AAG 2005 Call for papers: The social accommodation of nonhuman difference
Geographers of ‘nature’ have, in recent times, underscored the immediate
physical intimacy of humans and others in the collective emergence of life.
For a variety of political, epistemological or ontological reasons, they
have drawn attention to the vital presence of nonhumans within practices
previously understood as exclusively social. Analyses have considered arenas
as diverse as the domestic sphere, science, leisure and urban life, to name
but a few. Yet within these ‘posthumanist’ manoeuvres, there has been little
explicit discussion of the consistent particularities of the ways that
nonhuman agency is manifest and consequently accommodated. The human and the
nonhuman may be more similar than was previously acknowledged. Yet they can
also be very different.
Indeed, agency appears to be performed along a number of different axes: for
example other life can appear bigger, smaller, faster, slower,
differentially coloured, spatially diffuse, and more or less thoughtful than
the humble person. Animals can be bigger or smaller than we are. Plants can
be more colourful. Rivers can be stronger than us. Individual examples can
also be very different when compared to each other.
This session seeks to consider how different nonhuman capacities are
accommodated within the many spaces of our shared practice. How do we relate
to and deal with the many particularities and complexities of this alterity?
Is this with wonder, disgust, or even indifference? Along what new axes of
difference could we map our respective propensities, dissect our ways of
accommodating difference and produce richer understandings of nonhuman
agency? Current geographies of ‘life’ (after Spencer and Whatmore, 2001)
tend to consider bounded nonhuman units, but what of the more porous flow of
biophysical process? Could a framework of difference help us write more
telling narratives of our evolving lives together? What are the ethical and
methodological implications of this manoeuvre?
Contributions could address, but are not limited to:
 Forging alternative axes of nonhuman difference in empirical practice to
provide richer disaggregations of nonhuman agency. This might include such
affordances as speed, colour, movement, size, location, or intentionality.
 Examples of the management and organisation of different nonhuman
capacities and the implications and impacts of nonhuman difference/sameness
on policy processes. E.g. wildlife management, healthcare, urban green policy.
 The affective, emotional registers of nonhuman difference within our many
practices of, for example, work, research or leisure. How and why do we
assign nonhumans to certain categories within our shared spaces of living?
 The social experience of nonhuman agencies within geographical research -
including traditional fieldwork and physical geography practices. How do we
grapple with nonhuman complexities? Here we are especially keen to encourage
accounts from environmental/physical geographers on their own experiences of
nonhuman difference.
 Recovering sameness/difference within method: the ethical and
methodological problems of accommodating nonhuman difference.
Expressions of interest should be made as soon as possible to Russell
Hitchings, ([log in to unmask]) and/or Jamie Lorimer,
([log in to unmask]). Final abstracts of no more than 250 words
will be required by the session organisers by 7th October.
The AAG abstract specifications can be found at the following address:
http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/Denver2005/abstract.cfm
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