CALL FOR PAPERS

The Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies’ Graduate Student Association (SAGGSA) at Florida International University invites you to participate in our 7th Annual Graduate Student Conference.

Crisis, Catastrophe, and Complexity

Each year the Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, Graduate Student Association (SAGGSA) at Florida International University hosts an interdisciplinary conference around an overarching theme that speaks to current issues and debates in anthropology, geography and sociology. This conference is intended to provide a supportive and collaborative forum for interested graduate students to present original research and engage with other graduates and faculty researching similar topics from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. As such, we welcome and encourage presentations on research in any stage, formative or finished. This year we invite papers that critically engage with crisis, catastrophe, and complexity, broadly defined.

With the recent hurricanes Irma and Maria in the Caribbean, crisis and catastrophe are at the forefront of individual and collective imaginations. However, multiple forms of crisis pervade everyday life, including homelessness, poverty, insecurity, drug addiction, access to medical care, domestic violence, human trafficking, to name a few. This conference provides a forum for participants to explore these various manifestations of crisis, their interactions, congruence and juxtapositions, and their political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and ethical implications. Potential topics may include, but are not limited to, broad themes such as:

• Politics and thought in the Anthropocene
o Security and environmental change
o The politics of disaster management and recovery
o The politics of resilience and resiliency planning
o Nature-society relations and Interspecies connectivity
o Environmental subjects and identities
o Environmental and social movements
o Sustainable Development and conservation in a post-human world

• The persistence of structural violence
o Race and structural violence
o Militarization of police and police brutality
o Colonialism and neocolonialism
o Management of “risky” or vulnerable populations
o Slow disaster, slow violence and slow emergency

• Theories and methodologies for studying crisis and complexity
o Speculative fiction
o Gendered perspectives
o Indigenous knowledge and technologies

• Crisis and transformations of rule
o Neoliberalism and structural inequalities
o Securitization
o Fiscal crisis
o Finance and catastrophe
o Ruins of capitalism
o Urban and built environments
o Degradation and marginalization

Abstracts should be submitted via the conference website by January 15, 2018. Please limit abstracts to 250 words. Accepted participants will be notified within a week following the deadline. Accepted papers will be organized topically by the conference organizing committee. .

Any questions can be directed to Jacquelyn J Johnston (jjohn237@fiu.edu).