Hi Al

I had in my head that this was for the 18th October, hence the radio
silence.

Am I too late? I have a couple of ideas that I'd like to put into an
abstract and email over to you.

Hope you're OK in Laahndaahn town. I'm exhausted after stage managing a
huge event at the NIA this weekend. Very cool, though.

Dan 

-----Original Message-----
From: Economic Geography Research Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Al James
Sent: 08 August 2006 20:56
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: CFP AAG 2007 - Geographies of Work-Life (Im)balance

Apologies for cross postings


CALL FOR PAPERS

Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, 17-21 April 2007,
San Francisco, California


Exploring Everyday Geographies of Work-Life (Im)Balance

Organiser: Al James, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge,
UK

Session sponsored by the AAG Economic Geography Specialty Group


Over the last two decades, the emergent structures, social relations and

rhythms of work accompanying the shift to the 'New Economy' have become
the 
subject of intense policy and academic debate. As firms reorganise work,

'flexibility' for many workers has come to mean increased workloads,
less 
predictable work schedules, and more unsocial work hours, as firms
demand 
they work longer and harder in ways which minimise labour costs. 
Simultaneously, household life has also become more complex with the 
decline of the extended family; increasing numbers of lone-parent 
households; and greater eldercare responsibilities in the context of 
increased life expectancy. At the same time, female labour force 
participation rates continue to grow and an increasing proportion of 
workers are part of dual earner households.

The overall result of these synchronous changes for many workers is a 
complicated multi-variable balancing act between the competing demands
of 
work (production) and their responsibilities beyond the workplace 
(reproduction), for which they have only finite resources of time and 
energy. In response, the desirability and means of achieving an
appropriate 
work-life 'balance' (WLB) has received ever-increasing attention from 
governments, managers, trade unions, academics and the media. Various 
studies have documented how a lack of WLB can result in increased
stress, 
deleterious effects on psychological and physical well-being, and
increased 
family and marital tensions. Similarly, trade unions have also
emphasised 
the importance of WLB as a means of improving workers' quality of life, 
redressing gender inequalities, and combating the increasing work
pressures 
that are destabilising households and societal integration.

However, despite government efforts and considerable policy
proliferation, 
the gap between enlightened rhetoric about the need for work-life
'balance' 
and the everyday reality for many workers remains disturbingly wide.
This 
disjuncture raises a number of important questions, namely: what are the

major barriers faced by individuals, households, firms, and
organisations 
struggling to reconcile the conflicting pressures of production and 
reproduction? How do workers' everyday experiences of those barriers
vary 
across different institutional, cultural, legislative and urban
contexts? 
How far is it possible to transfer successful coping strategies for 
reconciling 'work' and 'non-work' priorities between different worker 
groups and/or local, regional and national socioeconomies? And what
added 
value do Geographers offer to policy actors grappling with these issues
on 
the ground? So motivated, this session seeks to bring together
established 
and junior scholars with research interests in geographies of work,
gender, 
and/or care to engage and learn from one another's work. Specific topics

might include, but are by no means limited to:

- Case studies of contemporary transformations of work in different 
industrial contexts and their meaning and consequences for different
groups 
of workers and their families struggling to combine productive and 
reproductive activities across the work-home boundary.

- Analyses of the overlapping networks, social ties, and institutional 
arrangements which buffer workers' experiences of work-life conflict,
and 
their varying importance to different groups of workers over the 
life-course and in different place contexts.

- The impacts of different combinations of work-life balance policies
and 
practices on how, when, where, and with whom people work; that is, on
the 
socioeconomic performance of firms in different industrial sectors.

- The development of alternative geographical frameworks for 
reconceptualising and retheorising work-life (im)balance (e.g. work-life

'reconciliation', 'integration', etc).

- Methodological innovations for researching geographies of work-life 
(im)balance across spatially and temporally shifting work-home
boundaries.

- The scope for the inclusion of work-life balance as a central tenet of

more holistic (socio)economic development strategies at different
spatial 
scales.
 
The AAG website <<http://www.aag.org>http://www.aag.org> provides more 
information about the annual meeting. Accepted papers will need to be 
registered online (paper title and short abstract of no more than 250
words 
and with 3 keywords). If you are interested in participating, please
send 
your abstract (of not more than 250 words) for possible inclusion in
this 
session to Al James ([log in to unmask]) by 15 October 2006.

Abstract instructions: 
<http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/SF2007/abstract.cfm>http://www.aag.or
g/annualmeetings/SF2007/abstract.cfm