CFP – Political geographies of authoritarianism
AAG Annual Meeting 2017, Boston
Organizers: Natalie Koch (Syracuse University) and Joshua Hagen (Northern State University)
Sponsored by: Political Geography Specialty Group; Cultural Geography Specialty Group
“Authoritarianism” has rapidly become a buzzword in left-leaning media commentary about the 2016 US presidential election. Reports and commentaries have both decried and sought to explain the remarkable rise of Trump as the Republican candidate, under titles such as: “The rise of American authoritarianism,” “It’s not just Trump: Authoritarian populism is rising across the West,” and “Trumpmenbashi: What Central Asia’s spectacular states can tell us about authoritarianism in America.” Leaving aside the “validity” of these commentaries, they are important because they function as geopolitical identity narratives, implicated in the articulation of normative maps of global space and political subject positions.
Yet in considering the “specter” of illiberal practices and logics in the United States and globally, geographers have not tended to focus on the specific concept of “authoritarianism.” While the concept has long been an important research area in political science, it has not been a major theme in geography scholarship to date. Authoritarianism thus remains a curiously understudied topic given geographers’ longtime interest in democracy, liberalism, and social justice. Social scientists and theorists, by contrast, have made significant efforts to theorize authoritarian political relations, albeit through contrasting lenses. This is seen, for example, in Michel Foucault’s explorations in Discipline and Punish, Hannah Arendt’s On Despotism, Michael Mann’s Fascists, Juan Linz’s typological approach in Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, and Max Weber’s wide-ranging classifications of nondemocratic rule beyond authoritarianism, such as (neo)patrimonialism and sultanism, in Economy and Society.
Fascism, despotism, patrimonialism, sultanism, illiberalism: the various labels for liberalism’s “other” are prolific. Like “authoritarianism,” these terms are most frequently applied to the state scale. Yet, geographers are uniquely positioned to move beyond this framing and to critically examine a variety of scales at which authoritarianism is produced, enacted, and imagined. So too are geographers positioned to bring a more grounded approach to the study of authoritarianism than some of the prevailing generalizing approaches in political science and related fields. Our goal is thus to unite geographers interested in the theme of authoritarianism, both taking stock of existing work in geography, and initiating a discussion about how critical geographers might approach future research on authoritarianism. This will involve two session types: (1) a roundtable/panel discussion and (2) a paper session.
(1) Roundtable/panel discussion: we are seeking panelists who might speak to general questions about conducting research in and on authoritarian, nondemocratic, or otherwise illiberal contexts. We would like to think collectively about questions such as: why have geographers been so reluctant to frame their research as contributing to the interdisciplinary body of research on authoritarianism? What methodological and theoretical challenges arise by positioning one’s work around the moniker of “authoritarianism”? And how might geographers advance a critical approach to authoritarianism?
(2) Paper session: we are seeking participants who might showcase what kind of research questions are being explored by geographers interested in authoritarian or illiberal political configurations. We are primarily interested in empirically-grounded case studies, but innovative theoretical paper proposals will also be considered. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Scales of authoritarianism beyond state space
- Spatial and social “islands” of liberalism/illiberalism
- Authoritarian/illiberal governmentality
- Orientalism, normativity, and authoritarianism
- The authoritarianism of neoliberalism?
- Constructing authoritarianism in democracy promotion agendas
- Authoritarian state resilience
- Dictators, personalism, and charisma
- Popular autocrats and “benevolent” authoritarianism
- Authoritarian physical cultures and sport
- Citizenship, subjectivity, and agency in authoritarian polities
- Gender, race, and minorities in authoritarian polities
- Human rights and authoritarianism
- Conflict spaces, post-conflict transformations, and authoritarianism
- Nature-society relations under authoritarianism
- Environmental authoritarianism
- Typologies and the politics of the term “authoritarianism” vs. alternative framings (e.g. fascism, despotism, paternalism, illiberalism)
- Practice-based methods and the challenge of “-isms”
- Methods/fieldwork and the challenges of researching authoritarianism
Presenters interested in participating in the paper session: please submit an abstract of 200-250 words to the organizers by October 1st.
Presenters interested in participating in the panel discussion: please submit a brief description of around 100 words, detailing your theoretical/research interests related to authoritarianism by October 1st.
Natalie Koch: nkoch@maxwell.syr.edu
Joshua Hagen: Joshua.Hagen@northern.edu