Report on the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 105 CHRONICLE Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 60 (1) (2011) pp. 105–107. Report on the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting Washington D.C., April 14–18. 2010 Although the Association of American Geographers is a US-based organization, its ac- tivities are of worldwide reach. The annual meetings of AAG are one of the greatest and most colorful events among the geographical conferences with thousands of presenters from all over the World. The 2010 Meeting was held in Washington D.C. The relative closeness of the venue to Europe had att racted a lot of researchers from Europe. More than 5,000 participants att ended the event, which took place in the Marriott Wardman Park and Omni Shoreham hotels. Partly because of the great number of the participants, the meeting was very diverse thematically and a wide range of approaches were present – which provoked interesting discussions and debates. The majority of presentations were from the fi eld of human geography, although some sessions dealt with topics related to anthropologic geomorphology or to the climate change, too. Conference break at Marriot Wardman Hotel 106 A number of sessions concentrated on the theoretical questions and main con- cepts of geography. For example, three sessions were focusing on space and spatiality with wide range of approaches. The last of them was a concluding one where some of the most prominent theorists (e.g. Yi-Fu Tuan, Nigel Thrift) exchanged their interpretations of space. These presentations – and the debates about the ontological and epistemological issues related to space – demonstrated the far-reaching philosophical roots of geographi- cal knowledge. Several sessions dealt with the causes and the consequences of the global economic crisis. One of the most anticipated lectures was about the crisis, too: David Harvey (City University of New York) interpreted the crisis as the logical consequence of the practices of the late capitalism – which he calls as “merchant capitalism”. In his Marxian analysis he emphasized the role of the “accumulation by dispossession” – a term which he developed and used in his later works. According to Harvey the solution to the inevitable crises is to change the capitalism itself – although Harvey himself admits that it is a utopian idea. The number of sessions dealing with China and India refl ected the growing eco- nomic and political role of these countries. For example the developing green turn of the Chinese economy was presented through the case of the automotive industry, in which the government invests heavily to develop new, more ecologically friendly engines and vehicles. The problems of rapid urbanization of China were also discussed in a separate session. The “Geographies of postfordism” sessions have dealt with some theoretical ques- tions of geography regarding the current crisis and spatial processes. For example, one of these sessions dealt with the relevance of the Marxian categories in the analysis of the crisis and usability of the concept of class. Richard Peet and Neil Smith both emphasized that there is still a class society and the lower classes are the main losers of the economic downfall. Similar to David Harvey the participants of these sessions agreed that a change is necessary in the capitalism. In another session the panelists discussed how the social construction/production of scale is changing in the postfordist era. The Nobel Prize recipient economist, Paul Krugman spoke about the “new eco- nomic geography”, and how it has infl uenced the economists’ approach. In his opinion the main result was that economists started to use the concepts of space and scale in their research. However, as the discussant of Krugman’s lecture, Michael Storper from London School of Economics pointed out that it is not always the case: a lot of analysis from the mainstream economy uses a simplifi ed view of the space, e.g. seeing the countries as a homogeneous entity rather than a spatially diff erentiated unit. The Lefebvrian idea of “Right to the city” emerged in a lot of papers: presenters from various parts of the world analyzed the spatial exclusion in the cities and the trans- formations of urban governance. E.g. the “Diversity of neoliberal urbanization” sessions demonstrated that despite the economic crisis the neoliberal urban governance is still in its bloom – moreover, in some places it was intensifi ed because of the growing competition for investments and jobs. The problems and specifi c development path of the post-socialist countries were also oft en mentioned topics. The “Critical geographies of post-communist cities” sessions were focusing on the changing housing conditions in and around the Eastern European cities, e.g. how the gated communities were formed in Bulgaria, how the former socialist summer homes were transformed in Estonia or what kinds of confl icts related to urban rehabilitation have emerged in Budapest. The „Author meets critics” sessions were memorable parts of the conference: in these events the writer of a recent book and a few critics/reviewers discussed that volume. 107 At one of these occasions the book in question was Edward Soja’s “Seeking spatial justice”, which was criticized for example because of the normative nature of the term “justice” or because of the author’s alleged “Los Angeles exceptionalism” i.e. that the processes and phenomena he addresses only apply to Los Angeles. At the same time the contestants un- derlined that Soja’s book is a valuable contribution to the philosophical/sociological debates related to justice and points out the role of geography in these debates. The scientifi c programme of the conference was extended by a book exhibition and numerous guided tours in Washington and its surroundings and social events like the International Reception or the meetings of various specialty groups. As a highlight of the conference, Jane Goodall was awarded with the AAG Atlas Award for her work for environment and humanity. At the end of the conference nature demonstrated its power and the relevance of geography regarding the globalized transportation and communication systems: because of the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafj allajökull volcano and the cancellation of fl ights, several European att endees of the AAG meeting faced diffi culties to get back to Europe. The next Meeting will take place in Seatt le (WA) in 2011. Hopefully the more distant location will not aff ect negatively the number of European participants and it will be a colorful and exciting conference as well – and hopefully without travelling diffi culties. Lajos Boros Conference break in the park of Omni Shoreham Hotel