Thinking the Economy Differently: Heterodox Approaches in Economic

Call for Papers
American Association of Geographers, Boston
April 15-19 2008

Thinking the Economy Differently: Heterodox Approaches in Economic
Geography

Convenors: Jane Pollard (Newcastle), Cheryl McEwan (Durham), Alison
Stenning (Newcastle)

In recent years there has been a renaissance and development of
heterodox or 'post-' approaches to economic geography. Economies are
diverse, proliferative, alternative, disseminated, multiple, performed,
practised, post-capitalist, overdetermined and much more. These attempts
to re-think and re-vision 'the economy' are inspired by a range of
interrelated theoretical frameworks including feminism, queer theory,
postcolonialism, post-structuralism, post-development, post-socialism
and others - and have sought to challenge the way we research and
theorise the economic by exploring the geographical construction and
performance of 'the economy' and the articulations between 'the economy'
and its others. In addition, such approaches have aimed to problematise
academic and pedagogic divisions of labour between 'Economic Geography',
'Development' and 'Area Studies' and to confront the geographical
production of 'Economics'.

Yet for all their common concerns, these approaches - and those who
employ them - use different languages and methodologies and prioritise
different politics and political strategies. In this session, we are
interested in bringing together recent work which explores the merits
and challenges posed by different heterodox approaches to 'economy' and
in developing a dialogue, across and between the different approaches,
which might enable us to articulate a common agenda and promote a shared
politics. For this reason, we are particularly keen to attract papers
which explicitly work across some of conceptual and theoretical
frameworks outlined above.

We invite papers which explore some of the following themes:
* How do different heterodox approaches comprehend and re-vision
the economic?
* What common notions of economy inspire different heterodox
approaches?
* What are the relative merits of different heterodox approaches?
* Is there the potential for a common language shared across these
heterodox approaches?
* What are the politics of different heterodox approaches to
economy?
* How might heterodox approaches challenge our teaching of
economic geography?
* How do different heterodoxies shape different kinds of
methodologies and research practices?

Expressions of interest should be sent in the form of an abstract
acceptable to the AAG (see
http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/2008/papers.htm#abstracts) by 22nd
October 2007 to any of:

Jane Pollard (J.S.Pollard@ncl.ac.uk)
Alison Stenning (Alison.Stenning@ncl.ac.uk)
Cheryl McEwan (Cheryl.McEwan@Durham.ac.uk)