Geopolitics of Displacement and Exclusion: Making and Unmaking of Refugees

 AAG, April 10-14, 2018

New Orleans, LA

Organizers: Kara Dempsey (Appalachian State University) and Orhon Myadar (University of Arizona)

As the number of refugees reaches record high globally, refugee issues have been brought to the forefront of political and public debates both nationally and internationally. The public views towards these refugees have been shaped by various mediums that disseminate images and ideas of and about refugees.

This session seeks to conceptualize refugee migration as a critical geopolitical issue and examine the theoretical and practical assumptions surrounding the humanitarian crisis. Invoking Judith Butler’s Precarious Life and Giorgio Agamben’s Bare Life, the session aims to explore the politics of making and unmaking refugees at different scales and in different milieus. Central to our understanding of the politics of refugees is the contradiction between the basic International Relations assumption based on the sanctity of the states and the forces that defy the assumption and the rigidity that comes with it. In exploring the processes of making and unmaking refugees within this contradiction, this session thus seeks to bring together discussions on topics including but not limited to: geopolitics of displacement and bordering (that of exclusion and inclusion; the travel ban); the biopolitics of making/unmaking refugees (coding, registration, incarceration, representation, exploitation and subjugation of refugee bodies); precariousness of refugee lives; refugee stories (production, narration, animation, fetishizing and silencing of refugee narratives; documenting refugee voices), racializing and essentializing tropes of refugees.

Interested contributors should submit an abstract of approximately 250 words to Kara Dempsey (dempseyke@appstate.edu) and Orhon Myadar (orhon@email.arizona.edu) by October 10, 2017.

Kara and Orhon

From Kaepernick and Qatar to Cobb County and the Kop: Critical Geographies of Sports Capitalism

Organizer: Andy Walter (University of West Georgia)

Quoting literary theorist Terry Eagleton, “No finer way of resolving the problems of capitalism has been dreamed up” than football (soccer). If this reads as an overstatement, geographer Doreen Massey argued that concerning oneself with the ways in which capital has enclosed football offers a means to understand and, on that basis, to figure out ways to challenge, neoliberalized and financialized society. Recent years have provided spectacular illustrations of both scholars’ claims and their relevance to modern sports generally. From the overt rent-seeking and subversion of local democracy by/for the Atlanta Braves in Cobb County, Georgia, to the deadly exploitation of migrant workers building stadiums for a World Cup serving as a conduit for the circulation of Qatar’s massive surpluses, sport offers a concrete picture of the modes and consequences of wealth extraction and accumulation. At the same time, professional sport provides a view of various ways in which capital’s dominant forms are challenged and grounds are potentially established to create different, less exploitative and unjust ones. For example, by “taking a knee” quarterback Colin Kaepernick inspired a players’ anti-racist movement that exposed the humanity and power of highly-skilled, highly-paid workers and ultimately disrupted the smooth multi-billion dollar flow of value in the NFL (leading NFL owners to collectively withhold work from Kaepernick as an apparent retaliation). Meanwhile, at Liverpool FC’s Anfield Stadium, the loyal supporters of the Kop end, among others elsewhere in the stadium, walked out of a match en masse to contest the narrowing of their role in the club to that of customer and to caution the American owners against treating the club as simply a financial, rather than a community, asset.

This session provides a forum for papers exploring the ways in which space and place figure into the operations and outcomes of sports capitalism as well as challenges and alternatives to it at all scales and in any region of the world. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the connections between the production and consumption of sport as a commodity and:

Rent-seeking through land development, media rights, etc.

Labor regulation, exploitation, and organization within and beyond the stadium

Fandom and neoliberal subject formation

Fandom and solidarity

Gender/sexism/gender politics and injustices

Urban politics and citizenship

Democracy and emancipatory politics

Economic governance

Race/racism/racial injustice

Global value chains/production networks

Urban public space

Urban infrastructures

Financialization of the built environment

Commoning and expropriation

Urban and global wealth inequality

In you are interested in contributing to this session, please contact Andy Walter (awalter@westga.edu) with a description of your paper’s topic, or any questions you may have about it, by October 18.

