RGS-IBG 2016 Annual International Conference, London 30 August – 2 September,
Nexus thinking
CALL FOR PAPERS: Geographies of Anti-colonialism
Session sponsored by the Historical Geography Research Group (HGRG)
CONVENORS:
Andy Davies, University of Liverpool,
a.d.davies@liverpool.ac.uk
David Featherstone, University of Glasgow,
David.Featherstone@glasgow.ac.uk
Federico
Ferretti, University College Dublin,
federico.ferretti@ucd.ie
In the last decades, geographers have done a great work in critical exploration of the imperial
legacy of their discipline, joining subaltern and postcolonial interdisciplinary scholarship.
This has implied the critique and de-construction of colonial discourses and representations
including imperial geographies, imperial maps, imperial and euro-centric standpoints, racist
presentations of different peoples. Nevertheless, relatively fewer efforts have been done until
now to study geographies of counter-empire, anti-colonialism, anti-racism and de-
colonization.
Recent research has shown the early emergence of unorthodox nonconformists and dissenters
in the scientific field since the end of the 19
th
century, like the anarchist geographers Elisée
Reclus, Pyotr Kropotkin and Lev Mečnikov and their international fellows, radically opposed
to racisms, empires and colonialisms including, in the definition given by Antonio Gramsci,
the internal ones. In the mid-20
th
century, some radical European scholars, like the French
geographers Jean Dresch and Jean Suret-Canale, militated for of the de-colonisation of
African countries; in the English-speaking world, scholars like James Blaut and Keith
Buchanan pioneered then a geographical critique to Euro-centrism. New scholarship has also
shown the early emergence of counter-global and anti-colonial networks in several regions,
from Northern Atlantic to South Asia, and started to address geographies of resistance, of
solidarity, of insubordination, of mutinies, of black and indigenous internationalisms. There is
also increasing recognition of the importance of intersections between feminist struggles and
anti-imperialism/ anti-colonialism, e.g. in the work of activists such as Claudia Jones and Ida
Wells Barnett.
The interdisciplinary field of studies linked to the transnational turn in history and social
sciences is progressively shedding light on all these scholars and networks, needing
nevertheless further research by geographers. After analysing imperial issues in geography, it
is time to excavate anti-imperial issues in geography, as well as the geographies of anti-
colonialist and subaltern networks and struggles. For this purpose, we invite papers on the
following topics:
Spaces, places and transnational networks of anti-colonialist and anti-racist struggles both
in Europe and in the colonial and de-colonized countries
Early anti-colonialist, anti-racist and non-Eurocentric geographies in imperial ages,
including critiques of internal colonialisms (Celtic fringe, Southern Italy, Eastern Europe,
creole appropriation of indigenous lands, etc.)
Geographies of counter-global networks, resistance, solidarity, feminist, anti-colonial and
anti-racist internationalism between the 19
th
and the 21
st
centuries
Intersections of anti-colonialism with other radical social and political movements and
the heterogeneous ontologies, epistemologies and geographies that were produced
through these intersections
Critical and historical geographies of de-colonisations (from Latin America in the 19
th
century to Asia and Africa in the 20
th
century)
Decolonizing the Nexus: critique of the relations between societies, spaces and resources
in colonial and neo-colonial exploitation
Anti-colonialisms of the present and their connections (or not)
with previous struggles
What is at stake in different perspectives, e.g. post-colonialism, anti-colonialism and
radicalism?
Please send abstracts up to 250 words by 8 February 2016 to:
a.d.davies@liverpool.ac.uk
,
David.Featherstone@glasgow.ac.uk
,
federico.ferretti@ucd.ie