Dear colleagues, I am advertising a CFP for American Association of Geographers (AAG) taking place in NY in February 2027. Out of neoliberal debris: Data centers and promises of prosperity at the end of globalization Communities globally have been hollowed out and left as neoliberal “debris,” to borrow a term from Ann Laura Stoler (2013) <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?h5dHnz>, in the name of establishing faster circuits for the circulation of commodities, data, and finance capital (Khalili 2020; Mezzadra and Neilson 2019) <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?1ZP9GT>. In response, data center developers have promised communities unionized construction and trade jobs, high-wage IT employment, infrastructure developments, specialized training, and donations to local schools and hospitals in attempts to quell opposition (Edwards et al. 2024) <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?IHAZ82>. Given data center development is also notoriously tax-exempt (thirty-six states have passed tax exemptions for data center developers), we see data centers attempt, in effect, to replace public services with private capacity for communities (Flood 2026) <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?vf8Thp> through imposing themselves upon places left impoverished by deindustrialization (Vonderau 2017; Johnson 2019; Burrell 2020) <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Kfjlvp>. The reactionary right has similarly proclaimed data center development to be part of a broader “reindustrialization” of America that would restore American supremacy, deployed alongside broad “retaliatory” tariffs and new forms of nativist and fascist violence (Davis 2017; Zhang 2025) <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?lbQqqS>. The Trump administration has accordingly declared data center development to be integral for national security, positioning AI-driven reindustrialization as an existential struggle against China (Kollar and Stokols 2026) <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?KJR92b>. In this sense, struggles over data centers are aligned with governance struggles over other infrastructures of this supposed new age, including warehouse purchases made by ICE and Flock’s ALPR surveillance network (Chua 2026) <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?v1ax1V>. They emerge as outrage over fascist visions of economic development, and they position themselves as struggles over and against the state, whether centered on zoning frameworks, local and state development incentives, or federal postures. These struggles’ targeting of the state is fitting given that the grand promises described above are only possible because of the retreat of the state’s provisioning of resources, in a tumultuous dynamic of class struggle Joshua Clover terms ‘riot prime’ (2016) <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?jxfdfJ>. Thus, much is to be gained by investigating the exact details of what these firms promise and deliver (successfully and unsuccessfully, in part or whole) and, where applicable, how such schemes are contested and even used as a chance to instead advocate for collectively-decided community needs and infrastructure. Analytical attention around the realization of such promises can propel us towards productively escalating the tensions within the working class’ approach and dispositions towards data centers. We seek empirically-grounded accounts investigating the myriad of ways data center firms and adjacent organizations advertise themselves providing essential services and needs (otherwise expected from the state), how their promises manifest, how their entrenchment in state (local, national) governance is contested and resisted in spite of such dazzling, (however incommensurate), developmentalist promises. Our interest in such phenomena is formally guided by a subset of mechanisms Brenner and Theodore (2002) <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?WniWra> outline of “actually existing neoliberalism”, emphasizing not only an understanding of neoliberal ideals but how capital struggles incompletely to seize existing infrastructures, laws, cultures, capital formations, and class positions. Overall, submissions are welcome around the tactics of data center developers, including: - How the tech industry structures the privatization of essential services, which may include education, childcare, pedagogic institutions, water and energy provisions - Comparative approaches linking data center firms’ community playbooks with past corporate practices of technology firms, revealing historical continuities and disjunctures - Analyses of class politics given data centers’ thirst for construction and trade labor amidst industry’s displacement of labor as a whole We also invite investigations of the varied forms of resistance against this landscape, including: - Case studies showing how the initial acceptance of a data center by certain groups in exchange for educational or employment benefits has instead changed and morphed into initiatives for community-led local development - Case studies of how data center development proposals have served as activation points for the community to advocate and rally for a different set of developments and opportunities - Efforts to build solidarity and more capacious political horizons within data center struggles, including through repositioning data center fights as a site within struggles against carceral infrastructures We ask for abstracts, with a maximum of 250 words, to be sent to Anoolia Gakhokidze <annygakh@uw.edu> and Nathan Kim <ncyk@umich.edu> by October 10. Participants will be notified of decisions by October 12, ahead of the conference deadline of October 15. References Brenner, Neil, and Nik Theodore. 2002. “Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism.’” Antipode 34 (3): 349–79. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00246. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Burrell, Jenna. 2020. “On Half-Built Assemblages: Waiting for a Data Center in Prineville, Oregon.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 6 (June): 283–305. https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.447. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Chua, Charmaine. 2026. “The Warehouse, in Plain Sight.” Places Journal, ahead of print, April 14. https://doi.org/10.22269/260414. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Clover, Joshua. 2016. Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings. Verso Books. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Davis, Mike. 2017. “The Great God Trump and the White Working Class.” Catalyst 1 (1). https://catalyst-journal.com/2017/11/great-god-trump-davis. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Edwards, Dustin, Zane Griffin Talley Cooper, and Mél Hogan. 2024. “The Making of Critical Data Center Studies.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, January 23, 13548565231224157. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231224157. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Flood, Grayson. 2026. “Governing the Grid.” Phenomenal World, August 31. https://phenomenalworld.org/analysis/governing-the-grid/. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Johnson, Alix. 2019. “Data Centers as Infrastructural In‐betweens:: Expanding Connections and Enduring Marginalities in Iceland.” American Ethnologist 46 (1): 75–88. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12735. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Khalili, Laleh. 2020. Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. Verso Books. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Kollar, Justin, and Andrew Stokols. 2026. “Geopolitical Ecologies of Cloud Capitalism: Territorial Restructuring and the Making of National Computing Power in the U.S. and China.” EPA: Economy and Space 58 (1): 38–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X251369704. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Mezzadra, Sandro, and Brett Neilson. 2019. The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism. Duke University Press. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Stoler, Ann Laura. 2013. Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination. Edited by Ann Laura Stoler. Duke University Press. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Vonderau, Asta. 2017. “Technologies of Imagination: Locating the Cloud in Sweden’s North.” Imaginations Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies/Revue d Études Interculturelle de l Image 8 (2). https://doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.LD.8.2.2. <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E> Zhang, Yongle. 2025. “Reconfiguring Hegemony.” New Left Review, no. 153 (July): 5–22 <https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?oK7b3E>