York University will host the Studies in Political Economy annual conference from Thursday to Saturday, Feb. 3-5. Titled “Towards a Political Economy of Scale”, the conference is a joint initiative of scholars working on scale politics at York and an interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa.
The purpose of this conference is to encourage interdisciplinary work exploring the ways “scale” and inter-scalar arrangements intersect with various social processes central to the political economy. It will do so by bringing together some of the leading people who have contributed to the theorization of scale, mainly geographers and urbanists, with those whose contributions lie in other areas, such as social movements, welfare states and cultural studies.
Presentations include Urban and Regional Scales; Social Movements and Scale; and Scale Politics. Keynote speakers will include: Neil Smith, City University of New York; Neil Brenner, New York University; Bob Jessop, University of Lancaster, UK; Helga Leitner, University of Minnesota; Warren Magnusson, University of Victoria, BC; Jamie Peck, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Eric Sheppard, University of Minnesota; Erik Swyngedouw, University of Oxford, UK; and York Professor Gerda Wekerle of the Faculty of Environmental Studies.
In conjunction with this conference, there will be a book launch for Nature and the City: Making Environmental Policy in Toronto and Los Angeles by FES Professors Gene Desfor and Roger Keil, Feb. 4 at 6:30-7:30pm in the York University Bookstore (see story in Feb. 1 issue of YFile). This wine and cheese event is open to the York community and the book will be available at a discounted price.
For further information, visit the conference Web site or contact Roger Keil by e-mail or at ext. 22604.