CFP conference “Poverty’s Causes and Consequences in the Urban Developing World”

CFP: Poverty’s Causes and Consequences in the Urban Developing World

August 4–6, 2016
University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Deadline for paper proposals: November 30, 2015.

Conference website:
http://povdev.blog.jyu.fi/p/conference-2016.html

The failure of much of the world to meet the first Millennium Development Goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 highlights the need for research to go beyond the measuring of poverty and give more attention to its causes and dynamics.
We invite anthropologists, ethnologists, sociologists, socio-economists, political scientists and development researchers, among others, to submit paper proposals for our conference on urban poverty to be held at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland on August 2–4, 2016. Keynote speakers will be James Ferguson, Bipasha Baruah, Harjit Anand, and Dayabati Roy.
This three-day conference will be aimed at both exploring new empirically based findings and developing theories on the causes of poverty, especially urban poverty or poverty at the interface between the urban and rural. We welcome critical perspectives which pay attention to the intersection between micro and macro levels of analysis, including ethnographic methods and local case studies with relevance for larger issues as well as larger-scale studies with theoretical implications for micro-level research.
Possible themes of papers include, but are not limited to, poverty’s links to the following areas in the so-called developing world:
  • Environmental issues: climate change, water and sanitation
  • Economy: micro-credit, capital, livelihoods, income generation
  • Development interventions, education
  • Governance, politics, and grassroots activism: housing, rights to the city, dispossession, land rights and land use, informal structures, rights to the city and urban spaces
  • Health: transactional sex, HIV /AIDS
  • Intersectionality and society: ethnicity, family, kin, gender, women, youth, social cohesion
  • Local knowledge and religion
  • Technology, infrastructure, media
A 300-word abstract, full contact information for paper proposer(s), and a biographical note (up to 75 words) on the paper propose(s) should be submitted by no later than November 30th, 2015.

Proposers of accepted papers will be notified by December 15th, 2015, unless the proposal deadline is extended. Please send your abstract as an e-mail attachment to the following email address: laura.stark@jyu.fi

On the basis of paper abstract submissions, we will be grouping some papers together into their own thematic sessions. However, we will also have five Special Sessions already proposed and accepted by the conference organizers. These are:

  • Elaine Dorighello Tomás: Poverty Reduction in Brazil
  • Bratati Dey: Women and Poverty in Urban India
  • Jeremy Gould and Tiina Konttinen: Poverty, Citizenship and a Rightful Share
  • Remi Adeyemo: Urban Food Security and Poverty Alleviation
  • Sirpa Tenhunen: Neoliberalism and Urban Politics in the Global South
  • Ghefari Elsayed, Abdelrahman Eldagum Bakhtan, and Eiman Omer Osman Suliman: Changing Urban Landscapes in East Africa: Violence, Poverty and Coping Strategies


If you are submitting a paper abstract and you would like your paper to be included in one of the above Special Sessions, please tell us which session when you submit your abstract.

The conference organizers cannot sponsor or fund presenters or delegates, who are expected to pay for their travel, food and stay during the conference. There will be no registration fee for the conference.

The conference is organized by the Finnish Academy-funded project “Urban Renewal and Income-Generating Spaces for Youth and Women in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia” led by Prof. Laura Stark, Dept. of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä. Our co-organizer is the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden.