2012 POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY SPECIALTY GROUP PRECONFERENCE
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie NY, Feb 22-23 2012
The 2012 PGSG Preconference will be held at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie NY, north of Manhattan on the Hudson River. The conference will start off with a keynote talk and discussion on Wednesday February 22nd; paper sessions will be scheduled for Thursday February 23rd.
The PGSG is particularly excited to announce that Christian Parenti, contributing editor at The Nation, CUNY visiting scholar, and author of Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, will give the preconference keynote address (see abstract below). More details on Dr. Parenti’s work can be found here: http://www.christianparenti.com/books/#toc
Schedule:
Wednesday Feb 22:
4:30 - 5:00 Registration; 300 Rockefeller Hall
5:00 - 7:00 Welcome and Keynote Lecture: Christian Parenti Climate Change and the Geography of Violence
Thursday Feb 23:
9:00 - 6:00 Paper Sessions; 307 and 212 Rockefeller Hall
Click here for the full schedule and abstracts
Accommodation:
The PGSG will not book a block of rooms for the preconference because hotel rates in Poughkeepsie are very competitive. Two options close to Vassar are: Alumnae House (directly across the street from campus) Phone: 845.437.7100 and Days Inn (less than a 5-minute walk from the campus) Phone: 1-845-454-1010.
Travel:
Poughkeepsie is approximately 70 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. Train enthusiasts are lucky because Poughkeepsie is very well served by rail. Visitors can use the affordable MTA Metro North Railway (Hudson Line from Grand Central, about 90-110 minutes). See http://mta.info/mnr/ for more details, and http://mta.info/mnr/html/mnrmap.htm for a map. Poughkeepsie is also served by Amtrak from Penn Station (about 90 minutes), and points north such as Syracuse, Albany, and Montreal. See http://www.amtrak.com for more details.
Climate Change and the Geography of Violence
Christian Parenti*
The era of climate war is upon us. Extreme weather brought on by global warming is unleashing cascades of unrest and violence across the globe, from Africa to Asia to the Americas. In Tropic of Chaos, award-winning journalist and sociologist Christian Parenti reports from the front lines of this gathering social and environmental catastrophe. Combining historical research and academically informed theory with on-the-ground reporting, Parenti shows how environmental crisis is already colliding with the twin legacies of cold war militarism and unbridled free market economics to cause fragile nations to disintegrate into failed states. He critiques the way the countries of the Global North have responded to this dangerous new world: rather than adapt by defusing tensions and embracing cleaner forms of energy, these governments are responding with greater repression, surveillance, and a program of border militarization and permanent counterinsurgency.
* Christian Parenti is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow, contributing editor at The Nation and a visiting professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. His most recent book is Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (Nation Books, July 2011). As a journalist, he has reported extensively from Afghanistan, Iraq and various parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America and his articles have appeared in Fortune, The Washington Post, The New York Times, London Review of Books, Mother Jones and Playboy. He has a PhD in sociology from the London School of Economics, has held research fellowships from OSI, RBF and the Ford Foundation; and has won numerous awards, including the 2009 Lange-Tailor Prize and “Best Magazine Writing 2008” from the Society for Professional Journalists. His three previous books, are: The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq; The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror and Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis.
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