic geographies resulting from more than a century of European settler colonialism and US imperialism. Palestine is however much more than the ‘object’ of imperial, colonial and capitalist forces. It is a place that stands at the heart of the recent Arab uprisings as an inspiration drive to the popular struggles that have profoundly shaken the Arab World and beyond in ways yet difficult to anticipate. Palestine will undoubtedly be an ideal site from where to pursue the mission and commitment set forth in the ICCG’s statement of purpose – that is “developing the theory and practice necessary for combating social exploitation and oppression”.


CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

The ICCG 2015 will be organized around nine main themes (see below) that connect to and expand the conference underlying subject, that is ‘Precarious Radicalism On Shifting Grounds: Towards a Politics of Possibility’.

Deadline for submissions is 1st December 2014. We invite you to submit paper abstracts and encourage proposals for populated panels, roundtable discussions, or sessions with alternative formats that address the proposed conference themes. As indicated in the application form, we ask that you include (a) information on which conference theme your panel or paper addresses; (b) title of your paper or session; (c) a brief bio (max. 100 words) of each participant with contact information, institutional affiliation, and any titles you would like placed in the program; (d) an abstract (max 500 words). Please take into consideration that proposed activities should fit into the 90-minutes time-slots. Feel free to issue your own Call for Panels through appropriate mailing lists such as CRITICAL-GEOG-FORUM, URB-GEOG-FORUM, CRIT-LAG-GEOG, LEFTGEOG, PYGYWG, H-NET, etc. before submitting to us.

The forms for Application for Paper<http://iccg2015dotorg.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/iccg2015_form_paper.pdf> and Application for Panel <http://iccg2015dotorg.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/iccg2015_form_panel.pdf> can be found underwww.iccg2015.org/call/<http://wp.me/P52VPL-4>

Selection decisions will be announced by 31st December 2014.

Send questions and proposals to submit@iccg2015.org<mailto:submit@iccg2015.org>



CONFERENCE THEMES

1 | Imperial, Colonial, Postcolonial and Anti-colonial geographies

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: colonial, anti-colonial, and post-colonial legacies and contestations; colonial cities/urbanism; political economies of colonialism/occupation; settler colonialism past and present; apartheid across borders and epochs; indigenous activism and revolutionary movements; securitization, militarization and privatization of space; land grabs; urban warfare and the war on terror; critical geopolitics, etc.

2 | Articulations and spaces of capitalism

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: financialization of capital and space, economies of urban development; alternative economies/economic alternatives; extraction industries and primitive accumulation; debt/credit economies; social reproduction and work; “free”, unpaid and slave labour in the 21st century; undocumented, informal and transnational work; (new forms of) labour struggles and unionism; class struggles and new conceptions of class; state interventions in the lives of economies, etc.


3 | Migration, Mobility and Displacement

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: immobilities, regulating mobilities, borders, migrant and refugee subjectivities, global labor, (urban) asylum politics, fortress Europe, securitization, south-south mobilities, human trafficking, refugee and migrant health and well-being, etc.


4 | Nature, Society and Environmental Change

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: commodification of nature; urban metabolisms; environmental and climate justice; governing nature/society relations; feminist, racialized and queer positionalities within urban political ecology; mining and extraction; energy and water transitions; provincializing and urbanizing political ecology; climate debt environmental racism and disposable life; food justice and urban agriculture; perspectives on the anthropocene; ecocide, etc.


5 | Mapping Bodies, Corporeality and Violence

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: corporeality in crisis and contestation; bodily intersections/assemblages of race, gender and sexuality; primitive accumulation and the body; materializing theorizations of the body in space and time; production and reproduction of corporeality; body as target – war and urban contest; blackness, body and the afterlives of slavery; racialized re-segregations, containments and displacements; decolonizing the body; structural violence, marked bodies and everyday life; queer assemblages and the national body; carceral geographies, etc.


6 | Critical “Development” Geographies: perspectives from the Global South

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: critical and southern perspectives on development; decolonizing development; aid, donors and development interventions; the privatization and financialization of development aid; geographies of uneven development; postcolonial theory and development; development ethnographies; development, security, and bordering; geopolitics and biopolitics of development; technopolitics; gender and development, governmentality and development; etc.


7 | Geography and matter / materiality

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: materialist approaches to materiality; the materiality of inequality and dispossession; materiality in urban studies; materiality and power; vital materialisms; more than human geographies; the politics of urban assemblages; assemblage theory and methods; assemblage theory for strategic political action; socio-technical and socio-natural geographies; urban metabolisms; materializing political ecology, technopolitics and expert knowledge; emancipatory materialities; etc.


8 | Remaking Space through Ideology, Culture, and Arts

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: reclaiming space; identities and lifestyles; diasporic and migrant artistic engagement; high-art and architectural commodification of space; ideological narratives, othering and spatial enclosures; art, the ‘creative class’ and urban commodification; monuments, geography and nationalism; feminism and histories of urban art; geography, ideology and transgression; art and practices of resistance; art, ideology and everyday space; landscapes, memory, monuments, and commemoration; psychogeography and radical cartographies; exploring urban spaces through artistic
practices, etc.


9 | Knowledge Production, Education and Epistemic Agendas

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: corporatization of knowledge and exclusion in academia; the politics of open source; democratization and knowledge-production; southern theory; anarchists and dissident education; beyond eurocentric knowledge; radical pedagogies; resistance and education; the role of indigenous knowledge in the academy; participatory action research in teaching, learning and research; practicing solidarities, education and social change; education and justice; challenges of multi-disciplinarity and trans-disciplinarity; co-production of knowledge; value orientations and epistemic agendas; political conditions and consequences of the production and use of knowledge, etc.



ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

Field Trips:  This edition capitalizes on the context by putting emphasis on fieldtrips that will build upon and further expand the conference themes through an engagement with local articulations and actors. Excursions correspond to a third of the total program duration, whereby a repertoire of 6 routes and destinations will be available for participants to choose from in accordance to preferences. Details in this regard will be released in spring 2015.

Limited Places:  Kindly note that due to logistical considerations participation space will be limited to 250 persons.

This conference complies with the Palestinian Call for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (click here)<http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869>




More information about the conference in our website www.iccg2015.org<http://iccg2015.org/>