Call For Papers
AAG 2017 Boston (April 5-8, 2017)
Session title: Geographies that Matter: The Middle East beyond the State
The prioritization of the state as a unit of study in geography is closely linked to the discipline’s colonial history. The same can also be said for the origins and motivations behind area studies and regional geography. While these histories are troublesome, we argue that modern Geography’s lack of critical, long-term engagement with the Middle East through field research is equally problematic. This CFP calls for innovative ways in which we can have engaged Middle East-focused work in Geography that goes beyond classic geopolitical tropes of state power and conflict. In a recent piece, Ince & de la Torre (2016) call for post-statist geographies, an approach that prioritizes “interrogating the intersections between statism and other power relations; constructing new epistemologies and methodologies; and shifting the way the state is represented in geographical work” (11). Building on their example, we wish to organize a (group of) session(s) that engage(s) substantively with post-statist geographies by turning our attention to engagements the Middle East.
The Middle East is an important source of theoretical insights for scholars interested in post-statist geographies. This is in part due to the still-developing state of field research by geographers there, but also, importantly, to the relative strength of localized networks within and across the region. These networks furnish numerous opportunities to investigate the evolving interactions between places inside and outside of the Middle East and the state apparatuses that try to govern them. At the same time, although state power is everywhere uneven, this uneven quality must be contextualized in time and space rather than through careless recourse to geopolitical scripts at play in formal politics – for instance, “state failure.” Due to geographers’ keenness for thinking through the politics of space, place and networks, they are well positioned to engage in the region in a way the challenges the traditional geopolitical narrative of (failed) states and conflict.
Accordingly, this Call for Papers is organizing a session that explores
> Conceptual alternatives to studying politics in state-container terms, with an emphasis on networks, topologies, STS, mobilities, etc;
> Methodological challenges that arise in the course of fieldwork in the region, from the point of formulating research questions, priorities, and frameworks; to research design and implementation; and the processing and publishing of our data, with particular attention to how these things can transcend methodological nationalism; and
> Critical and currently-pressing political issues such as the Syrian conflict, environmental management, the refugee “crisis,” and global economic development in ways that highlight emergent geographies of politics in a world still dominated by territorial states.
Please send 200 word abstracts to ahamdan@ucla.edu or brittany.cook@uky.edu by September 30, 2016
Works Cited:
Ince, Anthony, and Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre. 2016. “For Post-Statist Geographies.” Political Geography 55 (November): 10–19. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2016.04.001.