conferences – Social and Cultural Geography Research Group

Call for session sponsorship – RGS-IBG annual conference 2025

The RGS-IBG Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) would like to invite expressions of interest for sponsored sessions for the RGS-IBG 2025 Annual Conference, which will take place in Birmingham and online from the evening of Tuesday 26th to Friday 29th August.

The theme for the 2025 Annual Conference, chaired by Professor Patricia Noxolo (University of Birmingham, UK), is ‘Geographies of Creativity/Creative Geographies’. You can find out more about the conference at: https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference

SCGRG is keen to sponsor sessions that directly relate to the conference theme, as well as make room for a wide range of other issues and topics. We welcome sessions which will be of wide significance and interest to social and cultural geographers, will meaningfully contribute to ongoing debates in social and cultural geography, and demonstrate substantive, methodological or theoretical novelty.

Please take note of the guidelines for session organisers: https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/call-for-sessions-papers-and-posters

Please submit your expressions of interest for SCGRG sponsorship by 5pm GMT on Friday 31st January 2025 through: https://tinyurl.com/3nnwxnhv
We will endeavour to inform applicants of the outcome by Monday 24th February 2025.

Questions about SCGRG sponsored sessions should be directed to the SCGRG conference officer Rishika Mukhopadhyay: r.mukhopadhyay@soton.ac.uk.

Call for Session Sponsorship – RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2024

The RGS-IBG Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) would like to invite expressions of interest for sponsored sessions for the RGS-IBG 2024 Annual Conference, which will take place in London and online from the evening of Tuesday 27th to Friday 30 August.

The theme for the 2024 Annual Conference, chaired by Professor Stephen Legg (University of Nottingham, UK), is ‘Mapping’. You can find out more about the conference at: https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference.

Please take note of the guidelines for session organisers: https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/call-for-sessions-papers-and-posters/guidance-for-session-organisers

Please submit your expressions of interest for SCGRG sponsorship by 5pm GMT on Wednesday 14th February 2024 through: https://forms.office.com/e/iTB8EqtPK9
We will endeavour to inform applicants of the outcome by Friday 23rd February 2024.

Questions about SCGRG sponsored sessions should be directed to the SCGRG conference officer Rishika Mukhopadhyay: r.mukhopadhyay@soton.ac.uk.

RGS-IBG 2023: Sponsored Sessions

The following are the sessions sponsored by SCGRG at the RGS-IBG 2023 Annual Conference in London.

Feeling at Home in Non-normative Living Spaces

Organisers: Andrew Power (University of Southampton), Sophie Bowlby (University of Reading)

Presenters: Melanie Nowicki, Katherine Brickell, Ella Harris, Peter Hopkins, Robin Finlay, Matthew Benwell, Josefina Jaureguiberry Mondion, Beverley Clough, Henrietta Zeffert, Beverley Clough, Henrietta Zeffert, Aline Desmas, Janet Bowstead

Summary:

This session sought to explore the often difficult processes of home-making that people undertake in settings that do not fit with normative home environments. The call for papers for this session generated significant interest, with a wide range of good quality submissions to present papers (19). Following a difficult selection process, we selected nine papers for inclusion as well as a discussant slot to explore cross-cutting themes, led by Andrew Power. The two parts of the session (before and after morning coffee) were very well attended by scholars across SCGRG and beyond, with interesting presentations and debate. The non-normative settings presented in the papers ranged widely and included the dwellings of refugees, homeless people, and temporary residents occupying remittance houses. Each paper focused on the novel home-making practices of their respective residents, albeit often at the margins, including cosplay by autistic young people. One paper covered the feminist legal geographies of home-making, which helped to enhance the conceptual engagement with the topic. We felt that we had hit upon a topic of significance. The methodologies used in the studies that were reported were varied (virtual and face-to-face ethnographies and interviews, conceptual analysis) although not unusual within social and cultural geography. The topic of living in non-normative ‘homes’ is one that clearly brought together the theoretical interests of researchers examining apparently diverse topics. The questions and discussion showed a lively interest in the opportunity for theoretical cross-fertilisation amongst presenters and attendees and an interest in sharing findings and approaches. We hope to facilitate this with some form of publication such as a special issue or book arising from the sessions.

Spaces and Subjects of Impotentiality

Organisers: Vickie Zhang (University of Bristol & Guangzhou University), Thomas Dekeyser (Royal Holloway, University of London), David Bissell (University of Melbourne)

Presenters: Gediminas Lesutis, Paul Harrison, Farai Chipato, Alex Cullen, William Jamieson, Victoria Jones, Vickie Zhang, Merle Matthew Davies, Jonathan Pugh

Summary:

The first session opened with a brief introduction by the chair, Thomas Dekeyser, who summarised the impulse behind organising the session as the desire to offer a supplementation to, and modest questioning of, the prevalence – in geographical thinking – of ‘potentiality’ and ‘capacity’ as necessarily possible or desirable. In anticipation of the nine presentations, he formulated three modes of impotentiality: a) as an originary ontological status for (certain) being; b) as a collective structure of feeling characteristic of our contemporary political moment of sensed disempowerment; and c) as localised affective experiences. Picking up on the first of these modes, Paul Harrison kicked off the session with a challenge to ‘lively work’ in new materialism and posthumanist thought, proposing impotentiality as a way of avoiding the lure of redeeming existence. Farai Chipato located impotentiality within the ontological status of black subjectivity, and offered thoughts on how one might, methodologically, look towards attending to such spaces of impotentiality. Gediminas Lesutis and Alex Cullen each approached impotentiality as a feeling of incapacity in the face of wider political forces, examining – respectively – the impossibility of redress in Kenyan mega-infrastructures, and the impoverishment of radical climate action.

We were very pleased that the RGS-IBG were able to include a hybrid session, which meant presenters more distantly located could speak. Things kicked off with a pun with William Jamieson’s exploration of the paradoxical omni(m)potence of Singapore’s territorial expansion, refracted through Marxist analogies of growth and accumulation. Merle Davies Matthew incisively critiqued the politics of the hopeful gesture to potential often made in critical scholarship, questioning its politics by identifying its shared characteristics with the more obviously problematic capitalist versions of attunement to potential. Victoria Jones delivered a moving performance presentation on the underperformativity of emotion for furloughed workers in the UK, whilst Jonathan Pugh and Vickie Zhang both spoke to the idea of non-relational subjectivity, albeit through different conceptual traditions – in Caribbean studies and via continental philosophy respectively.

We were inspired to see the different versions of impotence emerging in the papers across the two sessions – from critiques of worlding, liveliness and potential, to impotentiality as incapacity to act, as immobility, futility, affective performance, historical inheritance, misplaced attachment, and more. We thank the presenters for their insightful presentations and look forward to engaging with the potent and forthcoming work being undertaken in the orbit of impotentiality.

Session Summary: “Seasonal Cultures: Elements of Change”

Organisers: Hester Parr (University of Glasgow), Shawn Bodden (University of Glasgow), Hayden Lorimer (University of Edinburgh)

Presenters: Helen Wilson, Michelle Bastian, Shawn Bodden, Rowan Jaines, Maximilian Hepach, Frederick Hubble, Felicia Liu, Pablo Arboleda, Scott Bremer, Caitlin DeSilvey

Summary:

At this year’s RGS-IBG conference, we hosted two sessions on the theme of Seasonal Cultures. Our interest in seasonality and experiences of seasonal change took on additional significance within the context of the Chair’s theme of Climate Changed Geographies: in a series of terrific presentations, our sessions’ speakers described how learning to live amid disruptions to familiar seasonal rhythms and the emergence of new weather patterns has produced changing social, cultural, emotional and affective geographies of environmental life. A major theme across a number of the presentations was the importance of local and intimate seasons for understanding the changing cultural geographies of climate change. Presenters shared examples of how gardens, apple trees and bird migration can become sites of intimate encounter with the threat of climate change, but also of struggles to read local environments to discover ways to preserve cherished forms of life. A closely linked discussion emphasised the value of understanding seasons as sense-making in the face of disruption, anxiety and feelings of ‘global weirding’. Through rich examples from a range of geographical locations, such as accounts of a new ‘haze season’ in Southeast Asia or Norwegian beekeepers’ modification of seasonal repertoires of practice, presenters addressed ways in which communities interpreted, named and responded to changing patterns of weather and atmosphere. A final major interest was the digital mediation of seasonality. Public perceptions of seasonal patterns and disruptions can be shared through social media platforms, offering insight into experiences of climate change as well as opportunities for innovative, participatory and creative-led research methods. This is also reflected in the development of new forms of popular digital media to simulate seasonal atmospheres, such as Yule Log videos and other ‘ambient’ media. Seasons are not simply times of year we find ourselves in: people watch, learn from, respond and even seek to make them. The Seasonal Cultures sessions suggested new avenues for studying changing experiences of seasonality and opened up a number of key questions about how to learn from those particularly affected by seasonal change—be it through their profession, location, or mental health—and how to build new forms of supportive seasonal life together.

