Subject: (Fwd) RGS-IBG 2003 Conference
Call for papers:
Post-human/post-natural geographies
Session for the RGS-IBG conference to be held in London,
September 2003. Sponsored by the History and Philosophy of
Geography Research Group and the Social and Cultural
Geography Research Group of the RGS-IBG.
Technoscience is muddying the ontological waters and challenging
conventional categories, norms and codes. Artificial intelligence,
xenostransplantation, nanotechnology, recombinant engineering
are just some of the many current examples of transgressive
technologies. The boundary-crossings they enact – both now and
in the future – have wide-ranging material, explanatory, and moral
implications. For example, does a genetically engineered mouse
have the same rights as one of its ‘natural’ cousins? What form do
explanations take when one can’t readily talk of ‘social’ and
‘natural’ processes/causes? Though it may be tempting to discuss
our emergent ‘post-human’/’post-natural’ world in apocalyptic
terms, this does little to further understanding of its complexities,
ambivalences and potentials. This session aims to bring together
geographers working on such things as the culture of science,
animals and other non-humans, virtual technologies, genomics and
more. Theoretical and empirical papers are invited that eschew
plenary assessments of material hybridity and ontological impurity
in favour of more textured appraisals. More parochially, because
technoscience disturbs take-for-granted notions of what
geographers study, there’s a disciplinary question of what
geography beyond the human-nature divide might look like. For
critical geography specifically, there’s the vexed issue of the
grounds for critique once foundational categories like ‘human’ and
‘non-human’ can no longer anchor ethical judgements.
The session will comprise 2 modules and will be linked with an
author-meets-critics session relation to Professor Sarah
Whatmore's (2002) <italic>Hybrid geographies.</italic> Expressions of
interest to
Dr. Noel Castree in the first instance please
([log in to unmask]).
Dr Noel Castree
School of Geography
Manchester University
M13 9PL
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