From freyja at berkeley.edu Mon Sep 26 11:45:30 2016 From: freyja at berkeley.edu (Freyja Knapp) Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2016 08:45:30 -0700 Subject: [Geogwaste] =?utf-8?q?CFP_AAG_2017=3A_Informality=2C_legitimacy_a?= =?utf-8?q?nd_authority_in_the_age_of_the_=E2=80=9CCircular_Economy?= =?utf-8?b?4oCd?= Message-ID: Apologies for cross-posting! Informality, legitimacy and authority in the age of the ?Circular Economy? Call for Papers, AAG 2017 Boston Organizers: Freyja Knapp, University of California, Berkeley Manisha Anantharaman, St. Mary?s College of California The circular economy is the ?new kid on the block? in the arena of technological and managerial responses to intensified waste production and resource shortages. Circular economy strategists seek to apply technical and design solutions to improve resource efficiency, reuse, and repurposing, hoping for new waves of economic growth even in times of crisis. In parallel, the urban infrastructure needed for circular resource flows is being remade through processes of zoning and land use regulation in concert with waves of gentrification and displacement. This session seeks to explore the relationship between the growing activity and interest in the circular economy (a subset of the ?green? or sustainable economy) with contemporary urban conflicts over so-called ?nuisance? land uses, commodity property rights (e.g. who owns curbside recyclables), race, and class. These conflicts recapitulate familiar patterns of dispossession or appropriation, but with a green-economy gloss that often masks socio-environmental injustices. Critical engagement with circular economy ideas and practice is of essence, especially as the concept has recently gained prominence as a global sustainability strategy attractive to policymakers and businesses. In this eagerness to realize the ?win-win? solutions that the circular economy promises, the socio-spatial practices that comprise circularity occur in the shadows of the excited claims of sustainable development and consumption, eliding the politics of expertise and practice embedded in urban re-cycling work. This panel seeks to add to the growing critical scholarship on the green economy and invites researchers studying discards, recycling, repurposing and allied processes from a critical perspective to explore the hidden effects of the circular economy transition. We are particularly interested in scholarship that seeks to trouble the North-South distinction in waste/discard studies. Some themes that we seek to explore include, but are not limited to: 1. How is the circular economy conceptualized across different places? 2. What physical, policy, and labor infrastructures articulate with the circular economy, and how are they changing? 3. How are waste gleaning/picking and recycling activities in the so-called ?informal sector? articulating with new urban structures under the banner of circular economy? 4. What are parallels or contradictions between the unlicensed waste collection economies in the global North and the global South? 5. What does sustainability and justice mean within a circular/green economy? 6. What spatial politics are at work with ?cleaning and greening up? the city? 7. How are patterns of economic development and gentrification intersecting with already-existing circularities? 8. How are notions of authority, expertise, or rights leveraged in contestations over who may legitimately participate in the green economy, and how? 9. How can we rethink ?informality? through the circular economy? Abstracts (250 words) should be sent to Freyja Knapp freyja at berkeley.edu and Manisha Anantharaman ma20 at stmarys-ca.edu by October 21. We will notify accepted participants by October 24. The deadline to submit abstracts to the AAG Annual Meeting is October 27. -- *Freyja Knapp, MLA Environmental PlanningDesignated Emphases, Science and Technology Studies & Global Metropolitan Studies PhD Candidate, Dept of Environmental Science, Policy & ManagementUniversity of California, Berkeleyemail: freyja (at) berkeley (dot) edu* *New Publication* Knapp F (2016) The birth of the flexible mine: Changing geographies of mining and the e-waste commodity frontier . *Environment and Planning A*, Published online before print May 28, 2016, doi: 10.1177/0308518X16652398 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://listserv.ohio.edu/pipermail/geogwaste/attachments/20160926/cd119554/attachment-0001.html