Organizers: Francis Massé (Dept. of Geography, York University), Jared Margulies (Department
of Politics, University of Sheffield)
Discussant: Dr. Bram Büscher (Wageningen University)

From extralegal rhino and elephant hunting, to illegal timber harvesting, to illegal, unregulated,
and underreported fishing (IUU), and the sourcing and trade of birds and reptiles, wildlife crime
and the responses to it are gaining increasing scholarly and policy attention. The International
Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) defines wildlife as “all fauna and flora”
(CITES, 2017). It defines crime as “acts committed contrary to national laws and regulations
intended to protect natural resources and to administer their management and use” (Ibid). At the
same time, wildlife crime is also transnational in scope, as the transport and sale of illicitly
harvested or otherwise protected species of fauna and flora make up the growing illegal wildlife
trade (IWT), a multi-billion dollar a year industry (UNDP, 2015).

Studying wildlife crime and the responses to it thus requires multiscalar research including the
spaces and sites of extraction, transit, and consumption of wildlife, to the connections and flows
in-between that span the local to the global. This includes spaces of conservation, the open seas,
surrounding communities, ports of entry and exit, global meetings, and (il)legal sites of purchase
and consumption both online and offline (Hansen et al., 2012; Hübschle, 2016a, 2016b; White,
2016). Efforts to combat wildlife crime similarly take us from local areas of sourcing, such as
protected areas (Lemieux, 2014; Lunstrum, 2014), to international forums and regional policing
agreements (White, 2016), and demand-reduction campaigns (TRAFFIC, 2017). Such efforts
involve communities (Massé et al., 2017; Roe et al., 2015) and increasingly more-thanconservation
actors, both state and non-state (Nurse, 2013). Put simply, wildlife crime and the
ways in which it is responded to are not relegated to a certain scale or political-ecological space.

Moreover, while much of the above might reflect or embody familiar geographical, politicalecological,
and socio-ecological dynamics, we are also seeing new and changing dynamics and
spatialities concerning wildlife crime and efforts to combat it (Büscher, Forthcoming). These
dynamics are shaped by a variety of factors including the very labelling of the illicit harvesting
of wildlife as “crime” and those who engage with harvesting as “criminals.” Wildlife crime is
also increasingly framed as a crisis, “war”, or a security issue connected to organized crime and
terrorism that enfold wildlife crime in geopolitical dynamics that are shaping responses to it and
where such responses take place (Büscher, Forthcoming; Duffy, 2014, 2016; Marijnen, 2017).

The result is that wildlife crime, responses to wildlife crime, and the studying of each is taking
place in new spaces and at new scales prompting an engagement with what might be termed
more-than-conservation spaces, actors, and interests. It is these changing geographies and related
political-/socio-ecological dynamics that this session is primarily interested in. Drawing on the
above, there are three key areas of focus for this session:

1. The spaces (and places) of wildlife crime and responses to it;
2. The ways in which the political-ecological and socio-ecological dynamics of wildlife crime
intersect with the geopolitical and political-geographic;
3. How these changes might influence or necessitate new approaches to studying wildlife crime.

Of particular interest are presentations that bring light to novel developments and/or changes to
each with a view to why such changes are occurring and what the implications might be.
Specific topics might include, but are not limited to:
• The changing spatialities and geographies of wildlife crime and the responses to it.
• Legal geographies related to the illicit harvesting of wildlife and the production of
“crime” and “criminals.”
• New understandings and problematizations of what might be considered “wildlife crime”
and wildlife law enforcement.
• The multi-scalar nature of wildlife crime and the connections between local and global
ecologies and political-dynamics.
• Shifting and new geopolitics and political-geographies of wildlife crime and responses.
• The intersection of wildlife crime and related enforcement measures with other sectors
and geopolitical, political-geographical, and political-ecological dynamics.
• Theoretical and conceptual approaches to studying wildlife crime.
• Innovative ways to study wildlife crime and responses to it.

Please e-mail abstracts of up to 250 words to Francis Massé (massef@yorku.ca) and Jared
Margulies (j.margulies@sheffield.ac.uk) by October 15th. Successful applicants will be
contacted no later than October 20th and will need to submit their abstract online to the AAG
portal thereafter.

