Hi there and apologies for cross posting
The editors of Regional Studies would like the attention of list members
drawn to then following session at the AAG 2006 conference.
Please get in contact with Sarah Wray (details at end of message) for
further information. Regards Paul
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AAG2006 CALL FOR PAPERS
Whither regional studies?
Chicago, 7th-11th March 2006
http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/Chicago2006/call_4_papers.cfm
Organizers: The Regional Studies Editorial team (Mike Coombes, Andy
Gillespie, Amy Glasmeier, Richard Harris, Angela Hull, Neill Marshall,
Andy Pike, Stephen Roper, Colin Wren)
Contact: Andy Pike, Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies
(CURDS), University of Newcastle, UK, [log in to unmask]
Regional studies continue to occupy an integral position in geography.
'Regions' still provide the conceptual and analytical focus for many of
our often overlapping geographies - cultural, ecological, economic,
political, social - albeit now situated within the increasingly complex
context of multiple geographical scales at the international, national,
local and community levels. 'Regions' remain an arena in which synthesis
across disciplines can take place. Yet the ways in which we think about
'regions' and their change, 'development' and regulation has been
evolving. The emergent conceptual polyphony in regional studies has
introduced competing interpretations of 'regions' as unbounded,
'relational' spaces or more bounded territories, 'regions' as conscious
collectives of people and places acting as agents in their own right,
and 'regions' as administrative and institutional architectures embedded
in places. We are at an early stage in thinking through what such
conceptual and theoretical innovation means for regional studies.
Healthy recent debate has concerned the integrity and quality of
concepts and theory, methodological plurality and standards of analysis
and evidence and the relationships and relevance to the politics and
public policy of government and governance. Amidst such discussion, the
cultural, ecological, economic, political and social dimensions of
regional change for people and places remain for us to understand.
This session seeks contributions to take forward recent debates and
trace out the implications of how we think and practice regional studies
now and in the future. We encourage papers that reflect and develop the
recent deliberations about the nature and purpose of regional studies.
Specifically, we invite papers connecting with the following themes:
- How can we conceptualise and theorise 'regions'?
- What are the implications of current thinking on space, place
and scale for the study of regions?
- How can the analysis of regions take into account that we live
in an inter-connected and inter-dependent world? How can regional
studies accommodate the way in which economies are structured round
flows of people, information and money?
- What could or should regional studies be about in a
post-disciplinary context?
- What are the implications of new thinking about regional studies
for research methodologies and strategy?
- How can or should regional studies relate to public policy and
politics?
- What are the normative, moral or ethical aspects of regional
studies? What kind of regional studies and for whom? Who could or should
be involved in the dialogue about what regional studies are and where
they are going?
Key contributions to the session will be encouraged to submit their
papers for consideration for a Special Issue of Regional Studies - the
journal of the Regional Studies Association - in the 40th anniversary
year of the journal in 2007.
Please send abstracts - no more than 250 words - for consideration for
this session in the format required by the AAG to the organizers by 23rd
September 2005.
Abstract instructions:
http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/Chicago2006/abstract.cfm
>Sarah Wray
>Regional Studies Editorial assistant
>CURDS
>4th Floor, Claremont Bridge
>University of Newcastle
>Newcastle upon Tyne
>NE1 7RU
>
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