Mapping for a changing world: qualitative, arts-based, participatory methods

Organisers: Heather Miles (University of Manchester), Barbara Brayshay (Royal Holloway, University of London), Mike Duggan (King’s College London)

Presenters: Alice Gorman Eveleigh, Buck-Matthews, Ersilia Verlinghieri, Chiara Chiavaroli, Rachel Andrews, Jina Lee, Heather Miles, Clare Qualmann

Summary:

The Mapping for a Changing World double session sought to showcase, and consider challenges and further development, of diverse and innovative mapping approaches. Different mapping approaches can focus on contrasting forms of data and knowledges, often simultaneously and as such are an important transdisciplinary method. The mapping approaches are valuable methods for social and cultural geographers to use together, with other geographers and other disciplines, and with other communities, when these collaborators have contrasting practices of knowledge-making. The mapping approaches explored in the sessions included creative arts-based mapping, deep mapping, GIS and qualitative GIS, body mapping, participatory creative mapping and walking approaches.

As such, our presenters and audience came from a range of different backgrounds, including different academic disciplines as well as practitioners outside academia, and from a range of mapping traditions, from GIS to art. The sessions attracted a large number of attendees (around 30) and each presentation, workshop and the end of session discussion prompted many audience questions and contributions. The discussions included the topics of positionality, project and map legacy, and how such projects can shape policy.

The double session provided both presenters’ reflections on using their different mapping methods (Session 1), as well as providing attendees with practical experience in using a creative and a walking method of mapping (Session 2). The creative aspects of the session reflected the recent increased uptake of creative methods in geography and explored the distinctive contribution such methods make to understanding people’s experience of place, space and environmental processes and practices.

The critique of critique: new perspectives on the future of critique

Organisers: Victoria Ridgway (Durham University), Philip Conway (Durham University)

Presenters: Victoria Ridgway, Philip Conway, Mark Jackson, Gediminas Lesutis, Maria Rusca, David Seitz

Summary:

This session discussed various modalities of critique, the possibilities to do critique otherwise or to let go of critique altogether. Several papers traced brief genealogies of critique, which emphasized its position as a prominent feature of the edification of the Enlightenment and its related subject positions, as well as its conflation with negative modes of interpretation that debunk and reveal. Participants’ engagements with the question of the ‘critique of critique‘ or ‘critique after critique’, mainly varied along the line of the possibility to carry on with critique, and the general critical ethos that supports much of academic work today. While some argued in favour of bettering critique either through more ambivalent, rigorous or ethically informed modes of interpretation, others argued for the subversion of critique through an engagement with more collective and caring modes of knowing. The papers contributed to advancing our understanding of what it means to be critical in cultural and social geography. They specifically engaged with the questions of what doing critique otherwise would look like, and how shifting our understanding of how different modes of criticism are already deployed outside of academia can help us better understand how people relate to the world. Furthermore, the discussion engaged through this session directly spoke to recent debates within cultural geography which question the mobilization of hope and affirmation in critique and politics, by opening this debate for further considerations of what more ambivalent modes of criticism could resemble.

Sounding Elements I & II :Listening to weathers, waters, atmospheres, and Listening across scales, measurements

Organisers: Samuel Hertz (Royal Holloway, University of London), Indira Lemouchi (Royal Holloway, University of London), Sasha Engelmann (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Presenters: Samuel Hertz, Indira Lemouchi, Sasha Engelmann, Nicola Di Croce, Eleni-Ira Panourgia, Carla J. Maier, Ivo Louro, Kat Austen, Kaya Barry, Margarida Mendes, Alex De Little

Summary:

The two sessions comprising our SCGRG-sponsored block ran successfully—with both sessions having an impressive turnout—and to an enthusiastic and engaged audience. Totalling nine presentations from 11 presenters over the two sessions, the block offered a wide range of experimental responses to concepts of sonic materialism and the elemental, fusing fields such as activism, public policy and data science to artistic responses in the form of architectural installations, field recording and dance film. Researchers and artists framed the ways in which sound offers new perspectives on grappling with changing landscapes, and in particular offered examples of how a sonic elementalism/sonic materialism may function as a geographic method itself.

The common trait shared amongst all presentations in the two sessions was an acknowledgement of sound’s potential to uncover new relationships between the practical effects of anthropogenic climate and environmental change, and the broader cultural and geographic ontological viewpoints that can be derived from participatory and experiential sonic methodologies. The presentations gracefully reinforced each other through a complex and

diverse set of practices, and both shared points of reference as well as shared terminologies suggested a strong conceptual and practical coherence between the previously undiscussed practices among the two sessions. Topics discussed included atmospheric acoustics of traditional Portuguese windmills, to workshops on inter-scalar listening, hacked instruments for listening to water as well as landscapes of drought.

The presenters and the conveners alike were very enthusiastic about each other’s presentations, and there was an immediate conversation following the end of the second session on developing further work in the form of a publication or special issue. The conveners are planning to meet at the end of September to discuss further possibilities and potential avenues within which to continue these exciting and generative conversations.

Indigenous ontologies, decoloniality and the naming of difference

Organisers: Mat Keel (Louisiana State University), Mitch Rose (Aberystwyth University)

Presenters: Emily Hayes, Kate Maclean, Dumisani Moyo, Mariana Reyes, Mitch Rose

Summary:

The aim of the session was to explore new geographic work on indigenous ontologies. In particular we asked authors to explore the potential paradoxes imminent to the study of ingenious thought – i.e., the problem of acknowledging the radically different thinking of others without falling into the trap of essentialism. This was a theme that came through many (if not all the papers). For example, Emily Hayes’ paper explored Viveiros De Castro’s concept of multinaturalism and its antecedents in 19^th century geographical thought. Kate Maclean, meanwhile, focused on the complexities of indigenous political identity, particularly when it intersects with political economies that exclude the experience of indigenous women. Similarly, Mariana Reyes examined two Brazilian museums – the Museum of Tomorrow and the Rio Art Museum – to illustrate the singular and reductive manner that indigeneity is represented within a museum space. In a slightly different vein. Dumisani Moyo, drew upon Mdembe’s notion of ‘necropolitics’ to query the appropriateness of concepts such as ‘indigeneity’ to characterize economic practices that are also exploitative. And Mitch Rose queried the alternative future that is often promised by work on indigenous ontologies, as well as critiqued the overall idea that there can be ‘better’ or ‘worse’ ontologies. All together the papers brought some critical questions to bear on the notion of indigeneity as well as its mobilization in various decolonial practices. Indeed, for many papers, the concept of indigenous ontologies – while useful for engaging how others think – also had the danger of reinforcing the strong ontological divides which are a hallmark of Western conceptions of difference.

