Call for papers: 99th Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting,
New Orleans. March 6th-8th 2003

Session: "Knowledge in Place: Re-imagining the agency of place within
methodological praxis"

Organisers: Jon Anderson ([log in to unmask])
                Paul Bevan   ([log in to unmask])
                Peter Adey   ([log in to unmask])

IGES, Llandinam Building, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Aberystwyth, UK,
SY23 3DB Tel: +44 1970 622632 Fax: +44 1970 622659

Geographers have always been concerned with the importance of the concepts
of space and place, increasingly acknowledging that identity, experience and
place are interrelated, perhaps even co-constitutive. In terms of the
accessing and constructing geographical knowledge, it is only ethnography
that has explicitly engaged with the role of place. This session seeks to
explore the neglected agency of space and place within the wider practice of
qualitative methodologies (interviews, focus groups, conversations).

Place can be configured not simply as physical place (as landscape, built
environment, street), but also as cyberspace (virtual realities, chat rooms
and multi-user spaces), and in a postmodern sense as non-place (service
stations, shopping malls and air terminals). Papers will need to engage with
the role that space and place play within everyday experience in relation to
methodological practice.  This will require a focus on the role of place in
knowledge formation, the relation between practical methodologies and place,
and how this knowledge can be (re)interpreted and (re)presented. The aim of
the session is to explore ways in which re-emphasising the agency of place
can lead to new understandings of the access, construction and archaeology
of knowledge.


Papers will fit into one or more of the following sections:

I The role of place in knowledge formation
        -       How is place co-constitutive of identity, experience and knowledge?
        -       How do landscapes/cyberspaces/non-places influence the construction of
self, experience and memory?
        -       In what ways are knowledges embedded within places?

II Place and methodological practice
        -       How can memories and experiences be accessed through places?
        -       What alternatives are there to the physical re-placement at specific
sites (e.g. virtual tours, photos, recollection)
        -       What fertile relations can be drawn between pathways in memory and
pathways in place?
        -       What role does mobility and sensory interaction play in the formation and
recollection of knowledge?
        -       What methodological techniques and strategies are beneficial to this end?

III (re)Interpreting the role of place and knowledge

        -       How do current interpretive strategies ignore the role of place?
        -       In what ways can more sympathetic methods re-place knowledge?
        -       How do the interconnections between place and knowledge impact upon the
wider relevance of knowledges out of place?

IV (re)Presenting place in knowledge out of place.
        -       What means can be used to represent how knowledge is placed?
        -       How do media technologies aid such strategies?


Those interested in giving a paper at the session should send a title and
abstract of up to 250 words to one of the session organizers listed above.