RGS CFP (8) Beyond Home and Family: Alternative Spaces of Ethno-Consumption

With commodities and consumption firmly embedded in geographic research and debates (Bridge and Smith, 2003; Goss, 2006; Mansvelt, 2008), the important roles that material culture and consumption play in locating and embedding migrant identities are now increasingly recognised. Homespaces, as sites of consumption and performances of ethnicity, have been especially closely investigated (Petridou, 2001, Tolia-Kelly, 2004; Walsh, 2006; Miller, 2008).

With so much research focusing on ‘home’ and ‘family’, however, the intense emotional connections between ethnicity, migration, consumption and material culture which take place beyond the immediate spaces of home and family need more attention. There are countless other arenas where this relationship can be studied: ‘ethnic’ retailing; the consumer behaviour of migrants and ethnic minorities; uses of space in specialist shops (Bonus, 2000); the social functions of specialist shops (Hamlett et al., 2008; Rabikowska and Burrell, 2009); the development of key migrant shopping areas (Roman- Velazquez, 1999; Li, 2005; Duruz, 2005); and shops and services as meeting points between minority and majority communities (Wang & Lo, 2007). Similar scrutiny can be applied to other experiences of ‘ethno-consumption’ (Ekstrom, 2004) such as beauty services, magazines, internet sites, dress and fashion, restaurants and cinemas (Puwar, 2007).

This session seeks to interrogate these ethno-consumer connections, looking beyond homespaces and family units to consider the emotional geographies at play in alternative, and often hidden, spaces of ethnicity and consumption.

SESSION ORGANISER DETAILS
Email address
kburrell@dmu.ac.uk

CFP RGS (7) Intersections of English- and German-Speaking Social and Cultural Geographies

Over the past decade, English-speaking social and cultural geography has developed sensitivity for geographical voices from other language areas. This includes specific sessions for international conversations at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference (Hudson and Williams 2004) and an ongoing series of country reports on geography’s state-of-the-art in the journal Social and Cultural Geography (Kitchin 2003). There are also commentaries on the English-language hegemony in geography and related asymmetries and challenges of international academic exchange (Samers and Sidaway 2000; Garcia-Ramon 2003; Berg 2004; Kitchin 2005; Paasi 2005; Aalbers and Rossi 2007), and individual reflections on the situation of non-native speakers in English-speaking social and cultural geography (Belina 2005; Helms et al 2005). Building on these exchanges, we aim to organise two paper sessions and a panel that focus specifically on the multiple relationships between English- and German-speaking social and cultural geographies. We are interested in historical interrogations of this relationship and in contemporary analyses exploring the intersections, divergences and convergences of theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches and topical foci. In close association with the conference theme Geography, Knowledge and Society, we hope to inspire innovative studies and vibrant discussions on the questions of how social and cultural geography is practiced in different language contexts and why certain concepts and topics are more successful or travel more easily than others, thus displaying a larger connectivity across geographical and linguistic boundaries. Email: H.Jons@lboro.ac.uk

CFP RGS (6) Geographies of the end of the world

This session will explore the science, culture and geography of the ways that worlds end. Predictions of the end of the world have (of course) been around a very long time. Yet time has not stilled popular, religious and cult interest in the idea of the end of life on earth. Thus, the website "Exit Mundi" lists 56 end-of-world scenarios, classifying them into those that can happen any day now, those possible in the near future, and those in the distant future. Meanwhile, disaster movies continue to explore the world's end -- by rapid climate change, meteor strikes, alien invasion, deadly viruses, social and economic collapse, terrorism, technological change (especially the rise of robots), the expansion or decline of the sun, nuclear war, infertility, vegetation's revenge and the like. Western society remains fascinated by the horror of doomsday, by the possibility of its own catastrophic downfall. However, the popular fascination with our own extinction paradoxically domesticates it, makes it seem unreal, unworthy of serious thought. In this session, we will nonetheless take the end of the world seriously – but by thinking through its specific geographies. In this way, we hope to illuminate the processes and politics of global disaster, rather than just laugh them off. Contact: stephan.harrison@exeter.ac.uk