Francis Massé, Ph.D. Candidate, York University
Jared Margulies, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Sheffield

References
Büscher, B. (Forthcoming). From Biopower to Ontopower? Violent Responses to Wildlife Crime
and the New Geographies of Conservation. Conservation and Society.
CITES. (2017). Wildlife Crime. from cites.org/eng/prog/iccwc.php/Wildlife-Crime
Duffy, R. (2014). Waging a war to save biodiversity: the rise of militarized conservation.
International Affairs, 90(4), 819-834.
Duffy, R. (2016). War, by conservation. Geoforum, 69, 238-248.
Hansen, A. L. S., Li, A., Joly, D., Mekaru, S., & Brownstein, J. S. (2012). Digital surveillance: a
novel approach to monitoring the illegal wildlife trade. PLoS One, 7(12), e51156.
Hübschle, A. (2016a). Security coordination in an illegal market: the transnational trade in
rhinoceros horn. Politikon, 1-22.
Hübschle, A. (2016b). The social economy of rhino poaching: Of economic freedom fighters,
professional hunters and marginalized local people. Current Sociology,
0011392116673210.
Lemieux, A. M. (2014). Situational prevention of poaching: Routledge.
Lunstrum, E. (2014). Green Militarization: Anti-Poaching Efforts and the Spatial Contours of
Kruger National Park. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104(4), 816-
832.
Marijnen, E. (2017). The ‘green militarisation’of development aid: the European Commission
and the Virunga National Park, DR Congo. Third World Quarterly, 1-17.
Massé, F., Gardiner, A., Lubilo, R., & Themba, M. (2017). Inclusive Anti-poaching? Exploring
the Potential and Challenges of Community-based Anti-Poaching. South Africa Crime
Quarterly, 60, 19-27.
Nurse, A. (2013). Privatising the green police: the role of NGOs in wildlife law enforcement.
Crime, law and social change, 59(3), 305-318.
Roe, D., Cooney, R., Dublin, H. T., Challender, D. W., Biggs, D., Skinner, D., et al. (2015).
Beyond enforcement: engaging communities in tackling wildlife crime: International
Institute for Environment and Development
TRAFFIC. (2017). Consumer Behaviour Change leading to Demand Reduction. Retrieved Sept.
1, 2017, from www.traffic.org/demand-reduction
UNDP. (2015). Combating poaching and wildlife trafficking: A priority for UNDP.
White, R. (2016). Building NESTs to combat environmental crime networks. Trends in

Geopolitics of Displacement and Exclusion: Making and Unmaking of Refugees

AAG, April 10-14, 2018

New Orleans, LA

Organizers: Kara Dempsey (Appalachian State University) and Orhon Myadar (University of Arizona)

As the number of refugees reaches record high globally, refugee issues have been brought to the forefront of political and public debates both nationally and internationally. The public views towards these refugees have been shaped by various mediums that disseminate images and ideas of and about refugees.

This session seeks to conceptualize refugee migration as a critical geopolitical issue and examine the theoretical and practical assumptions surrounding the humanitarian crisis. Invoking Judith Butler’s Precarious Life and Giorgio Agamben’s Bare Life, the session aims to explore the politics of making and unmaking refugees at different scales and in different milieus. Central to our understanding of the politics of refugees is the contradiction between the basic International Relations assumption based on the sanctity of the states and the forces that defy the assumption and the rigidity that comes with it. In exploring the processes of making and unmaking refugees within this contradiction, this session thus seeks to bring together discussions on topics including but not limited to: geopolitics of displacement and bordering (that of exclusion and inclusion; the travel ban); the biopolitics of making/unmaking refugees (coding, registration, incarceration, representation, exploitation and subjugation of refugee bodies); precariousness of refugee lives; refugee stories (production, narration, animation, fetishizing and silencing of refugee narratives; documenting refugee voices), racializing and essentializing tropes of refugees.

Interested contributors should submit an abstract of approximately 250 words to Kara Dempsey (dempseyke@appstate.edu) and Orhon Myadar (orhon@email.arizona.edu) by October 10, 2017.

CFP: Dimensions of dispossession: Spatialities, temporalities, and (im)materialities

2018 American Association of Geographers Annual Conference, New Orleans Louisiana 

Session Co-organizers

Joel E. Correia, University of Arizona Center for Latin American Studies

Max Counter, University of Colorado at Boulder Department of Geography

Discussant

To be confirmed

Sponsors

Cultural and Political Ecology, Political Geography, Cultural Geography Specialty Groups

