Forwarded message from Caitlin DeSilvey <[log in to unmask]>:
Association of American Geographers Conference 2006
7-11 March, CHICAGO
ORDERING/ DISORDERING SPACE AND MATTER
Social order is partly maintained by the predictable and regular
distribution of objects in space. The situation of objects in their
assigned places, and the impulse to re-situate them 'properly' when they
fall out of position, testifies to a common sense notion that there is 'a
place for everything and everything in its place'. The proper position of
things in space is underpinned by their status as durable fixtures around
which normative routines are repetitively practised.
Schemes of material order appear to be simply part of the way things are,
beyond critical appraisal. Shop windows, homes, museums and other
domestic, public and commercial spaces order objects in familiar
arrangements. Where unusual or exotic artefacts intrude upon this material
order, techniques of recontextualisation and containment (including
highlighting, curation, mounting and labelling) seek to banish
epistemological and aesthetic ambiguity. In a broader spatial and cultural
context, order is maintained through networks which assemble objects,
organisms, spaces, technologies and expertise. Such relational strategies
aim to stabilise the identity of material objects. This systematic
ordering establishes singular material meanings and effects in a thicket
of proliferating possibilities, a distillation of material identities
which also purifies context and divides space into discrete, single-
purpose realms.
The power of these strategies to discipline objects is, however, never
exhaustive.
Objects continually disrupt and exceed the constraints imposed on them.
Things may be out of place within established orders, or they may produce
destabilising effects in out of the way places. In ruins, trash heaps,
attics, and other spaces of marginality and excess, things escape the
bounds of their imprisonment and generate unexpected synergies and
juxtapositions. Objects so liberated express semiotic, aesthetic and
sensual effects which invigorate our experience of materiality and talk
back to the cultural systems that attempted to contain them.
For this session, we are interested in papers which focus either on the
processes of ordering things in space or on particular spaces of
disordering materiality.
Alternatively, contributors may wish to focus upon both aspects, looking
at how disorder is accomplished or domesticated in specific settings.
Further details on AAG 2006: http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/
Please send abstracts by September 25 to Tim Edensor ([log in to unmask])
or Caitlin DeSilvey ([log in to unmask]).
Dr Tim Edensor
Department of Geography
Manchester Metropolitan University
John Dalton Extension
Chester Street
Manchester
M1 5GD
0161 247 6284
Dr Caitlin DeSilvey
Geography Discipline
Open University
Walton Hall
MK7 6AA
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