The Institute of Human Geography (IHG) is a non-profit charitable foundation. Contact IHG at ihumangeography@gmail.com
First Marxist Geography Workshop, 11-12 October 2024, The People’s Forum, Manhattan, New York, USA
The Institute of Human Geography (IHG) are soliciting applications to participate in the first Marxist Geography Workshop, to be held at The People’s Forum in Manhattan, New York (US), 11-12 October. IHG is extremely grateful the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism for sharing the financial/material burden of organizing this Workshop. The objective of the workshop is to facilitate the process of developing Marxist Geography, but all Marxists (or those aspiring to become Marxists), in any field of knowledge, are welcome. A corollary main aim is to help interested people become mutually acquainted and finding ways to help each other in activities like teaching, research, and direct political action. The workshop is to further mutual education and not for critical appraisals of participants’ work.
More ambitiously, the workshop would lead to the formation of a collaborative group dedicated to building institutional capacities alternative to the academic mainstream, establish networks useful towards sharing resources to build for the long term and helping each other find permanent or secure posts, and run future workshops in such a way as to help prepare the next generation of especially (but not only) Marxist geographers gather, share ideas in mutually nurturing ways, and educate each other.
Several reasons animate the organization of this workshop. In North American Geography, interest in Marxism grew by the late 1960s and eventually became influential enough even to land, though not always explicitly, in introductory textbooks. This was thanks to much effort external to and within academic institutions, as well as major publications that shaped the intellect of many geographers. Continuing efforts and the acclaim gained by a few Marxist geographers, has enabled Marxism to persist, even if often just conceptually, within academic Geography. Progressive marginalization and much distortion since especially the 1990s, however, have stunted the development of Marxist Geography and its potentials for wider social relevance. The absence of academic Geography institutions dedicated to the study of Marxism has also impeded systematic training in even the most elementary aspects of Marxism. The workshop is an attempt to contribute to reversing the trend and to build institutional capacity (informal and formal). This is not only to further Marxist Geography, but to help in the development of the theoretical tools to meet the challenges of steadily worsening working conditions, including within universities, and to prepare more geographers in teaching Marxism, especially given a recently rising interest in socialism. Though principally concerned with Marxist Geography in North America, participants are welcome from other regions of the world as well.
There are no set themes to the workshop. Instead, participants are to bring and present summaries and thoughts about:
The theoretical work of Marx or Engels or a Marxist thinker, especially one who was or is involved in party work; this can be a specific book, article, pamphlet, etc.
How that Marxist thinker helps develop Marxist Geography (in terms of specific theories, methodology, paradigmatic or theoretical development, etc.); this could be about commodification processes in relation to basic needs (housing, food, healthcare, etc.), dialectical and historical materialism, imperialism, decolonization struggle, political economy of resource extraction, multiple-scale processes behind soil degradation, etc.
How Marxist Geography that can be developed out of that theoretical framework helps with a specific form of social struggle (relevant to, e.g., activism, social movements, etc.) or with the development of a party’s political platform or policy (please limit to one concrete, detailed example).
As time is never enough, these must brief overviews, presented within not more than 15 minutes. This is also to allow for discussion for the purpose of clarification, further description of concepts/theories and their applications, and other matters pertaining to further exploration and learning, rather than critique. Please prepare such overviews in ways that presume no prior knowledge. What is presented at the workshop will be considered for publication in the journal Human Geography, in the Reviews section.
It is highly recommended that prior to the workshop each participant will have read (or re-read), at a minimum, Capital Volume 1 and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. This is helpful in having a grounding on Marxist method and a shared background among all participants.
The structure of the workshop is to have two concomitant discussion groups (with facilitators) sharing ideas and then reporting the results of the discussion to all in a sharing session.
REGISTRATION FEE: USD 20-100 (sliding scale) for those who can avail themselves of reimbursement from their institution or want to contribute more. No one who is accepted to the workshop will be turned away for lack of funds to pay for the registration fee. Once accepted, information will be provided about how to make the payment.
An official invitation letter can be made available, and it can include a description of a presentation, if such is necessary.
Deadline for the application: 31 August 2024
To apply, please email the following to ihumangeography@gmail.com:
A letter describing who you are, why you wish to participate, a description of your background in Marxism (if any), what you would like to get out of the workshop, how you will further the aims of the workshop after its conclusion
An abstract of no more than 300 words delineating the ideas to be shared at the workshop (see above); if possible, submit a manuscript for the same of no more than 5000 words for the body of the text
Current CV or similar, highlighting any activities most pertinent to Marxist Geography
Human Geography - Current Issue
The first issue of 2024 (17:1, March) of Human Geography is out! Enjoy Substantive Articles by Joseph Nevins, Kevin R. Cox, Marie Chase, Adrienne Johnson, Antulio Rosales, Eva van Roekel, Peter Howson, Coco Kanters, Daniel Manzione Giavarotti, Ana Carolina Gonçalves Leite, and Clara Lemme Ribeiro. Contentions were written by Levi Gahman, Amedeo Policante, Erica Borg, Martha E. Gimenez, and Kwame Adovor Tsikudo. Review was contributed by Tod D. Rutherford. Visual Intervention was provided by Asif Mehmood and Sajjad Hasnain.