Dimensions of dispossession: Spatialities, temporalities, and (im)materialities

Dispossession is a central concept in the critical human geography lexicon with expansive use across various subfields that could almost certainly qualify it as one of Raymond Williams’ famed “keywords”  (Williams 1976). The literature on dispossession and its relation to capital accumulation bears witness to its enduring theoretical and empirical significance (See, for example, Marx 1976 [1867]; Harvey 2003; Glassman 2006; Hart 2006; Li 2010a; 2010b; Ballvé 2012; Chakravartty and Fernando da Silva 2012; Perreault 2012; Levien 2015; inter alia). Post-colonial, feminist, and critical social theorists have provided further perspectives that center on the affective aspects of dispossession as a more-than-material process (See, for example, Fanon 1952; Agamben 2005; Casolo and Doshi 2013; Coulthard 2014; Bhandar and Toscano 2016). Building from recent scholarship (Butler and Anthanisou 2013; Gordillo 2014; Fernandez 2017; Counter 2017; Bryan 2017), this session invites papers that explore the multiplicity of dispossession, taking as its point of departure that dispossession is a spatial process shaped by capital accumulation, but also more-than-material, affective, and temporal. In sum, we are interested in work, that through both empirical rigor and theoretical sensitivity, explores the very idea of “dispossession” and how it is manifest through an array of different dimensions.

Relevant questions include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How are multiple facets of the concept dispossession effective for understanding current processes of dispossession as a lived experience?
• What are the limits to the various ways the term “dispossession” is understood and utilized in contemporary critical geographic scholarship? In what ways can those limits be overcome?
• What new aspects might the term further encapsulate?
• How is dispossession manifest vis-a-vis temporal, spatial, and (im)material geographies?
• And, importantly, how might geographers develop a sensitivity to illuminating these multiple dimensions of dispossession in their empirical work?

If interested, please email you 250 word abstract to Joel Correia (jcorreia@email.arizona.edu) or Max Counter (max.counter@colorado.edu) by October 9th. We will notify selected participants by October 15th 2017.

References

Agamben, G. 2005. State of exception. Atell, K. trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bryan, J. 2017. Oil, indigeneity, and dispossession. In Other geographies: The influences of  Michael Watts. Chari, S. Freidberg, S., Gidwani, V., Ribot, J., and Wolford, W. eds. p. 157-168. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

Ballvé, T. 2012.. Everyday state formation: Territory, decentralization, and the narco landgrab in Colombia. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30(4), 603-622.

Bhandar, B. and Toscano, A. 2016. Representing Palestinian dispossession: Land, property, and photography in the settler colony. Settler Colonial Studies, 7(1): 1-18.

Butler, J. and Athanisou, A. 2013. Dispossession: The performative in the political. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Casolo, J. and Doshi, S. 2013. Domesticated dispossessions? Towards a transnational feminist geopolitics of development. Geopolitics, 18(4): 800-834.

Coulthard, G.S. 2014. Red skins, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Counter, M. 2017. ‘La doble condición’: landmine victims, forced displacement, and disability in Colombia’s Magdalena Medio. Social & Cultural Geography, 1-25.DOI:10.1080/14649365.2017.1280616

Chakravartty, P. and Fernando da Silva, D. 2012. Accumulation, dispossession, and debt: The racial logic of global capitalism-an introduction. American Quarterly, 64(3): 361-385.

Fanon, F. 1965. Black skins, white masks. New York: Grove Press.

Fernandez, B. 2017. Dispossession and the depletion of social reproduction. Antipode, DOI: 10.1111/anti.1235.

Glassman, J. 2006. Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession, and accumulation by ‘extra-economic’ means. Progress in Human Geography, 30(5): 608-625.

Gordillo, G. 2014 Rubble: The afterlife of destruction. Durham: Duke University Press

Hart, G. 2006. Denaturalizing dispossession: Critical ethnography in the age of resurgent imperialism. Antipode, 38(5): 977-1004.

Harvey, D. 2003. The new imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Levien, Michael. 2015. “From Primitive Accumulation to Regimes of Dispossession: Theses on India’s Land Question.” Economic and Political Weekly 50(22): 146-157

Li, T.M. 2010a. Indigeneity, capitalism, and the management of dispossession. Current Anthropology, 51(3): 385-414.

______. 2010b. To make live or let die? Rural dispossession and the protection of surplus populations. Antipode, 41(s1): 66-93.

Marx, K. 1976 [1867]. Capital: A critique of political economy volume one. Fowkes, B. trans. London: Penguin Books.

Perreault, T. 2012. Dispossession by accumulation? Mining, water, and the nature of enclosure on the Bolivian Altiplano. Antipode, 45(5): 1050-1069.

