NB: Deadline extended to 20 December 2014
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
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.
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 20 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 and Application for Panel can be found under www.iccg2015.org/call/
Please read the conference’s political statement before submitting your applications.
Selection decisions will be announced by 20 January 2015.
Send questions and proposals to 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 transdisciplinarity; 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
More information about the conference in our website www.iccg2015.org
We look forward to seeing you in Palestine!
www.iccg2015.org | connect@iccg2015.org
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