The University of Wrocław in Poland is hosting a conference on "Law, Space, and the Political" on September 3 to 5, 2015. The deadline for submissions of paper abstracts is June 30. Cribbing now from their call for papers:
In September 2015, for the first time in its history, the Critical Legal Conference will symbolically cross the frontier of the former ‘Iron Curtain’ and take place in Poland, a country of the former Soviet bloc. This will happen quarter of a century following the region’s political and socio-economic transformation from ‘actually existing socialism’ to a mix of political democracy with neoliberally flavoured capitalism. CLC 2015 will be hosted by the University of Wrocław Faculty of Law, Administration and Economics in the region of Lower Silesia in south-western Poland.
For this year’s Critical Legal Conference – the first one ever to be held in Central and Eastern Europe – we invited stream organisers to reflect upon the complex relationship between law, space and the political, encouraging a broad understanding of those three notions. Looking from our Central European perspective, we have a special interest in the centre/peripheries dialectic, and the interrelationship between economic and political peripherality on the one hand, and various cultural transfers on the other, with particular reference to legal transfers (encompassing both specific legal institutions, as well as ‘units’ of legal culture, such as legal theories, concepts and doctrines). On the other hand, we invite reflections on the role of law in forging and upholding the centre/periphery dynamic, both in Europe and in the world.
Focusing on smaller spaces, such as urban spaces, we invite papers aimed at exploring the privatisation of public space and in particular its impact upon human LAW, SPACE AND THE POLITICAL Critical Legal Conference 2015 rights, such as the right to the freedom of expression, as well as the opposing move of publicisation of private space, as in the case of squatting. Furthermore, we invite inquiries into the legal and political aspects of spaces of protest, such as those recently created by the Occupy movement and by the Indignados, or, over three decades ago, by the Solidarność movement in Poland. Moreover, urban and suburban spaces invite an exploration of the dynamic between geographical space (rich neighbourhoods and gated communities vs. poor areas) and socio-economic space, and the role of law in upholding or reducing this distance.
Moving right down to the space of buildings and spaces within buildings, the theme of this year’s Critical Legal Conference could also be understood as referring to legal proxemics, that is proxemics of law-related spaces, such as courtrooms, parliaments or law school classrooms. Enquiries could focus on the relationship between the arrangement of such spaces and the underlying ideological assumptions as to their political or depoliticised nature or as well as on the impact of legal proxemics on the upon social perceptions of the law.
Finally, the interrelationship of law, space and the political cannot leave out the vexed question of space and sovereignty as well as spaces of the state of exception. In particular, we invite, on the one hand, stream proposals exploring how sovereignty is constructed spatially, and on the other hand, the rising phenomenon of ‘spaces down by law’, such as extraterritorial military bases, ‘rogue states’, and other areas and territories which escape the standard legal order, including territories of an unclear status under international law or ‘special economic zones’.
Comments