Call for proposals for a special issue of Culture, Theory and Critique: “Theorizing Special Territorial Status and Extraterritoriality”

Deadline: October 25, 2019

 Edited by: Zachary T. Androus (Florence Ethnographic Field School), Magdalena Stawkowski (Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina) and Robert Kopack (Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto)

We are seeking article proposals for a planned special issue of the journal Culture, Theory and Critique. We aim to explore “extraterritoriality” beyond its traditional juridico-legal domain by focusing on special territorial designations in ways that reconsider normative ideas about state spaces, economics, and social practices. Conventionally, extraterritoriality refers either to the status of being exempt from the laws of the territory in which one is physically present, as in the cases of certain military or diplomatic installations and personnel, or to a government extending the reach of its laws beyond its own borders, as in the cases of cybercrime, terrorism, and drug trafficking (Colangelo 2013; Gann 1987). This is consistent with the premise that territorially-based sovereign states are the basic, fundamental units of the international political world system. Yet, while they are powerful, even dominant, forces in global institutions of governance, the world is also replete with cases that defy the presumed logic of territorial state sovereignty. Such exceptional forms of political, legal, and existential status frequently index colonial, postcolonial, and neocolonial relations, in addition to military, economic, and geopolitical interests (Agamben 1998; Brown 2018; Ferguson 1994; Fessel 2012; Hecht 2011; Kopack 2019; Painter 2010; Vogel and Raeymaekers 2016; Watts and Peluso 2001).

The articles collected in this volume will ask how these conventional understanding of extraterritoriality can be expanded to account for the range of protectorates, realms, dominions, and overseas territories; self-governing autonomies, reservations, reserves, and lands held in trust; free-trade zones, export processing zones, and exclusive economic zones; parks, monuments, memorials, and heritage sites; military installations, no-fly zones, and occupied or otherwise contested areas. We invite theoretically innovative contributions based on original research that push our understanding of the relationships between territory, autonomy, and governance during the era of late capitalist neoliberalism by expanding the traditional concept of extraterritoriality to address special territorial designations. We encourage submissions that challenge conventional understandings of state power through progressive and unorthodox approaches that are grounded in original research and richly informed by theoretical sophistication. Proposals addressing any region of the world as well as innovative perspectives that highlight the complex intersections of state and non-state actors with multiple peoples, places, and polities, are welcome. Submissions from members of historically excluded or underrepresented groups are especially encouraged.

Please submit an abstract of 150 words by Friday October 25, 2019 to prof.androus@florencefieldschool.com. Abstracts will be reviewed by the special issue editors and notifications will be sent by November 15, 2019.

Full manuscripts (7000 words) will be due to the special issue editors by February 28, 2020 for preliminary review. Manuscripts will be submitted to Culture, Theory and Critiquefor double-blind peer review on June 1, 2020, with final revisions due by September 1, 2020 and publication scheduled for early 2021.

All manuscripts will be subject to the journal’s ordinary review process, so acceptance by the special issue editors does not guarantee eventual acceptance by Culture, Theory and Critique. Potential authors are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with information about the journal available here: www.tandfonline.com/toc/rctc20/current. For any questions, please contact one of the special issue editors:

 

Zachary T. Androus, Florence Ethnographic Field School
prof.androus@florencefieldschool.com

Magdalena Stawkowski, Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina
stawkows@mailbox.sc.edu

Robert Kopack, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto
robert.kopack@mail.utoronto.ca
References.

Agamben G (1998 [1995]) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life(trans D Heller-Roazen). Stanford: Stanford University Press

Brown M (2018) The $15 Wage Movement Moves South: Politics of Region in Labor Union Campaigns. Antipode50(4):846 863

Colangelo A (2013) What is Extraterritorial Jurisdiction. Cornell Law Review99(6):1303 1352

Ferguson J (1990) The Anti Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Fessel M (2012) The Extraterritoriality Nexus: Manifestation of Extraterritoriality as Natural Phenomenon in Urban Context. Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development9(1):123 131

Gann P (1987) Forward: Issues in Extraterritoriality. Law and Contemporary Problems50(3):1 10

Hecht G (2011) Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War. Cambridge: The MIT Press

Kopack R (2019) Rocket Wastelands in Kazakhstan: Scientific Authoritarianism and the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Annals of the American Association of Geographers109(2):556-567

Painter J (2010) Rethinking Territory. Antipode42(5):1090 1118

Peluso N and Watts M (2001) Violent Environments. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Vogel C and Raymaekers T (2016) Terr(it)or(ies) of Peace? The Congolese Mining Frontier and the Fight Against “Conflict Minerals.” Antipode48(4):1102 1121