More-than-human archives: reflecting on geographers’ archival interventions

Organisers: Lena Ferriday (University of Bristol), Austin Read (University of Bristol)

Panelists:

Lena Ferriday, Austin Read, Jessica Lehman, Catherine Oliver, Merle Patchett, Hayden Lorimer

Summary:

This panel session on more-than-human archives and geography’s archival interventions prompted a rich and interesting discussion, featuring four mini presentations by each of the panellists where they presented a more-than-human archive that they work with, followed by a wide-ranging discussion involving the audience. The session drew upon and developed several key themes of cultural and social geography, including:

Corporeality. The presentations and following discussions foregrounded, in multifaceted ways, the presence of raced, gendered and specied bodies in the archive. What emerged through the session was that geographical engagements with the archive are particularly crucial for sensing the fleshy, corporeal more-than-human bodies that both do archival work and are present in the archives.
Labour. The session focused both on the labour of the archival researcher and the other kinds of labours that make their research possible – in the session we heard about the labour of archivists, oceanographers, chickens, birds of paradise and rocks. This discussion of labour was conceptually rich and theoretically adventurous – for example, prompting musings about whether if a chicken egg is an archive, is a chicken an archivist? What emerged here was that cultural geographic approaches to more-than-human archives, then, are perhaps particularly useful for reflecting both on method – the work it takes to do historical research – and for analytically foregrounding the different forms of more-than-human work that the archive can lead us to.
Power. The session focused on the importance of taking a critical approach to archives, given that archives and archival work are both always-already saturated with power. We’ve also had been cautioned about taking an overly celebratory approach to “alternative” archives – even creative and insurgent archives have territorialising functions, silences and gaps. What emerged through this session was the importance of not trying to escape silences, instead paying attention to them by foregrounding the patches and the gaps in our knowledges and archival sources. We heard from multiple critical geographies, including affective and postcolonial geographies, but feminist analyses emerged as particularly essential. Feminist fieldwork ethics seems to inform how many social and cultural geographers are approaching the archive, foregrounding awareness of situated knowledges, of strong objectivity that does not fetishize “truth” or authority whilst remaining committed to the integrity of careful research and of notions of care and caregiving.
Particularity. The session celebrated source-led commitment to materials – including map collections, eggs, and feathers. They also reminded us of the importance of beginning with particular histories rather than abstract ontologies. Each panellist drew on passion, love or some other form of affective connection when present the archive that they work with.

In sum then, the session contributed to social and cultural geography by staging a broad discussion about one of its key methods – archival research – that opened expansive, creative dialogue on some of social and cultural geography’s key concerns, including questions of gender, power, race, affect, humanism, materiality, care, knowledge, and many others.

Postgraduate Forum Twitter Conference – apply to present

The Postgraduate Forum Twitter Conference will be taking place from Tuesday 25 to Thursday 27 August.

What is the PGF Twitter Conference?

This conference is an opportunity for PhD students in geography and related disciplines to share their research with the wider geography community on Twitter.

The PGF recognise that many people will have been preparing materials for conferences that have now been postponed or cancelled, and so they decided to run this event in the absence of such conferences (for example, the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference). If you have work you’d like to share which you had planned to present at any conference, or indeed any new findings you’d like to share with the academic world, please consider applying to present!

How does it work?

Participants will be grouped into sessions with others carrying out research in a similar field. You’ll be given 15 minutes to share 5 tweets which showcase your work, and 15 minutes to respond to any comments in a ‘live’ Q&A. With just 280 characters per Tweet, you’ll need to think about creative ways of demonstrating your findings, for example by creating a short video or GIF to accompany your text. If your application is successful, you will be sent a detailed presenters’ guide to ensure you’re well prepared to share and discuss your research with as wide an audience as possible!

The deadline for submissions is Friday 24 July.

For more details, please visit the PGF website at https://rgspostgradforum.org/rgs-ibg-postgraduate-forum-twitter-conference-2020.

Webinars, conferences and podcasts on doing research during a pandemic

The below webinars from the UK Data Service offer guidance on the different kinds of data available for investigating particular geographical issues in the UK (political behaviour, mental health, religion, etc), and how to access and approach these data sets. There are also many live events online discussing how research methods and approaches might adapt to the new situation we find ourselves in – such as the NVivo conference below – that might be of interest. It’s also worth checking out the National Centre for Research Methods mini-podcasts series, in which they share methodological developments, research findings and ideas, and discuss their potential and actual impact.

NVivo virtual conference, 23rd September 2020

Hear from experts and doctoral students on how they are adapting their research (or not) due to the changed research landscape during Covid-19. Registration opens July 2020. https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-qualitative-data-analysis-software/nvivo-virtual-conference

UK Data Service

Dissertation projects: Introduction to secondary analysis for qualitative and quantitative data

Slides available here

Key issues in Reusing Data

https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/media/622714/web_reusingdata21may2020.pdf

Finding Data in the UK Data Service

Slides available here

Using UK Data Service in dissertations

Webinars

The following webinars discuss a variety of geographic issues that have used different data sets:

Investigating political behaviour in the UK – what data can I use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjeEK8LrZNg&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=12&t=0s

Investigating Religion in the UK – what data can I use? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBZkRm6yFwU&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=15&t=72s

Investigating mental health in the UK – what data can I use? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhSu0-IqwuE&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=24&t=0s

Investigating obesity in the UK – what data can I use? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znr5r153R54&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=44&t=0s

Research using Youth and Young Adult Data in Understanding Society https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r66TKL5sbzg&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=52&t=0s

Geography and Longitudinal Data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw_6QA_KfCs&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=54&t=0s

Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZLd1uBON8I&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=72&t=0s

Introduction to data on ethnicity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-TA0AIJh1U&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=88

Introduction to data on ageing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5N12075QNM&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=94

Podcasts

The following National Centre for Research Methods podcasts provide useful resources on online methods:

Making space for Big Qual: New ideas in research methods and teaching. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=59&title=Making

Teaching Big Qual: Benefits and challenges for students and teachers. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=60&title=Teaching

Mind the gap: Why skills are key to data reuse. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=54&title=Mind

Using Social Media in Research. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=24&title=Using

Social and Cultural Geography sponsored sessions at the RGS-IBG AC2020

The following sessions will be sponsored and co-sponsored by the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group for the RGS-IBG annual conference 2020, 1st – 4th September.

Should you wish to submit an abstract for any of the sessions below, please contact the organisers directly.

Non-representational geographies: approaches, methods and practices

Amy C. Barron, The University of Manchester

amy.barron@manchester.ac.uk

Andrew S. Maclaren, The University of Aberdeen

a.s.maclaren@gmail.com

Abstract:

This session offers a space for discussion of existing and emerging research exploring non-representational geographies. Non-representational theories provide a springboard for exploring the affective geographies of a multitude of phenomena from ageing, to nationalism and geopolitics, to name but a few. Various approaches, methods and theoretical lineages reflect and infuse the diversity of non-representational geographies, bringing together a concern for how places, subjectivities and identities are enacted, felt and mediated. The session presents an opportunity to traverse and reconsider the ‘borders’ within social and cultural geography with respect to non-representational theories. It provides a space to take stock of the development of the non-representational and associated thinking within and between subdisciplines. As well as research drawing on the established corpus of non-representational research, we are particularly interested in recent and innovative engagements with non-representational theories.

Topics in this session might include, but are not limited to:

– How might those engaged with non-representational theories learn from other innovative frontiers within social and cultural geography and vice versa?

– What non-representational geographies are emerging within the subdisciplines of geography, the arts and wider social sciences?

– How has social and cultural geography sought to understand the ways in which places, subjectivities and identities are enacted, felt and mediated? How can this be furthered?

– How are different bodies part of the nature of affective places/non-representational geographies?

– How are/might scholars engage methodologically with non-representational theories?

We are interested in engaging with perspectives from academics at all career stages.

Navigating, disrupting and re-working the borders of multiple citizenships

Kahina Meziant (kahina.meziant@northumbria.ac.uk) and John Clayton (john.clayton@northumbria.ac.uk)

In turbulent and precarious times, the promise of national citizenship is desirable yet often elusive (Bhrabat, 2019). This is particularly true for ‘non-citizens’, such as those seeking asylum (Könönen, 2018) where limits on citizenship have violent consequences. However, formal citizenship is also unstable, seen through enduring exclusions for those who are nominally, but differentially, ‘included’ (Erel, Reynolds, & Kaptani, 2018) and through the uneven space-times of citizenship ( Brexit, the Hostile Environment and Windrush) (Wardle & Obermuller, 2019). Beyond formal citizenship, there exists an array of ‘acts’ of citizenship that by-pass or contest legal membership (Isin, 2008). Work on post-national identities (Soysal, 2002), translocal activism (Nagel & Staeheli, 2008), everyday multiculturalism (Clayton, 2009), emotional citizenry (Askins, 2016) and sonic citizenship (McMahon, 2017) all highlight everyday relational practices that re-constitute borders of belonging. However, questions remain regarding the continued salience of the promise of formal citizenship and the ways in which contestations might continue to be ‘managed’ (Darling, 2017). Here, we look to address the tensions and ambivalences (Ikizoglu Erensu, 2016) between partial, uneven and (non-)citizenship and acts of citizenship that are practiced in relation to, in spite of and against the prevailing ‘institutional order’ (Aradau et al., 2010).