This issue also contains a special Symposium on Mike Davis, the Radical Urban Activist-Scholar, with Ananya Roy as the Guest Editor and contributions by Ananya Roy, Juan De Lara, Michael Storper, Deshonay Dozier, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Susanna Hecht.
Check out the detailed ToC of the Current Issue and also those of Past Issues.
We look forward to your submissions for the journal. Contact any of our editors to get started!
Human Geography Publication Awards, 2024
The Institute of Human Geography confers the 2024 Human Geography Publication Awards to the following scholars for their publications in the Human Geography journal:
Best paper: Erin Flanagan (York University, Canada) & Dennis Raphael (York University, Canada) From personal responsibility to an eco-socialist state: Political economy, popular discourses and the climate crisis
Best Paper by an Early Career Academic: Sarah Cheikhali (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA) The spatial antecedents for drone governance in Afghanistan
Best Review: F. T. C. Manning (San Francisco Community Land Trust, USA) Geographies of ground rent: Periodizing ground rent theory, spatializing ground rent refusal
Best Contention: Jude Fernando (Clark University, USA) The citizen’s uprising in Sri Lanka: A watershed moment against racial capitalism
The Institute of Human Geography confers the Human Geography Publication Awards for articles, reviews and contention pieces published in the journal Human Geography.
Awards are given for:
Best Paper (substantive article, $400 plus citation)
Best Paper by an Early Career Academic (substantive article by graduate student or assistant professor, $200 plus citation)
Best Review ($200 plus citation)
Best Contention ($200 plus citation)
The winning authors would be announced around April each year. The awards are announced in April based on the pieces published in Human Geography during the previous year. Editors and editorial board members are not eligible for these awards.
Professor Aijazuddin Ahmad Memorial Plenary Lecture 2024
The Institute of Human Geography helped establish and co-sponsor the first Professor Aijazuddin Ahmad Memorial Plenary Lecture delivered at the 44th Institute of Indian Geographers Meet and International Conference. The first Aijazuddin Ahmad Memorial Plenary Lecture was delivered by Prof. Atiya Habeeb Kidwai. The Plenary Lecture was given on Tuesday, 23 January 2024, at the Kalaguru Bishnu Prasad Rabha Auditorium, Cotton University (Guwahati, India). The lecture was chaired by Sohail Hashmi.
Professor Aijazuddin Ahmad (1932-2006) was the stalwart of social geography in India and played a key role in the establishment of the geography program at the Center for the Study of Regional Development at Jawaharlal Nehru University where he trained generations of scholars to work on issues of inequality, marginalization, and social and cultural justice.
2023 IHG Research Grants Awarded
Congratulations to all the recipients of the 2023 IHG Research Grants - Peter White, Joel Hopkins, Richard Kirk, Amrita Sharma and Nikos Kapitsinis!
Global Finance Capital - Richard Peet
IHG is proud to present Dick's latest publication. Get your digital copy here.
Call for Papers - Human Geography Special Issue
The Pluriverse of Transitions: Towards Anti-colonial and Insurrectional Energy Transformations
POLLEN 2024 (June 11-13) and Special Issue.
Organizers: Carlos Tornel (tornelc@gmail.com, Durham University) and Alexander Dunlap (alexander.a.dunlap@gmail.com, Boston University).
More details here.
Online Presentation - Politics and Environmental Policies: The Case of Koshi Floods in Bihar
The Institute of Human Geography, Prof. Aijazuddin Ahmad Memorial Fund for Social Geography, and the Patliputra Intelligentsia Forum (PIF) cordially invite you to an online presentation by Rahul Yaduka, a doctoral researcher at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University (Delhi). The talk would be chaired by Dr. Dinesh K. Mishra (Jamshedpur), and the discussants include Dr. Ajay Dixit (Institute for Social and Environmental Transition - Nepal, Lalitpur), Prof. Arupjyoti Saikia (Indian Institute for Technology, Guwahati), and Prof. Manindra N. Thakur (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi).
The presentation is scheduled for March 22, 2024, 3:00 PM IST on Zoom.
Abstract: The lower Koshi region in northern Bihar of India, adjacent to the Indo-Nepal border, suffers the perpetual agony of floods, land erosion, displacement, and out-migration. Despite these becoming a permanent feature of the ecological scape, primarily due to ill-thought flood control interventions, the annual floods evoke a false sense of shock and surprise. Mounting scholarly critique has yet to affect any reconsideration of the dominant flood management paradigm in the region.
The research is a product of a three-year-long immersion, almost akin to ethnography, in multiple flood-prone and allegedly flood-protected villages in the Supaul district of the Koshi diyara (the fluvial land-waterscape). It has attempted to understand the gradual process through which the Koshi diyara has been transformed, primarily through flood-control interventions and development infrastructure, and these have had a definite impact on the region’s ecology, society and polity.
The research attempts to address three major questions: How have the flood control and development infrastructures transformed the ecological backdrop of the region? How does the community perceive the structural interventions? How does the community resist the structural intervention? The answers to these questions illuminate the politics of disaster management policies and the politics of knowledge-making in the region and the globe in general.