Neighborhoods at Times of Change and Crisis
This workshop aims to explore the theme of “neighbors” and “neighborhood” as a departure point to consider space, identity, coexistence, solidarity, and violence, at times of change and crisis in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. Neighborhood as an intimate space with blurred yet shared boundaries in the mental-maps of its residents is home to conflicts over space and time. Its histories, material formations, as well as transformations are both indicative and inductive of micro and macro social phenomena. Historically, as much as recently they are the loci of resistance and political dissidence, but also coexistence of potentially hostile groups. Therefore, envisioning neighborhoods as more than an administrative category would give hints to understand spatial formations of the social and political.
Considering the complexity of the phenomenon, we suggest approaching neighborhoods with an interdisciplinary lens. This workshop, therefore, invites the collaboration of neighboring disciplines, including but not limited to history, geography, anthropology, sociology, political science, and psychology.
In the panels organized around the themes of urban transformation; violence; solidarity, activism, and neighborhood politics; sentiments; and non-human neighbors, the following questions will be addressed:
- How do the legal, politico-economic and social processes that relate to urban transformation affect neighborhoods in the region?
- What kind of neighborhood solidarity initiatives are formed particularly in times of crises like natural disasters, war, mass migration flows and urban transformation?
- What are the responses local residents develop to aid fellow neighbors or to defend their rights to city?
- How do neighborhood politics change in the context of turbulence and how different groups (of class, religion, ethnicity, age, gender and political orientation) clash and cooperate under these circumstances?
- How can we understand violence that takes place in the intimate space of the neighborhoods, directed towards those who are personally known to the perpetrators?
- What are the conflicting claims over land, property, use, time and also memory? How are neighborhoods remembered and reconstructed in the social imaginary in relation to present concerns? What are the political implications of the memory work that is actively carried on in particular neighborhoods?
- How certain affects and sentiments circulate within neighborhoods themselves and around them?
- What kind of gendered regulations and practices shape the use of time and space within neighborhoods? Or how temporal and spatial formations of neighborhoods develop in relation to gendered practices?
- How do the relations between human and non-human residents respond to these changes?
The deadline for abstract submission is 31 January 2018. The abstracts should be limited to 250 words, and sent to nazan.maksudyan@zmo.de or hilal.alkan.zeybek@zmo.de, alongside a short CV. The authors of the accepted papers will be notified by 1 March 2018. The organizers of the workshop intend to put together a publication on the subject. Therefore participants are asked to submit their final papers by 15 April 2018.
For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL" below.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://www.zmo.de/Ausschreibungen/calls%20for%20papers/CfP%20-%20Neighborhoods%202018.pdf