Upcoming Speaking Engagements:
“Thinking the City” (panel organizer and speaker), Urban Affairs Association Meeting, Chicago, March 4-7, 2009. With Robert Beauregard, Terry Nichols Clark, Owen Gutfreund, Robert Lake, Daphne Spain, and Warren Magnusson
Panel Abstract: This interdisciplinary panel will discuss amongst themselves and the audience two interrelated questions: first, what does it mean to "urbanize" our respective disciplines, that is, to see the city as the central "object" of our canon? and second, how might such a rethinking of our disciplines change our understandings of cities and our definitions of the "urban"?
In Western philosophy, for example, the city was arguably at the center of philosophy, as both the Western city and philosophy were born together in Ancient Athens. Yet the city slipped from philosophy's view, beginning with Plato's insistence on an ideal of truth ungrounded in the city, and becoming formalized in modernity as the "nation-state" rather than the city became the fundamental political entity that philosophers examined.
In political science, the focus on the state as the ultimate governmental authority has been even more pronounced. Cities have been treated as subordinate governments and urban politics has been identified with the merely local. The presumption is that the ancient polis long ago gave way to the extensive republic, identified with the nation-state, which now provides the framework for modern politics.
In the other social sciences, the focus has been on the wider society or economy or culture in which particular cities function. The urban experience has been understood as a particular form of something more general. And yet, there is a recognition, which we find in thinkers as diverse as Louis Wirth and Henri Lefebvre, that the urban experience is now general, that we live in an urban age, and that urbanism is the predominant form of modern life.
What would be involved in re-centering our disciplines on the city? Would the current disciplinary boundaries hold? Would our understandings of the intellectual tasks before us change fundamentally?
“Challenging the Green Revolution through Both/And Strategies: The Case of Indigenous Women’s Cooperatives in Rural Puebla Mexico,” Panel: "Following the Green Revolution: Ideologies, Inequalities, Offshoots." Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, NV, March 22-29, 2009
My paper abstract: Even the Green Revolution’s staunchest advocates admit that the Revolution did not have a positive impact on all peoples. Mexico’s indigenous peoples have suffered from the Green Revolution on at least two counts. First, the Green Revolution discounted indigenous ways and knowledges, and thus recapitulated the colonial judgment of them as “undeveloped.” Second, the privatization of land and the development of monocultural plantings of corn have weakened both their ecosystems and their cultures.
While much theorizing of the resistance to the Green Revolution has advocated resistance via the retention or return to traditional practices, I argue that such options remain embedded within a modern, dichotomous way of thinking: EITHER we embrace modernity OR we reengage our traditional ways. Feminist subsistence perspectives, for example, seem to make such a mistake, although they re-value the traditional side of the dichotomy.
In contrast, indigenous women’s cooperatives in rural Mexico are developing both/and strategies and practices that challenge the dichotomous thinking present in many environmental and feminist development debates. In this paper, I focus on a women’s
economic cooperative in Huehuetla (rural Puebla), Mexico (Taputsama Talakxtumit S. S. S.) and their NGO partner (Xasasti Yolistli). Their work reveals a model that engages in a critical reappropriation of traditional ways by integrating the modern languages of rights and of feminism. Their work also brings industrialized nations’ understanding of environmentalism into dialogue with their cultural traditions.
note: I do not usually work on rural issues, but this project is the result of a course that I team-teach on women and development in Latin America. And it is connected to my interest in globalization and the pressures on rural peoples to migrate to cities.
Recent Past Speaking Engagements:
December 29, 2008. Panelist, Committee on the Status of Women Panel on Mid-Career Issues for Women in Philosophy, American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division Meeting, Philadelphia, December 29, 2008, session V-I
April 4, 2008. "Philosophical Streetwalking," University of Scranton, Faculty Research Series.
April 17, 2008. "Buried Cities: Conquest and Migration." American Association of Geographers Meeting. Boston.
April 19, 2008. "Cities and War" panelist. American Association of Geographers Meeting. Boston.
April 24, 2008. "Lefebvre in the Wake of the Technocratic Planner." Urban Affairs Association Meeting. Baltimore.
|