CFP:  Reparations and Geography

Deadline: October 21, 2019

With the publication of Ta-Nehisi Coates (2014) piece, The Case for Reparations, discussions for reparations for the enslaved have moved into the political mainstream.  However, the call for reparations has long animated political organizing and reparations for enslavement have been discussed in various forms since the end of the Civil War. Critically reparations is not necessarily about compensation-though that is part of the broader project-but is also about larger projects of social healing (Verdun 1992).  This connects to processes of restorative and transformative justice as well as broader political organizing strategies to reparations projects. Additionally, reparations processes that do not fundamentally address the underlying conditions of inequity that exist and relate to racial capitalism and settler colonialism, or which do not actively provide for a broader critique of the political economy, risk only temporarily addressing inequity.  As a result, reparations should be part of a broader critique of the system of racial injustice that animates historic and contemporary manifestations of racial capital and violence.  Given these concerns this paper session aims to bring together a diverse set of academic perspectives to explore the fundamental role Geography plays in debates over reparations and broader abolitionist practices around addressing fundamental inequalities for enslavement.  Specifically, this session asks what role does Geography play in reparations debate?  Given Geographies long complicity with colonial and racist projects, what might reparations look within and outside the discipline?  How might Geography position itself to address longstanding inequities through reparations?  What are the limits to reparations at a political strategy?  How might reparations fit within broader social justice struggles?  We are also open to other questions and perspectives.  Questions should be directed towards the conveners:  Joshua Inwood, Pennsylvania State University jfi6@psu.edu ; Anna Livia Brand, University of California-Berkeley annalivia@berkeley.edu and Elise Quinn, Pennsylvania State University, eaq10@psu.edu

 

Deadline for paper titles and pin # is October 21, 2019.

 

Please Send Abstracts to Josh Inwood: jfi6@psu.edu

 

Citations:

 

Coates, Ta-Nehisi (2014) The Case for Reparations. The Atlantic June.

 

Verdun, V. (1993). If the show fits, wear it: an analysis of reparations to African Americans. Tulane Law Review 67 (3) 597-668.

Engaged scholarship of human-environment relations: Public Political Ecology & Critical Environmental Justice in an era of radical change

Deadline: October 11, 2019

With recent fires in the Amazon, pipeline protests in South Dakota, a resurgence of authoritarian populisms, and climate strikes across the world, the present moment represents a conjuncture full of peril and promise. The moment calls for engaged, critical scholarship based on forging solidarities across and outside of academia to address pressing issues of environmental change and social injustice. We suggest that political ecology and critical environmental justice, are well suited to address such challenges, providing a set of tools to bridge divides between and within different publics and academia.

Building from scholarship in political ecology and critical environmental justice (see, e.g., Peluso 2015; Osborne 2017; Pellow 2018; Pulido and de Lara 2018; Diagle and Ramírez 2019, inter alia), we aim to foster conversations about how engaged research resonates (or does not) with broader emancipatory struggles. This is a call to question how Public Political Ecology and Critical Environmental Justice are used to dismantle environmental racism, discrimination, and structural inequalities. We invite colleagues and friends to contribute works that consider how current debates about decolonization (and its limits), black geographies, Indigenous studies, feminist theory, and post-colonial approaches intersect with publicly-engaged research and action on environmental issues.

This session is the third installation in a series of activities we have co-organized at American Association of Geographers and Dimensions of Political Ecology conferences since 2017. It also builds from work done in the Public Political Ecology Lab since 2011. Emerging from those efforts, we are now coordinating a special issue and invite contributions from critical scholars whose research, teaching, and art move beyond the confines of academia, expressly engaging publics to advance environmental justice and Earth Stewardship.

While the challenges are great, we suggest that a critical approach never loses sight of the politics of the possible, embracing the notion that “the point is to change it.” We seek  contributions that grapple with the challenges posed by current environmental crises, the advances being made to thrive in times of radical socio-ecological change, and the ambivalent outcomes that trouble normative notions of “success” or “failure.”

Topics of particular interest are listed below, but we welcome all seriously interested contributions that are theoretically rich and empirically-grounded:

• Climate justice
• Critical physical geography
• Decolonizing methodologies
• Solidarities
• Plantation geographies
• Abolition ecologies
• Indigenous and Afro-descendant movements
• Everyday and extraordinary forms of resistance
• Disrupting settler colonialism–Indigenous resurgence
• Critical and participatory mapping

By 11 October 2019, please upload your abstract of 150-250 words here: https://forms.gle/UFNBHKPsHWMhtQne7. We will notify folks of our decisions by 20 October 2019. Should you have questions, please contact Joel Correia (joel.correia@latam.ufl.edu) or Tracey Osborne (tosborne@email.arizona.edu).

Works Cited

Daigle, M. and Ramírez, M. M. 2019. Decolonial Geographies. In Keywords in Radical Geography: Antipode at 50. T. Jazeel, A. Kent, K. McKittrick, N. Theodore, S. Chari, P. Chatterton, V. Gidwani, N. Heynen, W. Larner, J. Peck, J. Pickerill, M. Werner and M. W. Wright Eds. doi:10.1002/9781119558071.ch14

Osborne, T. 2017. Public political ecology: A community of praxis for Earth stewardship. Journal of Political Ecology 24: 843-860.

Pellow, D. 2018. What is critical environmental justice? Cambridge: Polity.  

Peluso, N.L. 2018. Entangled territories in small-scale gold mining frontiers: Labor practices, property, and secrets in Indonesian gold country. World Development 101: 400-416.

Pulido, L. and De Lara, J. 2018. Reimagining ‘justice’ in environmental justice: Radical ecologies, decolonial thought and the Black Radical Tradition. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1(1-2): 76-98.