Subaltern Globalisations
In what ways are processes of globalisation being rethought and reworked? To what extent does globalisation, as an ongoing dynamic with deep-historical roots driven by the forces of capital, ‘empire’ and ‘enlightenment’, engender multiple oppositions arising in and circulating from a diversity of spatial margins (not least under present conditions of ‘austerity’)? What alternative bases for agency, identity and solidarity have arisen, fostering ‘subaltern’ versions of globalisation, internationalism, cosmopolitanism, geopolitics, political economy and environmental justice?
Our work seeks to explore subaltern articulations of globalisation, cosmopolitanism, urbanism, political economy and geopolitics. Engaging with post-colonial theory, subaltern studies, feminist thought, critical geopolitics and political economy we have addressed such questions in a range of different geographical contexts, in both the global North and South, and in the past and present. Work on forms of subaltern cosmopolitanism, and subaltern and feminist critical geopolitics, has challenged and reworked dominant accounts of the relationalities of subaltern politics. Our work is, for example, reshaping understandings of traditions of internationalism, contesting the dominance of Western perspectives in framing accounts of geopolitics by working with situated African geopolitical imaginaries, rethinking the possibilities of progressive localism in opposition to discourses of austerity and positioning labour as an active constituent of the global economy in both past and present, and emphasizing the constitutive agency of grassroots mobilizations against property-led urban redevelopment schemes.
This conceptual focus links to ongoing engagements with diverse struggles, networks and solidarities shaped by alliances between labour and social movements in challenging unequal and uneven forms of neo-liberal globalisation. Collaborative work on the experiences of globalization by diverse communities in Britain has emphasized the uneven and contested engagements with globalising processes.
Selected publications (please go to staff pages for links to copies of publications or journal sites):
Campbell, P. (2013) Collateral Damage? Transforming Subprime Slum Dwellers into Homeowners. Housing Studies 28(3), 453 - 472.
Dixon, D.P. and Marston, S. (eds.) (2013) Feminist Geopolitics: At the Sharp End. London: Routledge.
Featherstone, D.J. (2012) Solidarity: Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism London: Zed Books.
Featherstone, D.J. (2008) Resistance Space and Political Identities: The Making of Counter-Global Networks Cichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Featherstone, D.J., Ince, A., Mackinnon, D., Strauss, K., and Cumbers, A. (2012) Progressive localism and the construction of political alternatives. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37 (2). pp. 177-182.
Gray, N. and Mooney, G. (2011) 'Glasgow's New Urban Frontier: 'Civilising' the Population of 'Glasgow East'’ City 15, 1, 4-24.
Karaman, O. (2013) Urban Neoliberalism with Islamic Characteristics. Urban Studies, first published on April 11, 2013 (in press)
Karaman, O. (2012), An Immanentist Approach to the Urban. Antipode, 44: 1287–1306.
Laing, A.F. (2012) 'Beyond the Zeitgeist of 'Post-neoliberal' Theory in Latin America: The Politics of Anti-colonial Struggles in Bolivia' Antipode 44(4): 1051-1054.
Sharp, J. (2013) Geopolitics at the margins? Reconsidering genealogies of critical geopolitics. Political Geography. (in press)
Sharp, J. (2011) A subaltern critical geopolitics of the "war on terror": postcolonial security in Tanzania, Geoforum 42: 297-305.
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