2nd Call AAG 2007: Commercialising the Nonhuman
Session organisers Emma Roe (Cardiff University, UK) and Henry Buller (Exeter University, UK).
This session seeks papers which use post-structural readings of materiality to present stories
about the varied procedures of the commercialisation of the ‘vital’ nonhuman as a socio-material
process. The materiality of animal and other bodies (e.g. seeds, body organs/parts, skin cells) is
highly significant in commercial strategies and innovations. Increasingly, manufacturers,
processors, retailers are drawing directly upon that materiality and human relations to it, as a
component element of product value, quality and distinctiveness (for example through issues of
health, beauty, welfare, ecology, sustainability and so on). Such entanglements, through which
humans (consumers) are attached to and detached from production processes ensure that the
resultant ‘things’ that are sold and bought (and, in many cases, subsequently incorporated as
food, medicine, body surgery) are, in effect, complex assemblages of the social and the material,
the human and the non-human that are differentially organised, segmented and ordered.
Going beyond a socially constructive approach, this session looks to investigate the nature, role
and place of materially-affective relations in commercialisation processes (as externalities, as
‘internalities’, as conventions of value, as performances and ways of being, as practice, as
regulation and so on) and the way they can be manipulated and/ or responded to within that
process. As such, we hope to explore readings of the commercialisation of the non-human that
address the relational, ecological and spatial ethics of production/consumption.
We invite papers on all aspects of commercialisation as a socio-material process but are
particularly interested in (though we by no means seek to restrict the session to) those that
involve, either directly or indirectly, bodies, both human and non-human. We invite papers on all
aspects of socio-material relations and are particularly interested in the epistemological challenge
of accounting for the material in such relations. Finally, we invite papers drawing upon all stages
of the commercialisation process, from production to processing, marketing, advertising and
retailing.
Some possible areas:
-Trade in animals as pets, farm animals, zoo animals.
-The commercialisation of biotechnological innovation
-The market for plastic surgery and other beautifying products.
Please get in touch with expressions of interest, or send a 250 word abstract to Emma Roe –
[log in to unmask] or Henry Buller [log in to unmask] by October 1st 2006.
The AAG conference is scheduled to take place between April 17th-21st 2007 at the Hilton Hotel
in San Francisco. For further information, including registration, please check the AAG website,
www.aag.org.
Emma Roe
University of Cardiff UK
Henry Buller
University of Exeter, UK
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