Author: SCGRG

Session Title: The Emotional geographies of Natural Disasters

Session Organizer: Stephanie Morrice, PhD Candidate, Royal Holloway, University of London.stephanie.morrice.2010@live.rhul.ac.uk

It has long been acknowledged that catastrophic events have the ability to cause widespread disruption to both people and places. They disturb not only to the physical strictures of a locality, but also the emotional attachments people feel to places. They are, by their destructive nature, characterized by a sudden and emotional blast of loss, fear, uncertainty and anxiety. Victims of disasters are commonly forced to find refuge in unfamiliar settings, as their once comfortable and familiar setting of ‘home’ becomes a place of alienation and heartbreak.

Over recent years, debates within emotional geography have explored the importance of understanding how the human world is constructed and lived through emotion. While psychologists have long discussed the mental health effects of catastrophic events, this session intends to draw greater attention to the work within geography that demonstrates the important connection between emotion and disasters. At a time of lively debate from within the field of emotional geography, and an age where the threat of natural disaster is particularly prominent, this interdisciplinary session aims to explore the emotional turmoil associated with the post-disaster environment and the complexities of people’s emotional response to disaster. Understanding these issues more thoroughly is crucial for planners and policy makers who are dealing with the long-term effects of natural disasters.

 

Areas of interest may include, but are not limited to:

* Emotional responses to natural disasters.

* Loss of home.

* Disaster displacement and return.

* Methodological challenges associated with researching emotion in a post-disaster context.

* Feelings of exclusion and “otherness” in the post-disaster environment.

* The importance of material culture in the post-disaster context.

* The emotional character of different natural disasters.

* The spatiality and temporality of emotions.

* Nostalgia and memory.

 

Please send abstracts of no longer than 250 words to Stephanie Morrice (stephanie.morrice.2010@live.rhul.ac.uk) by Friday 1^stFebruary, 2013.

 

Connecting Elements | RGS-IBG 2013 Session Proposal Isla Forsyth (University of Nottingham) and William Hasty (University of Edinburgh)

Abstract:

If it is the case that geography is the art of earth-writing, then, until relatively recently, geographers have been too literal in their interpretation of the earth aspect of this couplet. The earthly spaces and worldly matters of the seas and the skies, as well as those existing below the ground and at the outer reaches of the atmosphere, have been neglected in human geography, but, of course, of late this has begun to change.  The seas (e.g. Steinberg, 2001), skies (e.g. Adey, 2006), subterranean worlds (e.g. Scott, 2008) and extra-terrestrial spaces (e.g. Macdonald, 2007), now feature in geographical analyses of all kinds.  Indeed, parts of the geographical literature have gone watery and turbulent, vertical and angular, atmospheric as well as earthly: all of which has taken the discipline in new directions, raised new questions and pushed debates further by encountering these new frontiers of thought and practice.  If attention to these ‘new’ elements (water, air, sand, etc) in the geographical literature has enriched our discipline, then this session seeks not only to embrace these developments but to start to ask what might be gained from greater consideration of the connections between them.  If the ship and the plane (to name but two examples) are shaping new geographies of war, empire, law, knowledge, and so on, then one must begin to consider the ways in which these sites always exist at (and as) a confluence of elements, at (and as) places where land, sea and air converge to shape all that matters.  Taking particular spaces, places, sites, technologies, lives and objects as starting points, this session aims to critically consider the inevitably entangled and messily material geographies of the world in practice.  Following the pun of the session title through, we seek not only to explore the idea of connecting elements in this substantive sense, but also to foster conversations between geographers of the seas, skies,  land (above and below ground), and atmosphere and outer-space, thereby connecting elements of the discipline too.

Papers might include and/or consider the connections between but are not limited to:

Aerial Geographies; Technologies of mobility; Geographies of the Sea; Subterranean exploration; Atmospheres; Landscape; Extra-terrestrial geographies.

