CFP Animating Geographies
At the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers
Annual Conference, London, August 28 - 31, 2007
Convenors
Dan Swanton (University of Durham)
Hannah Macpherson (University of Newcastle)
Abstract
This session will address the methodological and (re)presentational
challenges posed by attempts to ‘animate’ geographical knowledge (Rose and
Wylie, 2006) through engagements with embodied experience, mobile
practices, fleeting encounters and emotion. In spite of an upsurge of
interest in more than/less than rational, intuitive, embodied, emotional
and affective qualities of human experience (Nast and Pile, 1998; Massumi,
2002; Dewsbury, 2003; Davidson, 2004), some have argued that in cultural
geography our research methods and modes of presentation have failed to
keep up with our theoretical talk (Thrift, 2000; cf. Latham, 2003; Crang
2005). Accordingly we aim to build on recent experiments with methods,
including walking ethnography (Kusenbach, 2003), participant diaries
(Latham, 2003), video clip analysis (Laurier and Philo, 2003) and artistic
practice (Tolia-Kelly, 2006) by bringing together a range of contributions
committed to methodological experimentation and innovative styles of
presentation as they attempt to animate geographies.
Questions that the sessions try to answer will include:
• What methods, writing styles and techniques of presentation can be
used to evoke more than rational worlds? These could include mobile
methods, psychogeography, space-time diagrams, montage, performance art,
film, etc.
• What methodological and presentational techniques might we develop
to grasp the force and intensities of affect, sensation or emotion? How
might we animate a moment-ary world, and engage everyday practices that
perpetually open out into an endless series of other moments?
• How might we also acknowledge the losses that inevitably occur in
our accounts?
• How can we develop styles of presentation that push at limits of
social scientific discourse?
Please email abstracts (max 200 words) to either of the convenors by 31st
January
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