CFP RGS (5) Geographies of the passenger

Research that has contributed to the new mobilities paradigm has helped to illuminate some of the various intersecting virtual, corporeal and incarcereal mobilities that constitute contemporary spaces of flows (Cresswell; Urry). However significantly less has been said about the particular experience of passengers who are caught up within these flows, networks and systems (although see Adey; Laurier; Bissell). Even less has been expressed about how the passenger and their experiences have been conceived, imagined, manipulated, regulated and engineered. And whilst some detail has been given to the various modalities of mobility the passenger may take, far less engagement has looked at how the experiences and imaginations of the passenger cut across multiple of modes of mobility in different historical, economic, political and geographical contexts (Shaw). In a world increasingly on the move, these issues seem particularly pertinent.

First, this session seeks to attend to the sociality of the passenger experience by considering the types of relationship that cohere, condense or evaporate between passengers and the various socialities and forms of belonging that emerge and disappear. It will consider the moral and ethical topographies and the rights and responsibilities that come with being a passenger.

Second, papers may consider the various processes and practices that allow individuals or groups to become passengers (and to exit these roles). Considering the multiple tensions between activity and passivity the session will probe the qualitative differences between ‘passengering’ and its apposite counter-forms (be it piloting, driving, steering, directing etc.). It will look at the rites of passage, routines, strategies and tactics associated with becoming a passenger and how they impact on the body.

Third, this session examines how some of the various objects, prostheses and affordances both help and hinder passengers’ experiences of travel (Lury). It will look at the complex tensions and juxtapositions that emerge between experiences of comfort and discomfort (Virilio). In so doing it seeks to get to grips with the affective and emotional topographies that are immanent to becoming a passenger. This might involve various experiences of uplift or anxiety (McCormack; Sheller), or the affective dimension of travelling spaces that are engineered to make passengers feel and respond in particular ways.

Fourth, papers may explore the cultural-politico-economy of the passenger and its imbrications into various political, economic and technological orderings (Dodge and Kitchin). It will consider the extent to which the passenger has been controlled through various institutions and governance regimes, or the role of passenger testimony and historical renderings.

Fifth, the session will address how passengers and their practices have been transformed through time and space. It will explore how shifting social, political, cultural and economic contexts have brought about substantial alterations in the passengers’ style, conduct, meaning, significance and embodied (tele)mediated experience.

This session aims to explore the figure of the passenger as both an empirical actuality and an existential problematic by inviting contributors from across a range of disciplines to consider the significance of the passenger in its myriad forms.


Titles and abstracts (200 words) should be emailed to David Bissell (d.j.bissell@brighton.ac.uk) and Peter Adey (p.adey@esci.keele.ac.uk) by Friday 23 January 2009. We would welcome initial expressions of interest and ideas.

CFP RGS (4) Follow the things

Twenty years ago, studies of the 'social lives of things' were thin on the ground. Material cultural geographies of commodities on their travels weren't being studied. So, those wanting to do this kind of research had little to be inspired by. And those wanting to use these studies in their teaching had little to work with. Now this work is everywhere: TV documentaries in which pop singers try to find the women whose hair they wore as extensions and which take lovers of cheap fashion to work in sweatshops; newspaper articles tracing the lives of tennis balls and tea bags; good shopping guides to ‘ethical furniture’; books exploring the genealogies of cod and coffee; artists exploring the geographies of bananas, milk and GPS devices; academics critically exploring the commodity chains of chocolate, diamonds, jeans and broccoli. All seem to have heeded David Harvey's (1990) call for work that defetishises commodities by revealing and questioning everyday exploitations, inequalities and value-contestations along commodity chains, and consumers' reliance on countless unseen others around the world to live the lives they live every day. However, there remain doubts about the efficacy of such work, as recent research into ethical trade campaigning has argued that attempts to forge empathetic connections between consumers and producers often fails to engage consumers in any meaningful action. The aim of this session is to bring together a range of academics, activists, artists and others pursuing this work, to address a number of its tensions and promises. These could include, for example:

