Disrupting the Frontier/Homeland Binary: Practices of Local-Scale and Indigenous Development
CALL FOR PAPERS
American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting
New Orleans, April 10-14, 2018
Organizers: Mia Bennett (UCLA/University of Vienna) and Ingrid A. Medby (Oxford Brookes University)
Sponsors: Political Geography, Development Geographies, Indigenous Peoples, and Polar Geography Specialty Groups
In remote, ecologically vulnerable, and/or sparsely populated regions such as the Arctic and the Amazon, global capital and its associated mega-projects are often seen as synonymous with unsustainable, unrelenting growth. In contrast, local initiatives, particularly if directed by Indigenous populations, are often viewed as preferable: “If sustainable development is ever going to be achieved, it needs to begin with citizens at the grassroots level, whereby local success can be translated into national achievements” (Roseland 2012, xviii).
However, an uncritical preference for locally scaled policies and actions may at times be misguided, or at least in need of added nuance. A good deal of geographers and political ecologists assume that while political and economic processes take place at national and global scales, cultural and ecological processes happen at the local scale (Brown and Purcell, 2005). Yet, political and economic processes can and do arise from the local scale too, often running up against global-scale movements that seek, for instance, to conserve the environment. The Arctic offers one example, where entrepreneurial Indigenous groups, like Arctic Slope Regional Corporation in Alaska, champion offshore oil and gas, while Greenpeace continues its campaign to “Save the Arctic.” Local actors – many of them Indigenous – thus often seek the right to development (Gibbs, 2005; Salomon and Sengupta, 2003), at odds with outsiders’ expectations of specific, often romanticized, practices and performativities of both “Indigeneity” and local-scale identities. When Indigenous and local actors are in the race for global capital to fund industrial development on their land, this complicates any supposed binary between homeland and frontier, between passive dwelling and active usage. In a time when decolonizing geographical knowledges has been high on the agenda, questioning assumptions about so-called “rootedness” and “stewardship”, and about what kind of “development” is considered legitimate in accordance with assumed role-enactments, is needed.
This session seeks to explore Indigeneity in the 21st century, especially in so-called “frontier” regions: How it is expected to be performed, how it actually plays out in practice, and not least, how expectations are challenged and disrupted. Recognizing that there is no single Indigenous trajectory, let alone a homogenous “Fourth World,” we seek to stimulate cross-regional dialogues that bring different experiences to bear on one another.
While far from an exhaustive list, possible topics include:
- Geographies of Indigeneity
- Expectations and performances of Indigeneity
- Tribal capitalism, Indigenous enterprise development, and Indigenous political economies
- Practices and policies of Indigenous corporations
- Consequences of land claims agreements on development
- Indigenous resistance to and/or accommodation of the state and capital
- Debates over the “right to development” in regions often perceived as “frontiers”
- Traditional Ecological Knowledges (TEK), and particularly how they might be employed in and/or deployed against development
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words, along with your institutional affiliation and contact details, to Mia Bennett (mbennett7@ucla.edu) and Ingrid A. Medby (imedby@brookes.ac.uk) by October 23, 2017. We will notify accepted applicants by October 24, 2017. Successful participants will need to pay the registration fee and submit their abstracts online at the AAG website before October 25, 2017.
References
Brown, J. C., & Purcell, M. (2005). There’s nothing inherent about scale: political ecology, the local trap, and the politics of development in the Brazilian Amazon. Geoforum, 36(5), 607-624.
Gibbs, M. (2005). The right to development and indigenous peoples: Lessons from New Zealand. World Development, 33(8), 1365-1378.
Roseland, M. (2012). Toward sustainable communities: Solutions for citizens and their governments (Vol. 6). Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.
Salomon, M. E., & Sengupta, A. (2003). The right to development: Obligations of states and the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples. London: Minority Rights Group International.