CFP: Socially Just Sustainability (AAG Annual Meeting 2010)

CFP: 2010 Annual Meetings of the AAG, Washington, DC, April 14-18

On Demanding a Politics and Practice of Socially Just Sustainable
Development

Organizers: Hamil Pearsall (Temple University), Joe Pierce (Clark
University) and Rob Krueger (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)

Sponsorship: Urban Geography Specialty Group, Political Geography
Specialty Group

For nearly 20 years local and regional governments have, for better or
worse, increasingly positioned principles of sustainability in some
aspects of their planning and development practices. These often include:
pocket parks, indicator projects, green architecture, carbon reduction
plans, open space preservation, transit-oriented development and
brownfield reclamation. Overarching development concepts, such as: "New
Urbanism," "Smart Growth," "Compact Urban Development," and "Urban
Sustainability," have thus emerged as operational definitions with much
fanfare from architects, planners, policy makers and political elites.

More recently, critics of sustainability efforts have pointedly argued
that underlying social relations constrain the reach of sustainable
improvements or represent a new culture of consumerism based on principles
of ecological modernization. For instance, the environmental justice
literature demonstrates how "uneven development" plagues the distribution
of environmental costs and benefits. In a similar vein, political economy
approaches show how it now makes economic sense (i.e., the conditions for
capitalist accumulation support this logic) for cities and regions to play
the role of steward with regard to the ecological integrity of a place
while discounting the disparate social impacts of their activities. Still
others argue that sustainability represents a post-political condition,
whereby debates over a "just" society are undermined by a tacit consensus.

While the concepts of social justice and sustainability have been wedded
diagrammatically, analytically and in practice, social justice has
maintained an ancillary position in many analyses. Issues of social
justice are indeed recognized, but are often viewed as an expected outcome
of the system (rising tides raise all ships?), and thus not addressed
directly. In practice, results have been often been disastrous for those
lacking political power.

This session seeks an analytical intervention into the social "injustice
of sustainability." We seek to envision a "neo- sustainability" paradigm
and politics that positions social justice at the core of sustainability
analysis and action. We invite papers that fit into these themes:

· Conceptual Interventions: The concepts of spatial justice,
environmental justice, the post-political, organic regeneration,
vulnerability and adaptive capacity/resilience among others would be
appropriate.

* Methodological Interventions: Are we missing opportunities to
employ interdisciplinary approaches or multiple methodologies to these
questions?

* Case studies: In-depth case studies that show how collective
political action transgresses politics and outcomes as usual. Case studies
should have a strong conceptual framework to guide their analysis.

Please submit queries and abstracts (250 words) to Hamil Pearsall
(Hamil.Pearsall@temple.edu), Joe Pierce (jpierce@clarku.edu) or Rob
Krueger (Krueger@wpi.edu). Abstracts will be accepted until October 10.
Final decisions will be announced by October 15.