Call For Papers: American Association of Geographers (AAG), Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA. March 29th – April 2nd, 2016
New Geographies of Alienation: Getting Reacquainted with Estrangement
Organizers:
Alex Colucci, Kent State University
Stian Rice, Kent State University
Marx’s concept of alienation, first put forward in his 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, links the structural organization of the modern labor process with its devastating effect on human beings, “on their physical and mental states and on the social processes of which they are a part” (Ollman 1976, 131). As a process of disconnecting and distancing humans from nature and from each other, it is somewhat surprising that alienation has received infrequent attention from geographers (see Evans, 1978; Peet 1978; Mitchell 2003; Olwig 2005). This session explores (1) whether alienation – in either new or classical interpretations – can be useful for emerging trends in geographic thought, and (2) how these trends might extend, expand, or contradict Marx’s original argument.
Marx identified four forms of alienation in the modern labor process. First, workers are alienated from the product of their labor. Second, workers are alienated from the act of production. Under capitalism, a worker must labor in order to survive, making the laboring act one of ‘deadening compulsion’ rather than free choice. Third, workers are alienated from species-being (Gattungswesen). Reduced by capital into exchangeable and expendable parts for the machinery of production, the labor process denies workers their essential ‘humanness.’ Finally, as a consequence of the first three, workers are alienated from other humans through the collective separation of humanity from its species-being, and the demands of a labor market that pits each person in direct competition for survival.
This session seeks geographic work related to the processes of disconnection, distancing, and estrangement complicit in alienation. Prospective abstracts need not focus solely on labor processes alone. Indeed, we encourage new or unconventional approaches and subjects, either theoretical or case-based. Possible areas of interest include (but certainly are not limited to):
- Political geography, political ecology, radical geography, and cultural geography.
- Critical race theory
- Post- and non-human geography
- Socio-nature studies
- Landscape studies
- Material geographies
- Actor-networks
- Migration and detainment studies
- Literary geography
Interested participants should send their abstract (250 words max) to either Alex Colucci (acolucc3@kent.edu) or Stian Rice (srice14@kent.edu) by Oct 25, 2015.
References:
Evans, David M. 1978. “Alienation, Mental Illness and the Partioning of Space.” Antipode 10 (1): 13–23.
Mitchell, Don. 2003. “Cultural Landscapes: Just Landscapes or Landscapes of Justice?” Progress in Human Geography 27 (6): 787–96.
Marx, Karl. 2013. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” Start Publishing LLC.
Ollman, Bertell. 1976. Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in a Capitalist Society. Cambridge University Press.
Olwig, Kenneth R. 2005. “Representation and Alienation in the Political Land-Scape.” Cultural Geographies 12 (1): 19–40.
Peet, Richard. 1978. “The Geography of Human Liberation.” Antipode 10-11 (3-1): 119–134.