Call for Papers: 'Cultural Globalization and the City'

The 100th Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
14th-19th March 2004

Organizers

Lisa Benton-Short, Marie Price Department of Geography, The George Washington University
John R. Short, Department of Geography, University Maryland Baltimore County

The ranking of world-city status has tended to focus on economic and financial measurements.  One area that remains under-studied in global cities research is the impact of cultural globalization.  This session will focus on exploring ways to measure the impact of various types of cultural globalization trends and dynamics.  For example, London, New York and Tokyo rank as the top tier global cities in most globalization indexes.  But how would Tokyo rank if the index considered immigrant flows or the diversity of the urban population?  Similarly, cities not ranked highly in economic indicators might rate well with regard to cultural festivals and the import/export of popular culture.  If cultural globalization is to be taken as an important indicator of world-city status, as we think it should, we need to explore ways to include these in the existing globalization indexes.  We welcome abstracts that address this emerging area of global cities research on the following themes:

• immigration flows and the diversity of the urban population
• cosmopolitanism
• popular culture (film, literature, television, art)
• the flow of information and ideas
• cultural festivals (World's Fair, Mardi Gras, Carnival, film festivals, etc)
• sporting events (Olympic Games, World Cup)
• the cultural economy (promoting heritage tourism and unique cultural attributes) 

Please send abstracts to Lisa Benton-Short at lbenton@gwu.edu no later than Friday September 19, 2003.