We welcome papers that address a wide range of experiences including migration and asylum, but also other practices of belonging for those whom formal national membership is tentative, uneven and precarious. We hope to attract work from a diverse range of theoretical and methodological perspectives that relate (but not limited) to:

– Emotional and affective geographies

– Belonging and politics of belonging

– Everyday multiculturalism

– Critical and radical theories of citizenship

– Feminist narratives of the right to the city

– Qualitative and participatory methods

– Subaltern studies

– ‘Race’, racism and racialisation

– Borders and bordering

– Migration and resistance

Plastic Geographies

Alison Browne and Peter Kraftl alison.browne@manchester.ac.uk and p.kraftl@bham.ac.uk

Plastics are on the agenda. In different contexts, in different ways, plastics have rapidly emerged as central to environmental debates, politics and behaviours, as well as to academic and technical work across a range of disciplines. This session seeks to encourage expansive, critical and creative approaches to plastics and their geographies. It seeks to emphasise how an awareness of geographical processes – and geographical analyses – might enable us to grapple with the synthetic, sticky, slippery characteristics of plastics. Yet, since plastics constitute, challenge and percolate through more-than-human systems, at different spatial scales, the session will also engender debate about the kinds of inter- and trans-disciplinary scholarship required to address ‘plastic geographies’. Drawing on recent (particularly feminist, queer and critical race) theorisations of and responses to plastics, we are particularly interested in the ways in which we (as a species, but also with nonhuman others) are “(en)plasticized” or bound by a “plastic contract” that will threaten and differentiate life for many centuries to come (Ghosh, 2019: 277). Despite attempts, especially in the Minority Global North, to divest plastics and render them ‘elsewhere’, plastics are no longer ‘outside’: they constitute the ‘substrate of advanced capitalism’ (Davis, 2015: 348). From decolonising perspectives perhaps plastics have never been ‘outside’ – made up of ancient more-than-human-kin to be cared for, carefully (cf. Libroin and the CLEAR Laboratory). Looking specifically at humans, we already know that the pernicious effects of living or working with plastics, in particular times and places, are patterned by (young) age, gender, race and class (Huang, 2017). Thus, a greater attentiveness to the workings of plastics does not simply require new forms of collaboration across disciplines but also new forms of interdisciplinary critique and experimentation. Whilst not, ultimately, assuming that all plastics are ‘bad’ (Libroin, 2015), this session nevertheless seeks to draw together empirical, critical, experimental, applied (and more) research that can respond to the machinations of plastic geographies.

Examples of topics to be covered within the session:

Circulations of plastic(s) through social, ecological, hydrological and technological systems
Children’s geographies and plastic childhoods
Household geographies and flows of plastic(s) through everyday practices
Everyday attachments to, aspirations about and/or nostalgia for, plastics
Material geographical analysis of stocks and flows of plastics through everyday lives, homes, communities, societies
The role of plastic in food waste and food safety
Connections to health and hygiene (eg., menstrual health, hospitals and healthcare, indoor ecologies)
Interdisciplinary work linking ‘polluting practices’ to water and sanitation systems
Analysis linking cars and mobilities to plastic in aquatic systems
Links to emerging research areas of ‘toxic geographies’
Indigenous and anticolonial perspectives on plastics
Feminist and intersectional perspectives on plastics
Political and economic geographies (e.g., firms, commodities/commodification)
Multi-, inter- and/or trans-disciplinary research invoking co-produced solutions
Examples of research/policy praxis to invoke meaningful change
Critical analyses of contemporary discourses about plastics, across geographical and social contexts
Any surprising, interesting, and evocative connecting themes we haven’t identified

This call for presentations is linked to the Leverhulme funded ‘Plastic Childhoods’ led by Prof Peter Kraftl (University of Birmingham) and the EPSRC funded RE3 (Rethinking Resources and Recycling) ‘Plastic Hygiene’ workpackage led by Dr Alison Browne (University of Manchester).

We particularly encourage Masters, PhD and ECR students and researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to participate in the sessions.

References

Davis, H., 2015. Life & death in the Anthropocene: A short history of plastic. Art in the anthropocene: Encounters among aesthetics, politics, environments and epistemologies, pp.347-358.

Ghosh, R., 2019. Plastic Literature. University of Toronto Quarterly, 88(2), pp.277-291.

Huang, M.N., 2017. Ecologies of entanglement in the great pacific garbage patch. Journal of Asian American Studies, 20(1), pp.95-117.

Libroin, M. 2015. Redefining pollution and action: The matter of plastics. Journal of Material Culture, 21(1), 87-110

From identity to identification: vernacularization of Asian borders

Dr. Po-Yi Hung, Associate Professor, National Taiwan University, poyihung@ntu.edu.tw

Dr. June Wang, Associate Professor, City University of Hong Kong, june.wang@cityu.edu.hk

Borders cannot be reduced to “a singular focus on political borders and their related social boundaries”, but a dynamic, “bounding processes involved in all types of categorization (Jones, 2009: 184), which “metaphorically and physically shape the ways we understand the world around us (Jones, 2010: 266).” The renewed approach for border studies pushed scholars to re-orient attentions to the non-state actors at the scale of people’s everyday lives (Jones and Johnson, 2014), or what Cooper et al (2004) call the “vernacularization of borders”.

The approach of “vernacularization of borders” is of particular value to our understand of Asian borders, where the everyday practices of bordering is shadowed by the geopolitical tensions among countries and regions, from North Korea and South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, to China and India. This session aims to relocate Asian borders in everyday identification, investigating the process of articulating, negotiating, and re-defining territorial identities that move across categories of ethnicity, religion, citizenship, law, nationalism, gender, and indigeneity. How different human and nonhuman actants, from tourists, farmers, dealers, smugglers, makers, agricultural and medical materials, encounter to do the border work and in return be shaped by meanings and effects of borders and bordering of the world.

Tentative topics include:

Political, social, cultural, religious performance of borders
Transborder communities, regional identity and placemaking
Border governance and institutions
Identity politics, “United in Diversity” – internal bordering of societies
national and regional identity,

References

Cooper, A., Perkins, C. and Rumford, C. 2014. “The vernacularization of borders.” In Jones, R. and Johnson, C. editors. Placing the Border in Everyday Life. Border Regions Series. Ashgate: Burlington. Pp. 15-32.
Jones R. and Johnson, C. 2016. “Border militarization and the re-articulation of sovereignty.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 41(2): 187-200.
Jones, R. 2009.“Categories, borders, and boundaries.” Progress in Human Geography. 33(2): 174-189.
Schaffter, M., Fall, J. and Debarbieux, B. 2009. “Unbounded boundary studies and collapsed categories: rethinking spatial objects. Progress in Human Geography. 34(2): 254-262.

Changing purposes and practices of the library as border

Dr Rianne van Melik, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands r.vanmelik@fm.ru.nl

Libraries are not merely information infrastructures facilitating the exchange and formation of public opinion, but also social infrastructures providing access to social networks and capital (Aabø & Audunson, 2012). Therefore, Klinenberg (2018) defines them as ‘palaces for the people’, which have not become obsolete or irrelevant in the current digitalised society. Instead, they are often neglected, starved for resources and overburdened by visitors and activities. In response decreasing subsidies and membership, the library landscape is constantly changing. Providing access to books and information becomes seemingly less important, while the offer of ‘non-book-based services’ is growing including creative and movement-based activities like yoga and fitness. Consequently, a number of changing purposes and practices of the library can be observed. For example, large public libraries in the Netherlands become new urban ‘hotspots’, often part of multifunctional flagship projects. In contrast, smaller towns struggle with keeping their libraries open. Solutions are sought in turning libraries into social and care spaces. These examples show how libraries are literally opened up; from single-purpose, ‘closed’ systems characterised by books and silence to open spaces where social and physical boundaries are not ordinarily expected. This session examines libraries as inclusive spaces, characterised as borders rather than by boundaries (Sennett, 2017). However, the encounter between different users of library spaces can ignite both unexpected conversations and conflict.

