AAG 2017: Landscapes of Humanitarian Expertise
Type: Call for Papers
Date: October 20, 2016
Location: Massachusetts, United States
American Association of Geographers 2017 Annual Meeting, April 5-9, Boston MA
Proposed Session: Landscapes of Humanitarian Expertise: The Built Environment Professionalism of Aid and Development
Conveners: Shawhin Roudbari (University of Colorado) and Sharóne Tomer (Virginia Tech)
From
the (now defunct) Architecture for Humanity to Engineers Without
Borders, recent decades have witnessed an emergence of endeavors by
built environment professionals (architects, planners, and civil
engineers) operating in the realm of aid and development. In these
professions, the urge to ‘socially engage’ is not new.[1] However, the
late twentieth century iteration of the modernist ‘social project’[2] is
unique in its intersections with millennial goals for humanitarianism.
The collision of contemporary developmentalism, increased frequency of
natural disaster and politically-induced crises, and neoliberal projects
of self-improvement have produced a situation in which built
environment professionals deploy their expertise in expanded
geographical and methodological contexts. Built environment
professionalism increasingly gets staged as an avenue for humanitarian
action, engaging with social and geographic sites that have historically
been outside the realm of professional service. Through such expanded
engagements, built environment professionals have the potential to both
destabilize and solidify hierarchies of disciplinary expertise. This
panel seeks to provide a conversation around the performance and ethics
of built environment professionalism as it takes the guise of
‘humanitarian expertise’.
This panel invites papers that
critically engage with the differing histories, geographies and
conceptual underpinnings of ‘humanitarian expertise’ in the built
environment professions. We hope to include papers that address
architecture, planning, engineering and related sub-disciplines. We seek
studies that are both transnational and domestic. We also seek a mix of
papers that provide ‘case studies’ as well as theoretical and
conceptual reflections. Our goal is to deepen a dialogue on the meanings
of expertise as performed in different built environment professions,
alongside the project of unpacking how such professions frame and
address humanitarianism.
Please submit a 300-word abstract and brief CV to Shawhin Roudbari and Sharóne Tomer at shawhin@colorado.edu and stomer@vt.edu by October 20. We will notify authors by October 27.
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