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Call For Papers—“Southeast Asia and Urban Studies’ Southern Turn”

Annual Conference of the Association of American Geographers

Los Angeles, CA

9-13 April 2013

Influential calls to ‘postcolonialize’ urban scholarship (Robinson 2006) and foster ‘new geographies of theory’ (Roy 2009) mean that it is now possible to speak of a ‘Southern turn’ (Harris 2012) in urban studies. We seek papers that examine cities in Southeast Asia as part of this wider Southern turn. This includes, but is not limited to, papers on the following themes:

– Southeast Asia as a site for the provincialization of EuroAmerican-centered urban geographies

– Postcolonial theory and/in the study of cities in Southeast Asia

– The contribution of scholarship and concepts in Southeast Asian studies (e.g. desakota, plural society, megaurban region) to global urban studies

– The role of area studies methods and training in filling urban geography’s ‘ethnographic void’ (Lees 2003)

– Comparative analyses…

In the Introduction to Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille by Denis Hollier (trans. Betsy Wing; MIT 1989) there are some interesting remarks:

“In 1867, Emilie Zola, a young journalist, dedicated one of his articles to the upcoming inauguration of a public space. The piece is entitled ‘The Squares.’ It begins: ‘The gates to the new Parmentier square, built on the site of the former Popincourt slaughterhouse, will soon be opened to the public.’ Then come two pages of sarcasm directed at the absurdity of urban landscaping, where lawns try to recall nature for consumptive city dwellers. ‘It looks like a bit of nature that did something wrong and was put in prison.’ A square is not a museum, but it too is a place for soft expenditure, it is an enclave through whose gates Parisian workers escape the implacable law of labor: they take the air (regenerate…