Call for Papers

Degrowth Economies as Transitional Geographies?

Global Conference on Economic Geography
July 24 – 28, 2018, Cologne

Chair: Bastian Lange (Universität Leipzig)
Co-Chair: Benedikt Schmid (Université du Luxembourg)

Call for papers

Recently, a lively debate within the discourse on alternative economic geographies centres on so-called open workshops, creative hubs (Schmidt / Brinks et al 2014), FabLabs (Fleischmann / Hielscher et al 2016), repair cafés, etc. as sites of open collaborative processes. Contrary to the prevailing growth paradigm of numerous regional economic approaches, these micro-spaces open up a lively, transdisciplinary debate about the acquisition of alternative, decentralized, and coproducing concepts. As a practical consequence, these spaces demonstrate insights how manufacturing, repairing, mobility, urban farming, cloth making characterize the city as fabrication plant (Jabareen 2014, Petschow 2016).

Economic geography as a discipline has been invited by different scholars (Smith/Voss/Grin 2010, Truffer 2013) to shed light on so-called transitional geographies. The discipline could contribute in more detailed ways to overcome static e.g. multi-level-perspectives and multi-level theories (Coehnen et al. 2012) within the discourse of transition economies and sustainability goals.

The task of the session is to invite papers to better understand the rapidly growing field of “grassroots innovation movements” (Smith 2017). The session will be a platform that seeks to discuss current empirical, conceptual and case-study contributions analysing occurrences of experimental urban transformations (Färber 2014). Potential topics are welcomed, but are not limited to the following thematic sub-fields:

• Upscaling and professionalization in grassroots economies

• Urban commons and experimental spaces

• Makerspaces and flexible cooperation between different stakeholders

• Values and category building in grassroots movements

• The role of intermediaries, NGOs, and supportive governance policies

• Digital infrastructures as modes of stabilization

• Space-making of innovation, co-production and knowledge-sharing

• The urban fabric as background and resource for decentralized industries

• local manifestations of degrowth economies

• organizing for post-growth economies / post-growth organization(s)

• Shifting meanings of work and economic practice

Please submit your abstract through the conference website between November 15th2017 and March 15th 2018: https://www.gceg2018.com. For further inquiry feel free to contact Bastian Lange (bastian.lange@uni-leipzig.de) or Benedikt Schmid (benedikt.schmid@uni.lu).