RADICAL POLITICS TODAY REVISIONING the spaces of UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY

Node Director, USA: Dr. Deborah Thien, Geography, College of Liberal Arts, California State University Long Beach

Network Director: Dr. Jonathon Pugh, Newcastle University, UK

The Spaces of Democracy and the Democracy of Space: a network exploring the disciplinary effects of the spatial turn’

Students and academics today are encouraged to reflect upon questions of ethics and responsibility: who is responsible and how, between and across places, for matters of pressing global concern such as climate change, the worldwide disaggregation of an international production process, human rights, liberal democracy, the feminization of poverty, fair trade, imperialism, post-colonialism, genetically-modified foods, indigenous peoples, Afghanistan, the cyclone that devastated Burma, or the earthquake that hit China in 2008. New forms of analysis, methodologies and modes of investigation in the social sciences and humanities seek to examine such concerns by engaging with the spatiality of such issues. That is, such analyses seek to open out’ understandings of ‘the spatial’, as a concept, such that space is increasingly seen as more than a predefined territorial container of political life: SPACES & PLACES MATTER.

As one of 6 original nodes of the Spaces of Democracy & the Democracy of Space Network, the Long Beach Node hosted an international, interactive and interventionist workshop over the course of 3 days in August 2008.

The three-part agenda encompassed a beach tour, a community forum panel, and a scholarly symposium. This multi-element event was carefully designed to embody and enliven the concerns of the network: how do we (variously defined and positioned) think about space(s), how do such understandings affect contemporary politics, and what is radical politics today? All participants were encouraged to attend all portions of the workshop. The broad rationale for this structure was to link the local, place-making radical politics of Long Beach and surrounds, together with conceptual and empirical scholarship addressing such concerns, offering a communal space for consideration, reflection and debate, and disrupting conventional (spatial) boundaries between university/community; scholar/activist; formal/informal politics.

For more information, please contact:Deborah Thien, Ph.D.Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, California State University, Long BeachNode Director, The Spaces of Democracy and the Democracy of Space Research NetworkTelephone: (1) 562-985-7072Email: dthien@csulb.eduWebsite: http://www.csulb.edu/colleges/cla/departments/geography/faculty/thien

The Long Beach Public Library President F. King Alexander, CSULBDeans Gerry Riposa & Mark Wiley, College of Liberal Arts,

CSULBEconomic and Social Research Council (ESRC)Ken Curtis, International Education & Global Engagement, CSULBJuan Benitez & Carina Sass, Center for Community Engagement, CSULBJonathon Pugh, Director, Spaces of Democracy Network, University of Newcastle, UK & Zoe Pugh, Newcastle, UKVincent Del Casino, Chair, Geography, CSULBJulie Ortiz & Carol Philipp, Administrative Support, Geography, CSULBJohn Fawcett, Kentaro Iwamoto, & Mary Ngo, Student Coordinators, Geography, CSULBUnna Lassiter, Christy Jocoy, Paul Laris & Dmitrii Sidorov,Geography, CSULBAll participants from Long Beach community and area

As the Network has expanded to include over 30 countries, a website has become an increasingly important means of communication and dissemination.

You can find this website under construction at: http://www.spaceofdemocracy.org/

DAY 1August 3rd: Radical Politics

hits the Beaches of Malibu (right and below)

An alternative tour of Malibu’s public spaces by the

LA Urban Rangers (www.laurbanrangers.org) sees participants engaging in local

behaviors of typical Malibu ‘species’: Frisbee throwing,

sun tanning and yoga.

Introduction

Aim

3 Days in August: politics as methodology

Responses

Contact

Acknowledgements

The Network aims to examine the practical consequences of new spatial conceptualizations for contemporary politics. If space is not a container, but the sphere of multiplicity and difference within which lines of responsibility toward others are traced (Massey 2005), then spatial flows of capital, services, passions, people, democratic imaginations, conceptions of imperial power, the media, material goods, information and technoscience(s) among others, are an important constitutive realm of political and ethical responsibilities and subjectivities. Such thinking emphasizes spatially delineated and experienced tensions: for example, between space as a predefined territorial entity (the university, or the community) and space as the post-territorial circulation of power relations, contingently articulated political identities, and ethical responsibilities. We ask: How are such modes of spatial analysis linked to, and means of constituting, spaces of and for politics? What IS ‘Radical Politics’ today?

DAY 2August 4th: Radical Politics Today,

Community Forum Long Beach Public Library, 101

Pacific Avenue, Civic Center Plaza, Long Beach, 90822, 6-8pm

Panelists Gilda Haas, Strategic Action for a Just Economy, Los

Angeles (left); Laura Pulido, American Studies and Ethnicity,

University of Southern California (right); and Goetz Wolff, Harry Bridges Institute, San Pedro &

University of California, Los Angeles discuss radical politics with a Long

Beach audience (below)

Website

In my experience, it is rare to find such a powerful connection between high-level intellectual work and meaningful community engagement, and in fact that is tough to pull off. You made an excellent start on what I am sure will be a continuing enterprise -- Attendee

…thanks for inviting me, giving me an opportunity to reflect, however informally, on such important issues. I really enjoyed the event and the exchanges we had. The effort to go beyond the (inevitably) limited perspectives of academia (my continuing agenda…) was much appreciated. -- Panelist

DAY 3August 5th: Ontology, Space &

Radical Politics, Symposium

Karl Anatol Center California State University, Long

Beach, 8:30am-430pm

Speakers Nigel Thrift (right), Vice-Chancellor, Warwick University;

Edward Soja, Urban Planning, University of California, Los

Angeles; Lawrence Berg, Geography, University of British Columbia; John Paul Jones III,

Geography and Regional Development, University of

Arizona; Sallie Marston, Geography and Regional

Development, University of Arizona; Keith Woodward,

Geography, University of Exeter; Liz Philipose, Women’s Studies,

California State University, Long Beach; and Mary Thomas,

Women’s Studies & Geography, Ohio State University examined

questions of ontology, space and radical politics (right). A

roundtable discussion completed the workshop.

A Project of the Spaces of Democracy and the Democracy of Space Research Network