- the more or less followed / more or less followable: beyond food and fashion;

- active materialities / heartful connections: beyond the information gap;

- making it 'fun': engaging audiences / the aesthetics of exploitation;

- exploring the ethics of the representation of ‘ethical goods’;

- veils of distance and transparency in the Internet-age;

- narrating commodity chains using the internet/citizen journalism/Web 2.0;

- relationships between disintermediation and defetishised commodities

- following methodologies: complex geographies <-> limited time & resources;

- practising theory / theorising practice in connective commodity research;

- film, art, journalism, activism, academia: inspirations and cross-over work;

- making commodity following public: traditional and organic approaches.



Please send enquiries, ideas and abstracts to Ian Cook (i.j.cook@ex.ac.uk), Dorothea Kleine (Dorothea.Kleine@rhul.ac.uk) and Mark Graham (mark.graham@tcd.ie) by 29 January 2009.

CFP RGS (3) Geographies of the seasons

Geographical research has yet to fully explore the changing ways in which societies relate to seasons. This is somewhat surprising when the seasons could easily be understood as shaping an important and contextually sensitive approach to the ways in which people live with the climate. Across the western world many lifestyles are becoming deseasonal as people spend more and more of their time indoors. Yet others contend that the effects of the seasons are increasingly important as higher summer temperatures make particular forms of mortality and morbidity more common. There are also concerns about winter with regard to how various groups cope with cold and how they could pass through this time more effectively. Various public promotions meanwhile encourage us to link our lives more fully to the seasons. Sustainability agendas sometimes promote seasonal living as a means of having more authentic forms of existence in terms of food consumption and other activities. Yet commercial interests with respect to clothing and lifestyles use this same strategy to sell products and services we might not otherwise need. There are clearly many reasons why we might be interested in seasons. This session will provide a new forum for geographers and others interested in seasonal experience to come together. This is a potentially important research topic and it could be usefully enriched by a number of conceptual and empirical approaches at this stage. The aim is to explore these issues and thereby initiate a new conversation about how a focus on seasons could feed into various policy and academic agendas.


Contact: r.hitchings@ucl.ac.uk

CFP RGS 2009 (2) Life going on and on

A range of recent geographical work has questioned the multiple spatio-temporalities and conceptions of embodiment which drive particular ways of knowing, being and acting on and in the world. Geographers have, for instance, continually questioned the spatialities of time, and vice-versa (Massey, 2005; Dodgshon, 2007). Recent work on pre-emption and hope has highlighted the affective registers at play in the potential futures open to intending subjects/societies (Anderson, 2006; 2007). Geographers of age have insisted upon more relational understandings of age, inter-generational relations and the lifecourse (Hopkins and Pain, 2007). Children’s geographers have deployed nonrepresentational theories to query the linearity of ‘growing up’, stressing that "embodiment-and this being-in-the-world-is always becoming: bodies are always in flux; always ongoing; never still"(Horton and Kraftl, 2006a, 2006b).

This session seeks to bring together critical debate about the diverse, multiple conceptions of spatio-temporality such as those above (and more besides). We seek empirical, methodological and conceptual papers that provide new insights into how bodies in/of the world go on. The session aims to question the multiple kinds of ongoingness done in and to the world. In particular, we seek papers that critically interrogate the relationships between hitherto separate theorisations of ongoingness (such as lifecourse, affect and time theories). We therefore invite papers which explore issues of space-time, embodiment and ageing in non-teleological terms through a range of theoretical and empirical engagements.

Papers might address (but are not restricted to) the following:
• age and embodiment
• how bodies ‘know’ ageing
• exploring the co-construction of age and embodied development with the development of spaces at larger scales (see Aitken, et al., 2007).
• the spatiotemporalities of memory, nostalgia, hope and fear as bodies grow up/go on
• alternatives to transitions
• questioning adulthood
• material/non-human accompaniments to ageing/going on

Contact: b.evans@mmu.ac.uk