We invite contributors to submit abstracts on relevant themes, including, but not limited to:

Boundaries of libraries; libraries as borders
Libraries as care and community spaces
Libraries as catalyst of urban regeneration
Libraries as liminal spaces
Changing librarianship and library practices
Libraries as sites of inclusion and exclusion

If you would like to participate, please send an abstract of between 200-250 words to dr. Rianne van Melik, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands (r.vanmelik@fm.ru.nl) by 31^st January 2020.

References

Aabø, S. & R. Audunson (2012), Use of library space and the library as space. Library and Information Science Research, 34(2), 138-149.

Klinenberg, E. (2018), Palaces for the People: How to Built a More Equal and United Society. London: The Bodley Head.

Sennett, R. (2017), The Public Realm. Chapter 32 in: Hall, S. & R. Burdett (Eds.), The Sage Handbook for the 21^st Century. London: Sage.

Legacies of austerity: What, who, and when does it leave behind?

Sander van Lanen, University of Groningen, s.van.lanen@rug.nl
Sarah Marie Hall, University of Manchester, sarah.m.hall@manchester.ac.uk

Over a decade has passed since the 2008 financial crisis, but the socio-spatial consequences of austerity still haunt contemporary spaces of everyday life. The narrative of austerity shifted from austerity as crisis ‘measure’ to governing ‘ideology’. What does this transformation mean for social, cultural and economic geographies? How does this shift affect austerity’s spatial outcomes, reception and resistance? Does austerity still hold as an explanatory factor or are we facing poverty by other means? In two sessions, we examine how austerity’s legacies settle in everyday life and shape everyday geographies.

In the first session, creative output made by, with, and for groups living with austerity explore its legacies. Accompanied by 5-minute talks, these forms of co-production explore how austerity has taken root in everyday lives and experiences.

During the second session, 15-minute conference papers address the legacies of austerity, including ‘austerity events’ and ‘austerity ideologies’. How did austerity reassemble everyday life and transform social relations? This session invites projects that assess austerity’s embedded legacies, now and into the future.

Together, these sessions explore how the legacies of austerity become embedded in the ‘new normal, and how the future is imagined in response to, or in spite of, these legacies.

“I’m a Geographer”: Stories of academic identity

Emma Waight, emma.waight@coventry.ac.uk

Becky Alexis-Martin, B.Alexis-Martin@mmu.ac.uk

Gail Skelly, g.skelly@mmu.ac.uk

We know that a plethora of cross-cutting identities exist within our discipline, and that these may present an opportunity to produce a more inclusive and representative Geography, but they also present tensions at the individual and collective levels.

Porous disciplinary borders facilitate intellectual mobilities across, within, through and beyond geography. This gains greater social and cultural significance when we consider who stays within geography, and who leaves. Geography welcomes doctoral students from diverse academic backgrounds, and simultaneously trains geographers who go on to reside in alternative academic fields. Whilst this can lead to the kind of inter/multi-disciplinarily working required to tackle complex global challenges, it may inevitably affect individual academic identities. In addition, sub-disciplinary branding is increasing within geography. As issue-related branding becomes more commonplace (nuclear geographer, climate change geographer), how is this creating fresh silos or hybridising our academic identities?

What does it mean to be a geographer? How do we relate to each other as geographers?

This session aims to explore individual experiences of negotiating geography’s internal and external borders as an academic through autoethnographic accounts. In doing so we particularly aim to illuminate the stories of hidden, dispersed or unruly geographers within the neoliberal academy.

SCGRG call for sessions: RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London 2017

The RGS-IBG Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) would like to invite expressions of interest for sponsored sessions for the RGS-IBG 2017 Annual Conference, which will take place in London, between Tuesday 29th Aug – Friday 1st Sept 2017.

The theme for the 2017 Annual Conference, chaired by Professor Sarah Radcliffe, is Decolonizing geographical knowledges: opening geography out to the world.

SCGRG is keen to sponsor sessions that directly relate to the conference theme but also those sessions that engage with broader issues of contemporary concern to social and cultural geographers.

You can find out more about the theme at: http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Conference+theme.htm

When designing your session proposals please take note of the following:

A session cannot occupy more than two timeslots on the conference programme unless this has been pre-arranged with the RGS team. Those seeking more than one timeslot should consider co-sponsorship (i.e. splitting sponsorship so as to have a sponsor for each slot).
Each attendee can only make two substantive contributions to the conference programme (eg. as paper presenter, panel member, discussant). A substantive contribution is defined as one where the individual concerned needs to be present in the session room, and so can include session organiser if attendance is necessary. For individuals proposing multiple co-authored papers, an alternative presenter must be clearly nominated at the time of submitting the session/paper.

SCGRG is able to sponsor 12 timeslots and you are welcome to propose joint sessions to be co-sponsored by another research group.

Please send expressions of interest including the below information by Wednesday 14^th December at 6pm. We will inform applicants of the outcome by 22^nd December.

(i) Title of session;

(ii) Name of Co-sponsoring groups, if applicable

(iii) Name and Contact Details for Session Convenors

(iv) Abstract, outlining scope of session – 200 words max.

(v) Number of session timeslots that are sought – please note: this year a session may not occupy more than 2 time slots unless this has been pre-agreed with the RGS.

(vi) Indication of session format

Proposals for, or questions about, SCGRG sponsored sessions should be sent to Dr Laura Prazeres: Laura.Prazeres@st-andrews.ac.uk

CfP: Finalised list of SCGRG sponsored sessions for the RGS 2016

Here is the finalised list of SCGRG sponsored sessions and abstracts for the RGS International Conference 30th August- 2nd September 2016.

Please contact the session organisers on each abstract for more information.

1) Sacred stuff: Material Culture and the Geography of Religion

Organisers: Ruth Slatter (UCL), Nazneen Ahmed (UCL) and Claire Dwyer (UCL)

Abstract

This session seeks discussion around the role of material culture in studying geographies of religion, faith and spirituality. Social and cultural geographers have offered critical insight into the use of material cultures, such as the processes of making and repairing material things, as a way of understanding geographical processes, networks and knowledges (Cook & Harrison, 2007; Gregson et al, 2007; Ogborne, 2007). In geographies of religion a material approach has been creatively developed to discuss buildings (Connelly, 2015 and Edensor, 2011) but also to understand the role of objects and places in shaping spiritual engagements (Holloway, 2003; Della Dora 2011; Hill 2007).

This session seeks to extend the critical insights of this work to understand how the material things made, used and appropriated in religious communities (and beyond them) can provide insights into everyday practices, congregational translations of religious practices and experiences of the spiritual, social and cultural aspects of religious communities. Drawing on concepts of materiality developed within anthropology and design history (Miller, 2010; Ingold, 2012; Lees-Maffei et al, 2010), we are interested in exploring in this session how material things offer alternative narratives about religious communities and what religion means to its adherents; how material objects are designed, created, appropriated or travel; what affects the decay, damage and necessary repair and maintenance of religious things have on religious engagements and experiences; what role material things play, and have played, in both the contemporary geographies and past histories of religious institutions and spaces.

2) Encountering Austerity

Co-sponsoring organization: The Economic Geography Research Group

Name of conveners:

Ruth Raynor R.I.Raynor2@durham.ac.uk; Esther Hitchen E.J.U.Hitchen@durham.ac.uk

Abstract

We seek to explore the multiple and networked relations of austerity (however conceptualized) by considering how austerity is encountered in everyday life. What are the specific relations between austerity and partly connected social-spatial formations and processes for example neoliberalism, family and friendships, banking and debt, housing, organisations of paid and unpaid work? How is the spatiality of the everyday made and remade in relation to austerity, in parks, staff rooms, homes, a twitter feed, through an atmosphere or mood and so on? And how might we engage with how austerity is felt or (or not) as a series of encounters across multiple spaces? How does austerity effect (interrupt, suspend, intensify or disassemble) existing infrastructures, ideologies and processes that meet and fold into everyday life? When do the effects of austerity fail to register as austerity in or beyond their scene or moment of encounter and why? By paying attention to austerity’s entanglement with other processes and formations we seek to better understand it’s multiplicity, it’s incoherence, it’s moments of consolidation, it’s temporal, rhythmic and affective life. Relatedly, we seek to consider how anti-austerity activism works or attempts to work as a strategy of consolidation to produce shared encounters with austerity. If austerity is entangled in other formations and processes, how to practice critique in relation to it? How to research and/ or represent austerity even as it is lived as a series of fragmented and fragmenting forces. Conversely, when and/or how is austerity related to in everyday life as a shared event, as a political ideology, and/or as a centrally implemented fiscal strategy, as it produces sites and scenes, for example food-banks, abandoned development projects, or queues outside of financial institutions?

