Session(s) Format: The following is a call for papers (or panels) to be organized into a series of sessions that draw on and further develop themes found in the forthcoming volume Making Other Worlds Possible: Performing Diverse Economies (edited by Gerda Roelvink, Kevin St. Martin, and J.K. Gibson-Graham and to be launched at the 2015 AAG conference by the University of Minnesota Press).
While there is no doubt that the ‘Economy’ is a keyword of contemporary life, its common sense meaning is increasingly up for grabs as national governments attempt to stabilize it, social movements try to occupy it, business interests seek to grow it, environmental groups pointedly vilify it, and households feel beholden to it. For those of us interested in building ‘other worlds’, what constitutes the economy is a contested terrain, as is the way we see it working to enable or constrain life. The task of reclaiming and reshaping our economies is central to any project of societal transformation. The forthcoming volume Making Other Worlds Possible: Performing Diverse Economies offers a distinctive approach to rethinking economy that is inspired by the ‘diverse economies’ research agenda pioneered by J.K. Gibson-Graham, and is in conversation with other contemporary projects that are reconfiguring ‘the Economy’ as an effect of various kinds of performativity.
A radical rethinking of economy is increasingly happening in both academic and activist circles. Within this milieu ‘performing diverse economies’ signals not only the economy rethought as a site of difference, but also the political and strategic implications of performing economic diversity through our research with both human and non-human others. ‘Diverse economies’ is the ontological ground upon which we can begin to ethically explore the choices we make to perform the economy and its future as either a singular inevitability or a field with a variety of potentials that is open to experimentation. More than just an analytical frame, then, diverse economies suggests a research program that is always, already an intentional intervention into making other worlds possible.
In these sessions, we will draw together a range of studies that have taken to heart what it means to see ‘the Economy’ as diverse in all sites and at all scales. We seek contributions that demonstrate how diverse economies research is intertwined with other projects that are also rethinking common sense keywords now similarly up for grabs—nature, markets, desire, and the human. Furthermore, we invite researchers and activists who are assembling and enacting economies differently, in ways that privilege ethical negotiation and a politics of possibility. Our goal for these sessions is to build upon and extend the ‘tradition’ of diverse economies research, now clearly represented in Making Other Worlds Possible.
Potential themes which intersect with Making Other Worlds Possible include (but are not
limited to):
Rethinking Economy
Diverse Economies/Diverse Ecologies
Ontologies of Economy/Economies
Performativity and Economic Diversity
Spaces and Places of Economic Difference
Economic Subjectivity
Community Economies
Commons and Commoning
Economic Assemblage and/or Agencement
Markets and Marketization
Markets, Design, Planning
Mechanisms and Dynamics of Other Economies
Communism and Communalism
Economic Discourse and Representation
Actor Network Theory
Ethics and Ethical Commitments
Scale, Size, and Macro Actors
Economic Forms: Cooperatives, Collectives, Households, Individuals
Other Actors: Institutions, State, NGOs
Expansion, Spread, and Transposition

You are invited to submit a paper abstract which we will slot into a session. Alternatively, we
welcome suggestions for entire sessions (paper or panel) that you would like to organize and
place into this series.
Please indicate your interest by sending one of us (see below) as soon as possible (ideally
before September 15th). We are aiming to have all abstracts in and sessions organized by
October 15th in order to meet the AAG deadline of November 5th.
Looking forward to hearing from you!