Friday, October 15, 2010

Cities & Synecdoche

Call for Papers: 2010 Annual Meeting of the Association of American
Geographers

Cities & Synecdoche

'Synecdoche', as defined by Webster's New World Dictionary, is "a figure
of speech in which a part is used for a whole, an individual for a
class, a material for a thing, or any of the reverse of these." In
Geography, we find this especially in representations and discussions of
scale where, for example, 'the city' is (mis-)represented using
phenomena and patterns better understood and analyzed at local or
regional scales ... or vice versa. Place-marketing and other
entrepreneurial endeavors - branding, for example - have made ample use
of synecdoche in the interest of economic development and investment.
'Best Places' claims and categorizations are, almost by necessity,
derived from scale-specific data that are hardly universal to the
'place' at hand. This is especially true for cities, for whom 'best' (or
'worst') place-branding (either self-generated or by others) has taken
on increasing competitive significance. To this end, it seems,
synecdoche is increasingly vital to projects of accumulation and - by
extension - uneven development and thus potentially rife with inter- or
intra-scale contradictions and the potential for conflict and injustice.


For this paper session, I invite papers that explore the complexities of
synecdoche at the Urban Scale, and that attempt to reveal its
implications (be they positive or negative) for those 'other' scales
(e.g., communities, environments, households, people, and places)
abstracted within it and from which it is emergent. I encourage
participation from a breadth of ideological and theoretical
orientations, sub-disciplinary interests, and international
perspectives.

Please send a message of intent and abstract electronically by no later
than October 18th to:

Alec Brownlow
Assistant Professor of Geography
DePaul University
Chicago, IL 60614
cbrownlo@depaul.edu
phone: 773-325-7876
fax: 773-325-4590