For Spatial Justice: Rethinking Socio-spatial Issues from East Asian Perspectives

Date: 10 (Mon) – 13 (Thurs) December, 2018
Venue: Daegu University (10 December) and Daegu Exco (11-13December), South Korea

Conference Aims and Theme

In January 1999, the East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography (EARCAG) was held in Gyeongju and Daegu, South Korea, where twenty scholars assembled to discuss research on the theme of ‘Socio-Spatial Issues for East Asian Countries in the 21st Century’. Since this inaugural gathering, scholars within the expanding EARCAG network have witnessed complex socio-spatial changes in East Asia that have served to produce and re-shape various forms of inequality, injustice, and precarity, and they have sought to critically examine these issues from East Asian perspectives.

Twenty years later, at the same location as EARCAG’s first conference in South Korea, we
will revisit these socio-spatial questions with the hopes of promoting spatial justice. We are particularly interested in considering the relationship between East Asian spaces and the variety of methods that both guide the organization of space and our understandings of that space.

The aim of EARCAG is to provide a platform for critical geographers and other social scientists to debate social and spatial issues in East Asia. Critical social scientists have observed increasing complexities, interdependencies, and inequalities in the development of capitalism and geopolitics over the world. Recent geopolitical tensions, particularly in East Asia, have produced convergent social and spatial concerns. What are the socio-spatial issues that act as impediments to spatial justice in East Asia? How are the issues approached in relation to Asian capitalism, politics, and the affects thereof?

Potential session topics include but are not limited to:

Division, conflict and peace in East Asia
Embedded developmentalism and spatial justice in post-developmental-state society; post-territorial dynamics of spatial justice
Right to the cities and urban commons
Geography of precarity; increasing precarity and the precariat’s spatial dynamics and precarious spaces
Gender, Space and Justice; Gendered migration within and from East Asia
Alternative spaces for spatial justice; critical geopolitics for spatial justice
Mobilities as threats to and possibilities for spatial justice; Mobilities promoted and mobilized under the post-developmental state
Challenge of climate change and risk governance in East Asia
Environmental justice; critical geography for nature and the environment
Technology development and spatial justice in a smart era
Urban alienation and just city in East Asia
Uneven regional development and spatial justice
Equity issues in cities and regions under Neo-liberalism; Planning and policy issues for social justice from East Asian perspective
Transnational migration, multiculturalism, and global justice