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2008 Conference Themes
Gentrification, Development, and Displacement- Session Chair: Naomi Jagers
Co-chairs: Kalfani Ture, Michel Tinguiri
Social science is increasingly giving attention to the effects of environmental and development policies as they have been implemented in a rapidly urbanizing and globalizing world including displacement of people and communities that often result. Equal attention has been given to processes by which people resist, create community identity and shape social space in the face of such policies. It is recognized that these processes not only disrupt physical space and people's sense of belonging, but also that such trends and policies often adversely affect vulnerable communities along the lines of class, race, gender, & religion. We welcome interdisciplinary papers addressing and/or re-examining themes including and related to gentrification, urban planning and housing policy, development, refugee, tourism, and displacement as they highlight power inequality, global political and economic inequality, inter- and intra-racial conflict, homelessness, and localized resistance to community dissolution. Please join us in exploring new insights that can inform academic and activist related discourse(s).
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Language as Social Action, Media Representation, and the Body
- Session Chair:
Jennifer Delfino
Co-chair: Audrey Cooper
This panel explores the ways in which language emerges as a form of social action, both through media representation and as embodied practice. We welcome papers from any social science discipline that explore the connections between language, social action, the media, and the body, as well as any that seek to challenge the ways in which these topics are linked together to interrogate power and dominant forms of representation, as well as to identify openings for theorizing social change and acting towards social justice."
Interdisciplinary Contributions to Environmental Policy and Practice- Session Chair: Rodolfo Tello
How can we promote greater inclusion of social justice concerns while improving the effectiveness of environmental interventions? We are looking for papers addressing potential and actual contributions to contend with current socioenvironmental problems. From a results-based perspective, we expect to gain a better understanding of the different ways of approaching these issues, both at the policy and on the ground levels, and their degree of effectiveness within the context of their application. Proposals from different disciplinary and non-disciplinary concentrations are encouraged, including environmental anthropology, political ecology, environmental justice, human geography, ecological economics, environmental activism, sustainable development, environmental sociology, political science, environmental education, conservation social science, and other related interdisciplinary programs. Join us in an effort to build a more socially inclusive conservation practice!
Inequalities in Health and Healing- Session Chair: Nell Haynes
Health and healing are conceptualized and practiced diversely among different groups. Even such concepts are often problematic in certain places. We welcome papers exploring relationships between health, inequalities, healing practices, and larger social processes. Papers addressing wellness, illness, health, healing, disease, injury, and cultural competency as they relate to individuals, families, or communities will be productive to this discussion. Particularly of interest are disparities in health and healing due to age, gender, race, citizenship, ethnicity, and socioeconomic conditions. Proposals are encouraged from disciplines such as medical anthropology, sociology, international studies, public health, gender studies, or other interdisciplinary programs, as well as health policy organizations and practitioners. Through this discussion we hope to advance social justice by exploring how health needs are or are not being met.
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2007 Conference Themes
Aaron Tobler and Maria Amelia Viteri, Founders and Co-Organizers
Current normalization around often restricting discourses - including whiteness, heteronormativity, ethnocentrism - are invested in the construction of otherness. This otherness uses "national security" discourses to frame race and ethnicity within sexually regulated bodies. These boundaries are in turn subject to constant surveillance and policing. Recent discussions of the "immigration crisis" in the United States are testimony to the construction of others bounded by race, class, ethnicity and sexuality.
The conference title, "Interrogating Diversity: Understanding Issues of Contemporary Surveillance and Policing," emphasizes just what this conference seeks to unpack. Indeed, the papers and discussions of this conference will question the distinct - yet interconnected - discourses associated with contemporary issues surveillance and policing. Otherness is just one of many discourses central to this exploration. The construction of otherness is intimately connected to current normalized, restricting discourses noted above. By exploring Diversity in all forms, we can all come to better realize the implications of otherness.
In this context, it is imperative to analyze the relationships within and between different discursive sites, various disciplines and spaces of knowledge production. Tracking movements across geographic, linguistic and imaginary locations might provide additional lenses to question the multiple ways in which surveillance and policing practices are constructed around notions of security. Moreover, these movements directly influence public discussions of administration and development.
This conference interrogates surveillance and policing as they intersect with race, ethnicity, class, sex and gender. We invite these interrogations through the gamut of theory-based papers to discussions of research-in-progress. Indeed, this space will provide a wide range of discussions - either in English or Spanish - to encourage and facilitate open and honest discussions that are often taken for granted.
We seek submissions that explore the impact of the current "war on terror" as it relocates policing and surveillance in everyday lives intersecting with current conceptions of family, homonormativity, neoliberalism, gender normativity, citizenship and political movements around the globe.
Some of the themes this conference will debate and discuss include:
- Surveillance: How are forms of surveillance practiced? Who sanctions surveillance? Who are those that experience surveillance? Why is surveillance conducted (publicly-stated vs. actual and unknown reasons)? Who benefits and what are the costs?
- Policing: Whether state agencies or not, the meanings and practices of policing and police agencies. How are these agencies interpreted by those policed? By those who do and/or are the police? What is the aim/objective of policing?
- Security: State-sanctioned practices, especially after 9-11, and the way it shapes the lives of people in a continuous struggle against 'terrorism" as defined by US social institutions. What are the intersections of personal liberty with the security of the state? How does American security compare or contrast with other nation states? What does "security" mean? Economic costs of increased security - what are the losses we suffer as a result?
- Intersections of race, ethnicity, sex and gender: How does sexuality amalgamate with notions of race, ethnicity and gender to normalize individuals? How does public police frame and shape our notions of gender? How has American social policy shaped our understanding of race? Can Latinos, like the Irish before them, become "white?" How are individuals positioned to react given others' actions?
- Dichotomies: What comes from an exploration of the way in which binary oppositions (e.g., us/them) naturalize difference as hierarchical where one privileged race seems to define and police otherness? How does "gender" fit into this framework?
- Knowledge: How is knowledge used to mark difference? How is "difference" policed around discourses of "national security?" How is this knowledge shared and presented through public officials or government statements? How do we balance the public's right to know with the notion of "national security?" Does the first amendment need restrictions? Information asymmetry and how it affects different entities—how does the (varying) disclosures of information to parties affect their respective power and freedom to make choices?
- Discourse: How do discourses of surveillance, policing and security currently create and reinforce otherness? (This includes both text and discourse analysis of various media, both fiction and nonfiction).
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