Archive: Marzo 22nd, 2013

• Economic recession and Tourism

Economic recession: interpretations, performances and reifications in the tourism domain

Organizers

Chiara Rabbiosi, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna (Italy)
Valeria Pecorelli, University of Milan Bicocca (Italiy)

Call for papers

One of the most visible phenomena brought about by late capitalism is the increasingly pivotal role of tourism in the economic and cultural life of places. The global demand for tourism has been also consistently increasing. Assuming that tourism is one of the most sensitive sectors in terms of susceptibility to crises on the short and medium term, it is interesting to unveil how current global economic recession and tourism intersect and influence each other.

The session will particularly question how topics related to economic recession are interpreted, performed and reified by a variety of actors in the European tourism domain:

• How do political and economic élites, policy-makers, intermediaries of any kind, tourists, etc. react to major, global, economical changes? E.g.: changes in the geography of holidays, in the length of journeys; changes in partnerships between public and private actors; changes in the awareness of the potentiality of the tourism domain as a sphere to attract exogenous economical/cultural/social resources; the repositioning of tour operators towards new tourist targets.
• Is it possible to identify new or renewed themes in the tourism domain that become the object of material and discursive mobilization in order to answer problematic conditions brought about by the economic recession? E.g.: the promotion of innovative tourist destinations, itineraries, events, etc. as an answer to the need for sustainability; but also the promotion of luxury destinations that may attract consumerist élites.
• How do the possible changing attitudes of political and economic élites, policy-makers, intermediaries of any kind, tourists, etc. influence the economic and cultural, social and spatial life of tourism destinations at micro-scale level? E.g.: in terms of “power relations”, “participative democracy”, “transition to a low carbon society”, “social innovation”, “socio-spatial segregation” just to quote but a few debated themes.
• How are lock-ins dismantled or reproduced in tourism?

We particularly welcome papers that focus on fostering the renewal or the “(re)invention” of tourism destinations, tourism sites within cities, tourism itineraries, products, policies and even of particular categories of tourists as a possible solution or as a reaction to economic recession.

Priority will be given to the presentation of those case studies embedded in theoretical accounts or exploring emerging trends in tourism with the help of analytical categories.

Papers will be discussed either in English and French

Session code: S10

If you are interested in participating please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words by filling in THIS FORM and send it to the organizers before march 31st 2013 using this email: s10@eugeo2013.com
No one may submit or take part in more than two presentations.

• Geographies of TransformAction

Geographies of TransformAction: Spaces, processes, practices and tactics of reappropriation in contemporary activism

Organizers

Network Geografi-A:
Margherita Ciervo, Economy Dept. University of Foggia (Italy)
Arturo Di Bella, Political and Social Science Dept., University of Catania (Italy)
Daniela Festa, Equipe Mosaïques, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, UMR LAVUE 7218 (France)
Valeria Pecorelli, Sociology Dept. University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy)
Massimiliano Tabusi, Università per Stranieri di Siena (Italy)

Call for papers

This session calls for papers that, through the lens of critical and active geography, focus on self-organized resistance and innovation practices performed by civil society and social movements at the present time.

New social movements, which seem capable to influence increasingly the contemporary powerscape of actors, integrate the critique to neoliberism with protest, constructive actions, and alternative territorial development models, adopting multiple tools and performing different repertoires (Ranciere, 1990; Castoriadis, 1998; Routledge, 2003; Amin, Thrift, 2005; Vanolo, Rossi, 2010).

Through the autonomous re-appropriation of tangible spaces (e.g.: territories, dismissed buildings, public places, empty areas, artistic labs etc.) and intangible spaces (e.g.: participation, citizenship, democracy, communication etc.), social movements and collective practices define new and immediate cooperative modalities of imaginaries, active engagement and innovative forms of government.

Despite possible destabilizing factors (Chatterton, 2005; Holloway, 2010), such as assimilation and cooptation by the established system (political parties, trade unions, elite etc.) and by hegemonic practices (Harvey, 2012), social movements remain key-actors in the reinvention of the contemporary political process.

The objectives of the session are summarized as follows:

• questioning contemporary social movements role in the spatial requalification and democratic regeneration of territorial systems at different scale levels;
• analyzing types of repossessed spaces, articulated practices and alternative participated models of government as well as achieved results, limits, contradictions;
• identifying innovative potentials of civic activism practices in changing power and government relations;
• discussing responsibilities of critical geography in investigating, supporting and nurturing the work and the practice of social movements;
• collaborating at the ‘Manifesto for Geography of TrasformAction’.

 

Session code: S14

If you are interested in participating please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words by filling in THIS FORM and send it to the organizers before march 31st 2013 using this email: s14@eugeo2013.com
No one may submit or take part in more than two presentations.

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• EUGEO Congress – CFP

The fourth EUGEO Congress will take place in Rome, 5-7 September 2013.

 

Researchers and experts from all over the world are invited to submit proposals for the presentation of their research within one of the following sessions.

 

If you are interested in participating, please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words by filling in this form and send it to the session organizers using the corresponding email only before march 31st 2013.

No one may submit or take part in more than two presentations.

 

Call for papers

• New geo-graphies of exile

New gep-graphies of exile. Displacements, re-placements and literary reconstructions od belonging

Organizers

Elena dell’Agnese, University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy)
Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawai’I at Manoa (USA)

Call for papers

“…writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back…but, .. physical alienation …almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short create fictions” With these words, the exiled writer Salman Rushdie introduces his collection of essays entitled “Imaginary Homelands”. Indeed, experiencing exile, that is being banished from a place considered as “Home”, often suggests to a writer the literary re-invention of that place.

The positionality of the displaced writer is influenced not only by the feeling of difference, but also by questions of gender, time, nation; and by his/her capacity of overcoming the “frontier” between Here and There, of re-placing him/herself and of re-inventing new geo-graphies of emotions. Beyond the rhetoric of displacement, the experience of exile can invite the displaced writer into a new aesthetic experience and reframe his/her sensible world. Other people’s bread can be salty, as objectively remembered by Dante (since in Florence, bread is salt-free), but one can also learn how to appreciate its different taste.

The three panellists (Marcella Schmidt di Friedberg, Giulia de Spuches, Michael J. Shapiro) will interrogate in this perspective the works of the exilic writers Charles Selasfield, Nuruddin Farah, and Ismet Prcic. The session is open to papers concerning other exiled authors, who, in different times and space settings, re-imagined their lost homelands, but also learned how to re-place themselves into the new spaces in between.

This session is linked to the IGU Commission on Political Geography Research Network

Session code: S21

If you are interested in participating please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words by filling in THIS FORM and send it to the organizers before march 31st 2013 using this email: s21@eugeo2013.com
No one may submit or take part in more than two presentations.