Organisation of session: Two sessions will enable us to cover the two-related foci. In the first session we will call for work that differently engages with how the cuts and reforms of austerity are encountered amidst other flows and networks that constitute everyday life. In the second session we will think more about how this informs, challenges and folds into an anti-austerity politics, including research, creative practice and other forms of activism. In each session we will take four twenty- minute presentations with time for questions and we will welcome non-traditional presentation formats but do not require any technical support for this.

3) Cultural Geologies: Working with stone in the geological turn

Dr Rose Ferraby: rf281@exeter.ac.uk

Dr David Paton: dap207@exeter.ac.uk

Abstract

This session will explore the newly emerging field of cultural geology (Ferraby 2015; Paton 2015; Romanillos 2015). Growing from studies of the material, temporal and cultural worlds of stone, the cultural geological perspective offers new ways of thinking about our relationship with the land. Consideration of geological and human processes, can establish more nuanced understandings of the characteristics and foibles of different stone. Different modes of working stone can reveal complex narratives that weave together geological temporalites and strata with human histories. Telling the stories of stone reveals the nature of our connections with the land, and with each other. The broad temporal view, from millions of years to personal encounters, provides a way of thinking about our relationships with materials and the land that gives greater perspective on issues of change in the future. Cultural geology offers a grounded, material and practical perspective on the geological turn, offering an alternative to the sometimes over-theorised realms of the ‘anthropocene’.

This session encourages creative, multi-disciplinary approaches to cultural geology. It will encourage the involvement of those working between disciplines to contribute to the discussion practical modes working with stone.

Session Organisation:

Two sessions, plus a lunchtime slot for stoneworking (if a space can be negotiated with the RGS)

Sessions will be 4x20min presentations plus 20mins discussion.

The lunchtime slot will be a stoneworking demonstration

Session Arrangements:

Audio-visual set up will be needed for presentations that involve sound, video etc.

Space for stone working will need to be sought at the RGS.

4) Provocations and Possibilities of ‘Nexus Thinking’: Postgraduate Snapshots

Name of Co-sponsoring groups:

Postgraduate forum

Katie Ledingham, University of Exeter, KAL210@exeter.ac.uk

Phil Emmerson, University of Birmingham, PXE991@bham.ac.uk

Abstract

The aim of this session is to explore the different ways in which postgraduate researchers in Social and Cultural Geography are engaging with and attending to the manifold provocations posed by the concept of Nexus Thinking. ‘Nexus thinking’ is taken here to refer to the varying ways in which human geographers are working to consider the entanglements and interconnectivities between environmental and social domains.

We are encouraging postgraduates to present a brief ‘snapshot’ of their work (whether a photograph, a quotation, a field diary entry, an image of an object, or mini-video clip) as a focus for 5-10 minute contributions that explore the ways in which their theoretical and/or methodological interventions expand or restrict the propensity for and the possibilities of nexus thought.

It is envisaged that the snapshot will be the main artefact around which each contribution is orientated. We encourage participants to fully utilise their snapshots in ways which further deepen and enrich the developing trajectories, tensions, and textures associated with the mobilisation of the Nexus Thinking.

1 timeslot

7 X 5-10 minute presentations followed by a discussant and ‘round table’ group discussion

5) Geographies of Outer Space

Co-sponsoring groups -Historical Geography Research Group

Social and Cultural Geography Research Group

Oliver Dunnett (Queen’s University Belfast): o.dunnett@qub.ac.uk

Andrew Maclaren (University of Aberdeen): andrew.maclaren@abdn.ac.uk

Abstract

This session aims to explore current and future potential for research into the geographies of outer space. There has been a small but burgeoning field of geographical enquiry into outer space (Cosgrove, 1994; MacDonald, 2007; Lane, 2011; Dunnett, 2012; Sage, 2014). Here, researchers have investigated the ways in which outer space has provided a focus for a variety of geographical modes of imagination, including whole-earth environmentalism, nationalist / imperialist visions, spaces of scientific and technological rivalry, and domestic cultures of night-sky observation. If geographers are to continue to push for nexus thinking in arts and science collaborations, then outer space presents one possible focus for this to happen.

We welcome papers that seek to engage with, build upon and challenge current thinking in the ‘geographies of outer space’. These are not limited to, but could include, engagements with the materialities and histories of spaceflight in specific national contexts, representations of outer space within (popular) cultural imaginations, considerations of how outer space relates to art and landscape, or reflections on counter-cultural engagements with outer space.

6) Urban Public Arts and Collaborative Production: Revisiting the Role of Universities in the Triple Helix¹

Dr Martin Zebracki, University of Leeds; Dr Saskia Warren, University of Manchester; and Professor Calvin Taylor, University of Leeds.

This panel invites scholars across disciplines as well as practitioners to critically discuss the role of universities in arts-based socially-engaged practices. Where consultancy in the public arts was once considered in tension with academic labour, Triple Helix¹ that is the nexus between research, industry, and policy is positioned at the lucrative cutting-edge of the academy vis-à-vis the urban knowledge economy and creative industries.

Our focus is on the critical role that universities play within Triple Helix alliances to design and execute arts for public spaces inclusive of sculpture, performance, (new) media, heritage, etc. The impact agenda and the stipulations of national and international research council funding agencies have moved away from a culture of patronage. They have substantially formalised the contributions the academy makes, or should make, to wider societies as a core function of academic labour (Pain et al. 2011). As resonated by participatory geographies (e.g.Macpherson et al. 2014), this raises critical questions about the nature and ethics of co-working and the (potential) impacts among the multiple actors involved in public arts projects as part of a broader legitimising narrative for the purpose of universities.

We invite critical accounts on how universities may speak to the very diverse micro publics that are understood from, firstly, an intersectionality framework (e.g. Gutierreza & Hopkins 2015) that includes holistic considerations of gender, age, ethnicity, class, religion, ability/disability, and so forth, and, secondly, a collaborative research-industry-policy context.

Number of session timeslots sought: 1

Indication of preferred organisation of session: 5 x 15min presentation, with 5min question for each (including policymakers and artists)

7) Nexus-Thinking the Network: Social Network Analysis, Digital Data, and Complexity in Cultural and Media Production Networks

Michael Hoyler, Department of Geography, Loughborough University, UK M.Hoyler@lboro.ac.uk

Allan Watson, Geography and the Environment, Staffordshire University, a.watson@staffs.ac.uk

Session abstract:

While there has been a great deal of attention paid within Geography to the localised spatial clustering of the cultural and media industries in particular ‘hot-spots’, our understanding of the social and economic complexities of cultural and media production networks, and the subsequent spatial manifestations of these networks, remains poorly developed. Furthermore, our ability to understand the scope and scale of these production networks has remained limited by a lack of extensive, quantitative analyses. The aim of this session is to ‘nexus-think’ the complex social and economic interdependencies within networks, so as to better inform methodologies and digital data collection strategies for extensive network analyses. The topics addressed within this session will include, but are not limited to, the following:

Theoretical or empirical papers concerned with the complexities of networks of cultural and media production, especially those considering the interdependencies of cultural, social and economic ties.
The application of Social Network Analysis methodologies, or other quantitative network analysis strategies, to the study of networks of cultural and media production, across a variety of spatial scales.
Innovative visualisation strategies for complex social, cultural and economic networks.
Challenges and opportunities for digital data collection for network analysis, especially data from social networks and ‘big-data’.