Please send 250 word abstracts to both Isla Forsyth (isla.forsyth@nottingham.ac.uk) and William Hasty (william.hasty@ed.ac.uk) by 30^th January 2013

 

 

 

RGS-IBG Annual Meeting, London 2013 Call for Papers

The Re-Making of the National in the Age of Migration 

Marco Antonsich and Liz Mavroudi, Loughborough University

Contemporary societies have been recently characterized as having entered the age of ‘super-diversity’. Migratory flows in particular have contributed to this transformation, due to the heterogeneous ethno-cultural, and religious background of migrants, as well as factors such as their social status, age, gender, and mobility patterns. Demographic projections also anticipate a future where the boundaries of majority and minority groups will become more blurred.

Within this context, migration scholarship, and geographers in particular, have offered important contributions aimed at exploring transcalar forms of identification, attachment, and belonging amongst an increasingly diverse population. However, we argue that there is a need for further analysis on how the national remains an important site for the articulation of collective discourses and practices.

The aim of the proposed session is to re-invigorate the debate on the role of the national in the age of migration, and to highlight the contribution of geographical research in this. We wish to investigate the ways in which the transformation of societies as a result of migration is associated with a re-signification of the national, understood here as both a discursive resource activated in processes of identity-formation and a spatial context framing and which is framed by mundane/daily practices.

We are therefore looking for empirically-informed papers which explore the re-making of the national both from institutional perspectives (governmental policies, party documents, school curricula, etc.) and lay discourses and practices (happenings, everyday encounters and talks, habits, routines, etc.).

Papers could therefore focus on (but are not limited to) the following questions:

• How does the state seek to ‘nationalise’ migrants and ethnic minority groups through processes of nation-building in dynamic, politicised, and situated ways, across space, and through time?

• How do migrants (first, second and beyond) negotiate national identities and the geographies of difference according to factors such as place, space, gender, age and so forth within their daily lives? How is their resistance and contestation of hegemonic nationalizing discourses conducive to alternative ideas of the national?

• How can the scale of the ‘national’ be made meaningful to migrants, ethnic minority groups, and to members of host society in/at different scales and spaces? How does this relate to perceptions of citizenship, belonging, ‘social cohesion’, multiculturalism and the like? How can the ‘national’ become inclusive and a force for social and political justice, given the increasing transnational connections that many migrants and their descendants have?

To submit a paper please email M.Antonsich@lboro.ac.uk and  E.Mavroudi@lboro.ac.uk

CFP:RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London, 28-30 August 2013

Participatory Science: understanding what motivates and sustains participation in science

Convened by Dr Hilary Geoghegan (UCL Geography), Professor Muki Haklay (UCLCivil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering) and Louise Francis (UCL/ Mapping for Change

Sponsored by HGRG, SCGRG, PyGyRG and GIScRG in association with the Science Museum (London) and UCL’s Extreme Citizen Science Research Group (ExCiteS)

Addressing the conference theme of ‘new geographical frontiers’, this is one of three RGS-IBG sessions, all dedicated to participatory science, to be held at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre:  a space for connecting contemporary science, technology and culture.

In recent years, citizen science has gained recognition as a new frontier for knowledge creation and geographic understanding. Citizen science can be defined as the participation of non-professional scientists in scientific knowledge production, and can be seen as part of both a long tradition of amateur, volunteer and enthusiast participation in science and a wider phenomenon of new participative forms of knowledge creation facilitated by information and communication technology, as well as societal changes. This trend is also influencing popular encounters with scientific outputs, namely museum exhibitions. For geographers and other professional researchers, the inclusion of many more participants in the process of scientific knowledge creation is opening up new places and experiences that could not be captured before due to limits in time, financial resources and geographical coverage. At the same time, these emerging forms of participatory and inclusionary science require adjustments to the relationships between researchers and the public.

This session seeks to explore and debate current research and practice surrounding ‘participatory science’, namely the associated motivations, materials and meanings of participating in science. By adopting a broad understanding of ‘science’ as any instances where the public might contribute to research, for example arts initiatives, historical research, social mapping and more traditional citizen science programmes, we welcome papers that explore (but are not limited to) the following themes:

