Cfp: Beyond binary thinking in economic differences

*Global Conference on Economic Geography*, Worcester, 4 to 8 June 2025

Call for papers: Searching for economic difference beyond binary thinking: a pragmatist approach.

Organizers: Paolo Giaccaria (University of Turin); Chiara Certoma’ (Sapienza University of Rome)

In their long-lasting (re)search for a way off capitalocentrism, Gibson-Graham (1996) developed the notion of “diverse economies” (2006 and 2008). In their original account, “reading for economic difference” implies abandoning the obsession with the neoliberal project that innervates much of the critical approaches in Economic Geography.

Practicing diverse economies implies accepting the move into a grey zone where communities involved in social innovation processes need to engage with both political institutions at different scales and other actors explicitly belonging to the capitalist side of the economy. When this occurs – and it occurs often – binary thinking strikes back. Allegations of cooptation or of being ancillary have often arisen against diverse economies for not being alternative enough to capitalism and neoliberalism. 

On the one hand, to build community economies in place, we must be open to diversity rather than searching for alternatives – which is a binary notion itself. It is a creative process where aprioristic judgment can clip the possibility of novelty and serendipity. This openness makes “reading for economic difference”  similar to social innovation. On the other hand, innovation is risky, and cooptation and subjugation to capitalistic imperatives are the risks that community economies have to engage with.

This session focuses on the contribution of critical social innovation and philosophical pragmatism in making non-binary understandings of “diverse economies.” Philosophical pragmatism enjoyed erratic fortune in Geography (see the 2008 special issue on Geoforum; see also Wills and Lake’s edited volume). From a non-foundational perspective, pragmatism suggests that (geographical) concept should be interpreted as (Barnes, 2008: 1551):

tools for achieving particular goals (hence their “truth” should be assessed consistently);
being dependent on the community that uses them and sensitive to the context;
provisional, uncertain, and fluid;
experimental and targeted to the making of a better world;
incomplete, inconsistent, and untidy.

As such, philosophical pragmatism has often been accused of being an “everything goes” approach, prone to ethical and political compromise, in particular to neoliberalism. On the other hand, its non-ontological character makes pragmatism a purposeful framework for pursuing engaged pluralism in Economic Geography (Barnes and Sheppard, 2010; Barnes, 2024). Also pragmatism has been recently praised as a standpoint to address the issue of community (Shannon et al. 2021). Recently, also the proximity of Actor-Network-Theory and pragmatism has been investigated in Geography (Bridge, 2021).

Against this backdrop, contributes are invited on the following non-exhaustive topics: 
theoretical exploration and practices of Gibson-Graham’s “reading for economic difference”; 
pragmatist understandings of place and community;
critical social innovation;
non-binary and non-judgemental reading of socio-economic practices;
post-capitalist encounters of pragmatism, material semiotics, and assemblage theory;
engaging “diverse economies” into a dialogue with different economic geographies (political, evolutionary, institutional, relational, and more).

If you are interested in participating, please submit an abstract of up to 250 words to the organizers Paolo Giaccaria (paolo.giaccaria@unito.it) and Chiara Certomà (chiara.certoma@uniroma1.it) by January 10th, 2025. You will be notified if your abstract is accepted by January 11th, 2025.

Authors will need to submit abstracts via the GCEG conference website by the deadline of January 15th, 2025. For general information on the conference, see: https://gceg.org/

References

Barnes, T. J. (2008). American pragmatism: Towards a geographical introduction. Geoforum, 39(4), 1542-1554.
Barnes, T. J. (2024). Towards a pragmatist economic geography. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 56(5), 1541-1547.
Barnes, T. J., & Sheppard, E. (2010). ‘Nothing includes everything’: towards engaged pluralism in Anglophone economic geography. Progress in Human Geography, 34(2), 193-214.
Bridge, G. (2021). On pragmatism, assemblage and ANT: Assembling reason. Progress in Human Geography, 45(3), 417-435.
Geoforum (2008). Pragmatism and Geography.
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (1996). The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Cambridge, Blackwell.
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006). A Postcapitalist Politics. University of of Minnesota Press.
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2008). Diverse economies: performative practices for other worlds’. Progress in human geography, 32(5), 613-632.
Shannon, J., et al.  (2021). Community geography: Toward a disciplinary framework. Progress in Human Geography, 45(5), 1147-1168.
Wills, J. & Lake R. (2020). The power of pragmatism. Knowledge production and social inquiry. Manchester University Press.

The session organisation is part of the “Digitally-enabled Social Innovation in the city: implications for urban spaces, societies and governance” (DSICity), a PRIN 2022 Research Project of National Relevance funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) (2022KTEZPX). Financed by the European Union – Next Generation EU.