Number of session timeslots sought: 2

Session organisation:

Session 1: 4 x 20 min presentations, plus 20 min discussion

Session 2: 3 X 20 min presentations, plus 40 min panel discussion

8) Geographies of human trafficking and smuggling: navigating the traffic of migration, mobility and justice studies

For the consideration of: Population Geography Research Group; Social and Cultural Geography Research Group; Geographies of Justice Research Group

Matej Blazek (Loughborough University; m.blazek@lboro.ac.uk), James Esson (Loughborough University; j.esson@lboro.ac.uk), Darren Smith (Loughborough University; d.p.smith@lboro.ac.uk)

Session abstract:

Human trafficking and smuggling are ubiquitous features of contemporary society, and concerns over these forms of irregular migration are now deeply embedded within the daily discourses of global news media and international politics. These concerns are reflected in academic debates over how migration and mobilities are understood, conceptualised, and theorised. Accounts from population and development studies have shed light on, and complicated the narratives typically associated with, human trafficking and smuggling (Anderson and Ruhs, 2010; Koser, 2010; Delgado Wise et al. 2013). Social and cultural geographers have explored conceptions of social justice in relation to irregular migration by examining themes such as advocacy and activism (Laurie et al. 2015), and geographical imaginations and politics of representation (Yea, 2015). Studies on agency, embodied experiences and individual mobilities are positioned at the intersection of these two discussions (Goldeberg et al. 2014), while important methodological developments around issues such as access, ethics and empowerment also speak to wider fields (Tyldum and Brunovskis 2015). These vibrant and diverse debates have undoubtedly advanced academic knowledge about irregular migration, yet there is scope to extend our understanding further by bridging these silo disciplinary contexts.

This session aims to bring together different viewpoints on the geographies of human trafficking and smuggling. Through so doing, we aim to explore the breadth of intersections between social, cultural, economic and political impacts of human trafficking and smuggling. We invite contributions seeking to advance geographical perspectives on irregular migration; identify new conceptual areas within and across disciplinary fields; and or critically examine research methodologies. Suggestions of alternative presentation formats are welcomed.

Session format:

2 timeslots; 5×15-minute presentations + 5 minutes each for discussion

9) Scholar activism and the Fashion Revolution: ‘who made my clothes?’

Proposed co-sponsors: Social and Cultural Geography Research Group, Economic Geography Research Group.

Convenors: Ian Cook (Exeter Geography i.j.cook@exeter.ac.uk), Louise Crewe (Nottingham Geography louise.crewe@nottingham.ac.uk) and Alex Hughes (Newcastle Geography alex.hughes@newcastle.ac.uk)

Abstract

The collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex on April 23rd 2013, which crushed to death over 1,000 people making clothes for Western brands, was a final straw, a call to arms, for significant change in the fashion industry. Since then, tens of thousands of people have taken to social media, to the streets, to their schools and halls of government to uncover the lives hidden in the clothes we wear. Businesses, consumers, governments, academics, NGOS and others working towards a safer, cleaner and more just future for the fashion industry have been galvanised.

Originated by ethical fashion pioneers, and drawing in designers, academics, writers, business leaders, policymakers, NGOs, brands, retailers, marketers, producers, makers, workers, consumers and activists, the Fashion Revolution movement that catalysed this change has nexus thinking at its heart.

After two years marking 23rd April as Fashion Revolution Day, its #whomademyclothes? question for brands and retailers has had an extraordinary social media impact (64 million people used this hashtag on Twitter and Instagram in April 2015, and Fashion Revolution’s online content was seen 16.5 billion times). The Fashion Revolution movement has become truly global, with co-ordinators in over 80 countries. This popular support has given it considerable power in campaigning for change with governments, brands and retailers.

Our aim for this session is to bring Fashion academics within and beyond geography into critical dialogue with the Fashion Revolution movement, to share insights from their research and to inform the Fashion Revolution’s work over the next five years. In Fashion Revolution’s white paper (Ditty 2015, 25), 5 areas for further research and thought have been outlined, to which we have added suggested paper themes.

Consumer research & demand (what do consumers understand about the fashion industry? What expectations do they have about its products and information? How can demands for more ethical and sustainable fashion be catalysed?)

The fast fashion model: history, cycles, consequences.
Materialities, narratives & values in fashion consumption.
Recycling, upcycling, swishing, making & mending
Customising, hiring, vintage & charity shopping.
Investment shopping practices and the lifetimes of garments
Geographical associations and dissociations: origins, provenance and place.
Ethical shopping data, smartphone apps and consumption.

Policy and legislation (how, where and with whose support can change be mobilised by politicians, business people, national governments, intergovernmental organisations, supranational institutions, and related bodies? How can citizens influence policy-making and legislation?)

International human rights and health and safety legislation: beyond toxic supply chains.
National legislation on minimum wage and workers rights.
Animal rights, Rules of Origin labelling, the trade in animals, bio-commodification
Fashion labelling, consumer information and choice.
Consumer petitioning, letter writing and political debate.
Global fashion and climate change after Paris 2015.

Theorising fashion value (what examples of best practice can be gathered, studied and promoted? What can already existing examples of transparency show about what constitutes a ‘good’ fashion company?)

Animal life and bio-commodification.
Fast fashion, slow fashion, luxury
Pre- and post-consumer waste, hidden water in clothing manufacture.
From value chain to harm chain approaches.
Challenges to ‘triple bottom line’ transparency.
Ethical auditing cultures, scope and power.
‘Good fashion’ business models in theory & practice.

Engaging farmers, producers, workers and makers (how can the lives and work of the least visible people in fashion supply chains be highlighted, celebrated and listened to? How can we better connect the people who make and buy fashion?)

‘I made your clothes’: garment workers’ engagements in Fashion Revolution, NGO campaigning, unionisation, democratic politics and consumer-facing communication.
Researching fashion: access, ethics, voice, collaboration & audiences.
Complicating the producer-consumer divide.
Supporting lost artisanal and craft skills and traditions.

Amplifying and supporting NGO work (how is the human rights and sustainability work of NGOs and labour unions such as the Clean Clothes Campaign, Labour Behind the Label, Greenpeace, Bangladesh Accord and IndustriALL coordinated? How can Fashion Revolution amplify public awareness and demand for these organisations’ work?)

Strategies, tactics, financing & cultures of fashion campaigning.
Activism within and beyond the fashion industry.
Tactics for engaging wider publics in fashion ethics debates.
Amplifying public awareness and demands for ethical fashion.
Coordinated NGO action and socio-cultural-economic change.

10 & 11) Re-imagining tree health and plant biosecurity: a more-than-human approach: 2 sessions

Dr Hilary Geoghegan, University of Reading: h.geoghegan@reading.ac.uk

Dr Mariella Marzano, Forest Research: Mariella.Marzano@forestry.gsi.gov.uk

Dr Clive Potter, Imperial College London: c.potter@imperial.ac.uk

Dr Julie Urquhart, Imperial College London: j.urquhart@imperial.ac.uk

Abstract:

Trees and forests remain a source of interest for social and cultural geographers. The growing incidence of new tree pest and disease outbreaks has the potential to radically reshape woodlands and forests as well as interactions between citizens, government, industry, NGOs, and researchers. An interdisciplinary response incorporating social and cultural approaches is required to understand the complex inter-relationships between humans and non-humans. Recent thinking around concepts of the nexus and borderlands offer important launch points for re-imagining biosecure futures, yet their value remains largely unknown to funders, policymakers, and natural scientists. This session is an important shift from ‘business as usual’, reinvigorating the traditional economic, political and scientific landscape that surrounds tree health and plant biosecurity. We seek presentations from academic and applied researchers that adopt social and cultural geography approaches to address research questions surrounding tree and plant health, such as:

Specific tree and plant health issues, pests and diseases
Planty and more-than-human perspectives
Affective, emotional and embodied accounts of living with trees
Impacts of tree pests and diseases on social and cultural values
Challenges of regulative and economic frameworks and associated governance
Implications and learnings for researcher-policy interaction, risk communication, citizen science

Session Format:

Number of session timeslots sought: possibly 2 (1: offering presentations on research informed by social and cultural geography approaches; 2: 4 invited papers from members of various academic, artistic, policy and practice settings. Including Defra Tree Health Evidence Team who have commissioned AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC and NERC funded research in the area of tree health)
Preferred organization of session: 5 x 15 min presentation, followed by 4 x 20 min presentations, plus 20 min discussion

12) Geographies of faith, volunteering and the lifecourse

Session organisers: Tim Fewtrell (Loughborough University) and Sarah Mills (Loughborough University)

Session Sponsorship: TBC

Abstract

Over the last decade, there has been a growing interest in the relationship between faith and voluntary action across the social sciences (e.g. Lukka and Locke 2000; NCVO 2007; Smith and Denton 2005). Indeed, diverse faith-based motivations have shaped both small scale, highly localised provision and contributed to major international relief and development work (Montagne-Villette 2011; Milligan, 2007). As these debates on the relationship between religious identities, volunteering and faith-based organisations expand, there remains a need to be attentive to the dynamics of age and the lifecourse. Indeed, this has been demonstrated in recent studies on the experiences of young religious volunteers (Baillie Smith et al., 2013; Hopkins et al., 2015) and more broadly in work on older volunteers, for example within deprived communities (Hardill and Baines, 2009).