• what motivates and sustains individual and/or collective participation in ‘citizen science’
• socio-personal meanings of participation
• emotional drivers of participation in science
• politics of participation
• ways in which motivation to participate in science increases and/or decreases across time and space, e.g. age-related participation, geographic location, access to resources
• ways in which citizens have chosen to participate historically
• stakes at play in participation as enjoyable leisure pursuit (e.g. RSPB Big Garden BirdWatch <http://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/?gclid=CPCossy_2bQCFaTMtAodGTsA6g> ; Old Weather <http://www.oldweather.org/> ), community-defined projects (e.g. noise mapping in London <http://www.mappingforchange.org.uk/?portfolio=royal-docks-noise-mapping> ) and life and death data collection (e.g. disaster mapping in Japan following nuclear accident <http://blog.safecast.org/> )
• how technologies, gizmos and mapping devices alter levels of participation
• ways to enhance participation in ‘science’, enabling access, online collaboration and interdisciplinary communication

Please send all abstracts (max. 250 words including title, name, contact details, abstract) and/or questions regarding the session to Hilary Geoghegan h.geoghegan@ucl.ac.uk by Tuesday, 5th February 2013.

New frontiers of geographical knowledge and practice? Exploring creative methods and encounter Liz Bondi (Edinburgh), Hester Parr (Glasgow), Olivia Stevenson (Glasgow), Alette Willis (Edinburgh)

1 session slot sponsored by the SCGRG for the RGS-IBG conference, London, Wednesday 28 to Friday 30 August 2013 (with an opening event on Tuesday 27 August 2013)

The aim of this session is to explore and show-case how creative and arts based encounters, acts, ways of knowing and exchanging knowledge are being currently utilised within the discipline of human geography.  The session allows for papers or performances that engage with a range of empirical materials, but with an accent on reflecting upon how geographers are creatively expanding ways of organising and engaging the research encounter and disseminating the knowledges that are accumulated within them. Artistic and theatrical and mediatised techniques, methods and tactics are increasingly common in a discipline which is newly energised to critically deliver its ‘impact’ performatively.

We want to ask: What is at stake here? What and how are these new techniques being utilised as ‘research methods’? How are traditional methodological concerns with inter-subjectivity and empathy being re-cast as a result? In regards to research dissemination and knowledge exchange – how is this creativity constituted and encountered with what intentions and outcomes? How are understandings of ‘research’ and ‘impact’ being challenged?

The session aims to learn from the differing experiences of those using diverse forms of arts based research methods and arts in public and ‘user’ engagement activities.

The call for papers is thus guided by the following question and themes, but not restricted by them:

• What are creative and arts based research methods and why should they be used in human geography?
• How can geographical knowledge be performance based and performative and with what effects/affects?
• What genres are being used in geographical research and with what effects/affects?
• What happens to ‘safe inter-subjective relations’ in creative and arts based research encounter and dissemination?
• How does writing geographical research as scripts make a difference?
• What is the role of the visual in creative research methods and dissemination

Creative and interactive methods of presentation are very welcome.

Further thematic guides:

• Geography and the creative arts
• Storying research for social purpose
• Creative methods and the impact agenda
• Representing everyday live through arts based approaches
• Experimental practices
• Audiencing and production
• Performance
• Transformative spaces of learning
• Creative practice as a pedagogical tool

Please email abstracts of 250 words max to Hester.parr@glasgow.ac.uk by 4^th February, 2013.

Over the next week, we will be posting the calls for papers and other news on the SCGRG sponsored sessions for the 2012 RGS/IBG conference.  Thank you to everyone who submitted session ideas to us. We are delighted to be sponsoring a range of innovative slots for the summer.

Immunitary Geographies

Organisers: Gail Davies, Jamie Lorimer and Steve Hinchliffe

We invite papers and other provocations exploring immunitary geographies, how biological and social practices, community and immunity, territory and borders, self and non-self are de- and/or re-territorialised through understandings and performances of immunity.

Immunity is receiving increasing attention in social and political theory, biology and geography as well as outside academia. In one sense this suggests a need to interrogate shared metaphors. The correlations between biological framings of immunological responses and the ordering of social lives are well known (Waldby, Haraway, Martin, Napier, Esposito). Martial registers used in fighting disease and defending borders, for example, as well as seemingly more neutral senses of immune system and communicative process, tend to operate through culturally and politically sedimented notions of self and non-self (Napier, 2012). These high-level metaphors can function as premature closures on understanding the complex and embodied practices of immunity across a range of sites (Fischer, 2012). In another sense, there is also a possibility to make use of shared re-investments in the notion of immunity to reconfigure geographies of self and difference. Indeed, alternative ways of thinking about and practising immunology may challenge notions of identity, system and spatial register, and it is here that an immunitary geography could usefully contribute.