Williams, R. (1976). Keywords: a vocabulary of society and culture. Fontana/Croom Helm, London.

Emergent politics of REDD+ governance

Organizers: Adeniyi P. Asiyanbi (University of Sheffield); Jens Friis Lund (University of Copenhagen)

Emerging in the mid-2000s, REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhance of forest carbon stocks) quickly became an important symbol of optimism not only for international action on climate change but also for forest governance, biodiversity conservation, market-based environmental governance, and development. However, a decade on, hope in the scheme has plummeted. Not only has the scheme been largely ineffective, we have also seen fears of ‘green grabbing’ materialize despite the development of safeguards. REDD+ discourse has been mobilized for a variety of purposes, including as innovative financing for private wildlife conservation, for a variety of NGO projects and to finance state budgetary deficits. Above all, REDD+ has remained mired in technical and political challenges that raise important questions (Leach and Scoones, 2015; Beymer-Farris and Bassett, 2012; Cavanagh et al., 2015). Increasingly, critical scholars ask whether REDD+ is another fleeting conservation fad (Lund et al., 2017), and whether it might be time to ‘move on’ (Fletcher et al., 2016).

Yet, REDD+ stumbles on, and emergent global environmental imperatives warrant that we critically examine it and its future within the broader global environmental governance arena. The Sustainable Development Goals agreed in 2015, the New York Declaration on Forests in 2014 and the 2015 global climate deal (the Paris Agreement) all give REDD+ a renewed significance (Angelsen et al. 2017; Savaresi, 2016). Meanwhile, outright and outspoken resistance to REDD+ among forest-dependent and indigenous groups across the world is growing, partly in response to failed expectations. And at a more general level, increasing nationalism raises new challenges for multilateral governance of climate change mitigation and REDD+.
This session invites theoretical, empirical and review papers that reflect on the current and future politics of REDD+ governance. Some questions of interest include: How are actors at various levels reacting to the learnings generated over the past decade? In what ways can nations now be seen to be more ‘ready for REDD+’ than they were a decade ago? How are the major international REDD+ institutions interpreting, evaluating and responding to local outcomes of REDD+ implementation? What discursive strategies are being deployed among REDD+ actors to reframe narratives of the poorly performing scheme? We are also interested in contributions that situate REDD+ within the wider global climate change mitigation, forest conservation, and energy debates. Under the emergent global environmental imperatives, we ask: how are REDD+ institutions, structures and processes being reworked? How are these new imperatives shaping the emergent governance of REDD+? Is REDD+ governance undergoing important structure shifts (e.g. from market-based to aid-based; from centric to polycentric approaches)? What are the implications of these shifts?

Please submit your 250-word abstract to Adeniyi Asiyanbi (a.asiyanbi@sheffield.ac.uk) and Jens Friis Lund (jens@ifro.ku.dk) by October 20, 2017.

References

Angelsen, A., Brockhaus, M., Duchelle, A. E., Larson, A., Martius, C., Sunderlin, W. D., … & Wunder, S. (2017). Learning from REDD+: a response to Fletcher et al. Conservation Biology, 31(3), 718-720.

Cavanagh, C. J., Vedeld, P. O., & Trædal, L. T. (2015). Securitizing REDD+? Problematizing the emerging illegal timber trade and forest carbon interface in East Africa. Geoforum, 60, 72-82.

Beymer-Farris, B. A., & Bassett, T. J. (2012). The REDD menace: Resurgent protectionism in Tanzania’s mangrove forests. Global Environmental Change, 22(2), 332-341.

Fletcher, R., Dressler, W., Büscher, B., & Anderson, Z. R. (2016). Questioning REDD+ and the future of market‐based conservation. Conservation Biology, 30(3), 673-675.

Leach, M., & Scoones, I. (Eds.). (2015). Carbon conflicts and forest landscapes in Africa. Routledge.

Lund, J. F., Sungusia, E., Mabele, M. B., & Scheba, A. (2017). Promising change, delivering continuity: REDD+ as conservation fad. World Development, 89, 124-139.

Savaresi, A. (2016). The Paris Agreement: a new beginning?. Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law, 34(1), 16-26.

​I am willing to organize a session or more to electoral geography for the AAG meeting in New Orleans April 10-14, 2018. If you have research devoted to recent elections, gerrymandering, and related aspects to electoral geography please get in touch with me.

John Heppen
University of Wisconsin, River Falls
john.heppen@uwrf.edu