This session seeks to further explore the diverse relationships and interactions between religion, spirituality and volunteering, with a particular emphasis on age and the lifecourse. Furthermore, the session seeks to ask critical questions surrounding other ‘moral economies’ of volunteering (Wolch 2006: xiv) in order to consider the diverse motivations and practices of volunteering projects and individual volunteers. Consequently, papers may focus on a variety of different contexts, scales and religious affiliations, or themes surrounding the ‘post-secular’ landscape of voluntarism (Cloke and Beaument, 2013).

We would particularly like to welcome papers that examine the following themes:

Youth transitions, faith and identity
Intergenerational geographies of faith-based volunteering
Faith-based social action in austere times
The ‘post-secular’ and moral landscapes of charity provision
The wider ‘moral economies’ of volunteering
International volunteering, faith and global citizenship
Faith-based voluntary projects and/or community work
The emotional geographies of volunteering

13) Geographies of loss, grief and carrying on: the nexus of death, diversity and resilience

Co-sponsoring groups-GFGRG (tbc)

Avril Maddrell (UWE), Katie McClymont (UWE), Charlotte Kenten (KCL), Olivia Stephenson (UCL)

Contact: avril.maddrell@uwe.ac.uk

Geographies of loss, grief and carrying on: the nexus of death, diversity and resilience

Abstract

Building on a growing body of work on geographies of death, dying and remembrance (see Evans 2014; Stephenson et al 2016, Social and Cultural Geography), these sessions will explore the spatial dimensions of social, cultural, material and immaterial complexities of the nexus of human and non-human life-death, absence-presence, grieving-consolation.

Papers are invited from Geography, Planning and related subjects which are attentive to difference and diversity (Global South/ North, gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality) and address critically-engaged, theoretical, empirical and methodological issues, including:

The physical, emotional and spiritual spaces and practices of living-dying, including life-shortening illnesses, suicide, remembrance and consolation
Discursive and material spaces and boundaries of grievability, including non-human loss
Intersections of time-space in practices and performances of loss and resilience
Inclusive and exclusive deathscapes and practices
Policy and planning needs and responses in diverse and multicultural societies
Research methodologies, ethics and researcher care and resilience

2 time slots

14) ‘On edge’ in the city: precarious urban lives

Proposed session, Convened by Ola Söderström and Zoé Codeluppi (both University of Neuchâtel), Hester Parr and Chris Philo (both University of Glasgow)

Abstract

Recent work on mobility, care, mental health and homelessness has promoted a performative, practice-oriented understanding of the urban everyday for psychologically vulnerable persons in precarious life situations. This perspective addresses, on the one hand, the logics and effects of policies aiming to govern these urban lives and, on the other, the situated urban practices of persons with serious health or affective problems, but suggests a focus beyond a simple binary of structural control and agentic resistance. This does not mean that issues of domination and exclusion or processes of categorisation and subjectification, central to previous work, have been discarded, but rather that inquiry has been opened up to new dimensions. The role of atmospheres (Adey et al. 2013) or assemblages of care (Lancione 2014, Duff 2014), alongside renewed conceptions of dwelling or ‘niching’ (Bister et al. 2016), have come to the fore, often through the use of innovative non-representational methodologies. Furthermore, the ambivalence, contradictions and diversity of state policies regarding marginalised social groups – questioning accounts of a monolithic punitive or disciplining State – have also been highlighted (DeVerteuil 2012).

Concerned with these recent developments in studies of precarious urban lives, our session aims to identify convergences and divergences between conceptual framings, fieldwork methodologies and empirical findings across recent studies of different marginalised urban social groups.

We welcome submissions on any aspect of this broad area, but would particularly encourage papers on:

Urban ethnographies of mental health, homelessness, disability and movement
Being on edge in urban places
Lived experience of psychosis and delusion in urban places
Cities as locations for governing fractured lives
Urban mobilities as precarious mobilities
The role of care (landscapes, networks, atmospheres) in precarious lives
Urban geographies of stress and disruption
Strategies and spaces of recovery from precarity
Urban state policies (including international comparisons) and precarity
Urban design and precarious living
NGOs and mediating precarious lives

CfPs: Encountering Austerity sponsored session by SCGRG and Economic Geography Research Group

Please see the info below about a SCGRG and Economic Geography Research Group (EGRG) sponsored session for the forthcoming RGS conference.

‘Encountering Austerity’

Call for Papers – RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London, 30 August – 2 September 2016

Sponsors: Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG); Economic Geography Research Group (EGRG)

Ruth Raynor (Durham University) Esther Hitchen (Durham University)

This panel seeks to explore the multiple and networked relations of austerity (however conceptualized) by considering how austerity is encountered in everyday life. What are the specific relations between austerity and partly connected social-spatial formations and processes for example family and friendships, banking and debt, housing, organisations of paid and unpaid work? How is the spatiality of the everyday made and remade in relation to austerity, in parks, staff rooms, homes, a twitter feed, through an atmosphere or mood and so on? And how might we engage with how austerity is felt or (or not) as a series of encounters across multiple spaces? How does austerity effect (interrupt, suspend, intensify or disassemble) existing infrastructures, ideologies and processes that meet and fold into everyday life? When do the effects of austerity fail to register as austerity in or beyond their scene or moment of encounter and why? By paying attention to austerity’s entanglement with other processes and formations in the everyday, this session will explore its multiplicity, its incoherence, its moments of consolidation, its temporal, rhythmic and affective life.

Relatedly, we seek papers that consider how anti-austerity activism works or attempts to work as a strategy of consolidation to produce shared encounters with austerity. If austerity is entangled in other formations and processes, how to practice critique in relation to it? How to research and/ or represent austerity even as it is lived as a series of fragmented and fragmenting forces, as it constitutes and sometimes hides the unravelling of existing sites or scenes, becoming, for example, an empty staff room, a pre-emptive strategy that wasn’t enacted, or a form of continuation amidst privatisation? Conversely, when and/or how is austerity related to in everyday life as a shared event, as a political ideology, and/or as a centrally implemented fiscal strategy? What happens when it produces sites and scenes, for example food-banks, abandoned development projects, or queues outside of financial institutions?

In the first session we will call for work that engages with how the cuts and reforms of austerity are encountered amidst other flows and networks that constitute everyday life. In the second session we will think more about how this informs, challenges and folds into an anti-austerity politics, including research, creative practice and other forms of activism. In each session we will take four twenty- minute presentations with time for questions. We will welcome conventional papers and non-traditional exploratory presentation formats from academics and artists including performative writings, presentations, demonstrations of artistic work. Possible themes could address but are by no means limited to:

– Austerity as atmospheric affective, and/or emotive,
– Everyday geographies of the austere state,
– Public cultures of austerity,
– The sexual politics of austerity,
– Paid and unpaid labour amidst austerity,
– Family life, friendships, and the home in austere times,
– Intersectionality and austerity,
– Public services and other spaces of welfare provision,
– Researching austerity as a series of encounters including forms of disassembly and/or transformation,
– Cyber and other everyday forms activism,
– Creative encounters with austerity including narrative, film, photography, street performance.

Please e-mail abstracts (250 words max) with full details to Ruth Raynor R.I.Raynor2@durham.ac.uk and Esther Hitchen E.J.U.Hitchen@durham.ac.uk before the 10th February.