Immunitary thinking is active in a range of settings, (we sketch them below), but it is also important to note these scientific paradigms, empirical practices and social theoretical accounts do not always align. By bringing them together in this session we aim to interrogate their geographies and promote not so much a tracing of high-level metaphor, but rather a sense of opportunity for a re-vitalised geography of life.

• Research into immunologically complex phenomena, such as viruses, transplantation, tumour development, pregnancy and regenerative medicine, point to the wider range of immune repertoires and trouble any hard and fast division between self and other. The result may point to more affirmative forms of life politics.

•‘Probiotic’ conceptions of immunity are emerging from citizen science experiments, applying new ideas about health and hygiene to develop practices for tolerating, cultivating and even introducing parasites and symbionts. Likewise, dissatisfaction with anti-biotic modes of urbanism introduces complexity through practices such as shared space planning.

•Security practices, which rely on tropes of resilience, and Lockean preparedness, de- and re-territorialise spaces of home and nation. Here, spatial extension, anticipatory governance and risk management may involve a new kind of warfare, as immunities and exceptions arise from state and nonstate partnerships in emergencies, wars, and disaster management.

•Engagement with hypertrophic security and autoimmunity through the work of Derrida, Esposito and others highlights the paradoxical nature of self-protection.

•Work in geography and elsewhere on hospitality, on hosting and on the requirement to rethink classical political notions of friend and enemy (Dikec et al) starts to unsettle notions of immune response.

We seek to bring together with different ways of understanding immunitary geographies. Our aim is to encourage ongoing and inventive exchange across the different practices, sites, scientific and social theoretical perspectives currently at play in such immunitary geographies, preventing closures around a further series of high-level metaphors.
Some foci include, but are not limited to:

Immunology and security, resilience and risk; Biosecurity and insecurity; Emergencies, accidents, preparedness and immunity; Community and immunity; Political economies of inoculation, vaccine manufacture and administration Immunology; Immunology and the political ecologies of the human microbiome; Discourses and practices of immunology in urban planning; Dirt and mess in children’s geographies; Immunitary bio-economies and bio-resources; The nature of immunosuppression and the geographies of tissue matching; Aesthetic and architectural interventions into immunity; Spatial thinking and immunitary geography; Political immunity and power, and exception; Affirmative biopolitics and thanatopolitics; Studying and tracing immunity; Life as interval, inflexion and the memory of immunity.

Please send an abstract of 250 words to Gail Davies (g.f.davies@exeter.ac.uk), Jamie Lorimer (jamie.lorimer@ouce.ox.ac.uk) and Steve Hinchliffe (Stephen.Hinchliffe@exeter.ac.uk) by Wed 6th Feb 2013.

RGS-IBG Social and Cultural Geography Research Group AGM

Tuesday 2nd July 2012, RGS Edinburgh, Room TRH-COM

Agenda for the meeting

1. Apologies for absence
2. Chair’s report
3. Treasurer’s Report
4. Changes in Committee Membership:
   • Election of New Chair
   • Election of New Secretary
   • Confirm Election of Acting Treasurer to Treasurer
   • Other committee members, including election of new dissertation co-ordinator, proposed re-election of postgraduate representatives, any further roles (membership secretary, communications secretary) and ordinary members
5. Undergraduate Dissertation Prize
6. Proposed research group activities
7. Allocating Group funds to support non-committee proposed research activities
8. Proposal from Robert Rojek (sage)
9. AOB
10. Key dates from RGS:
    • a) Research Group Grants – deadlines Oct 31st
    • b) Annual Report due 31st January 2013
    • c) Next RGS-IBG annual conference Wednesday 28 to Friday 30 August 2013. The conference Chair will be Jonathan Rigg (Durham) and the theme ‘New Geographical Frontiers’.
    • Key dates for the research group are: i) October 2012 Call for Papers ii) End of February 2013 deadline for Research Group sessions
11. Date of next meeting sometime 28-30 August 2013