RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2007 28th-31st August 2007, at
the Royal Geographical Society with IBG, London
Call for papers: Lively non-human temporalities: towards rhythmanalysis
of hybrid nature-society time-spaces.
Sponsored by the Rural Geography Research Group
Convenor: Owain Jones
More people than ever live in cities and to speeds and rhythms set by the
clock, driven by schedules of work, family, leisure, and electronic
media/information. Much is made of how social processes are speeding up
and smoothing out (24/7), floating free of 'old nature' in technological
webs. But despite this, many forms of natural rhythms remain profoundly
influential in shaping our lives. Obvious examples are diurnal and
seasonal rhythms and organism body-clocks (human and non-human) which
respond to them. Within and alongside these pervasive natural rhythms are
all manner of other velocities and pulses such as multiple geo-rhythms
(e.g. tides) and the specific temporalities in the umwelten (lifeworlds)
of animals, plants and trees. All these orchestrate into the complex
timescapes of cities, buildings, countrysides, farms, forests, and myriad
other forms of temporally hybrid spaces/places.
Latour (1997) argues that space and time are 'the consequences of the ways
in which bodies relate to each other [ ]instead of a single space-time, we
will generate as many spaces and times as there are types of
relations'. Socio-ecological processes/spaces/places are thus not only the
result of 'a multiplicity of differing agents [], human and non-human,
technological and textual, organic and (geo)physical, which hold each
other in position' (Whatmore 1999) but also of the intermeshing temporal
signatures of those entities/processes.
How 'social' systems interact with, shape and are shaped by natural
rhythms, and how multiple rhythms gear together in spaces/places, are
questions of profound importance for understanding ecological, economic
and cultural systems (inc identity), human/non-human health and quality of
life, ecological planning and governance, and sustainable development.
The temporalities of the seasons and day and night have been gestured
towards in recent accounts of time geographies (e.g. May and Thrift, 2001)
but little sustained work is done on these and other key rhythms. Think of
our estuaries as huge volumes of water flow in and out of them twice daily
in complex rhythms which cut across the 24 hour clock. Think of the
multiple rhythms of the city, say, the changes in the affective life from
a hot summer's day to that of a freezing winter's night, and back again.
Think of economic assemblages in which animal or plant life rhythms are
central.
The aim of the session is to explore, amongst other things,
the presence and functioning of differing natural temporalities in
socio-ecological formations
how to approach the rhythmanalysis of such formations (a difficult
challenge - Amin and Thrift, 2002)
temporality and ecological planning and ecological governance
hybrid temporalities in ecologies of place, landscape and dwelling
Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words to
[log in to unmask] by 31st January 2007.
Owain Jones
mobile: 07871 572969
Research Fellow
Dept of Geography, University of Exeter
Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4 4RJ
Eating Biodiversity project website
http://www.sogaer.ex.ac.uk/geography/Eating%20Biodiversity/Index.htm
(http://www.owainjones.org.uk/)
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