Apologies for cross-postings. Please see the call for papers below.
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Andrew Jones
School of Geography
Birkbeck College
University of London
Malet Street
LONDON WC1E 7HX
tel. +44 (0)207 631 6471
fax. +44 (0)207 631 6498
email: [log in to unmask]
web: www.bbk.ac.uk/geog
AAG2008 CALL FOR PAPERS
"Researching Practice in the Space Economy: Possibilities and Limitations"
Boston, USA 15th-19th April 2008
http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/2008/papers.htm
Organisers:
Andrew Jones, School of Geography, Birkbeck College, University of London,
London, UK
James T Murphy, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, Worcester
MA 01610, USA
Continued interest in the ‘practice turn’ in economic geography has
provoked a series of questions and challenges around theory and research
methodology. A growing body of research has begun to map and explore the
nature of economic practices at the individual, group, firm and regional
level. These empirical studies have variously drawn on sociological
literatures concerned with social interaction, power relations, social
networks and knowledge. Practices-centred approaches have also begun to be
adopted by a wider range of economic geographic research including work
concerned, for example, with development studies and geographies of
finance and business education.
Broadly stated, practices are the everyday relational processes that
constitute economic action and industrial communities and which help
organize and sustain industries, economies, regions, and firms. Practices
are spatially and temporally embedded within or in relation to particular
places, scales, networks, institutional structures, and power hierarchies
and they demonstrate the complex and contingent ways in which firms,
industries, and economies function and interconnect in the global
economy. Moreover, practices reflect the knowledge held within places,
regions, and professional or industrial communities; knowledge that is
often only tacitly realized in the “doing” of economic and business
activities. Context, social meaning, and identity are central to
interpretations of practices such as learning and innovation and power
plays a key role in determining what actions are appropriate, who is a
legitimate participant in practice, and to what degree norms, routines,
and conventions can be differentially interpreted, transformed, or ignored.
Despite the growing interest in practices-centred research, however, its
theoretical and methodological foundations remain uncertain. Critics have
continued to argue that a focus on social practices risks abandoning
concern for key macro-level influences on the development and evolution of
the global economy. Furthermore, research into economic practice continues
to struggle to develop a clear consensus on how to relate individual and
micro-level practices to the success or failure of regions, clusters and
national economies. Simply stated, some view practices-centred research as
insufficiently critical, diffuse, or primarily descriptive in nature and
there is considerable lack of clarity regarding the methodological
implications, analytical possibilities, and conceptual contributions
associated with any ‘turn’ toward practice. As such, important questions
linger as to whether or not practices-centred research offers a new,
novel, sustainable, and theoretically significant direction for economic
geographical research.
Building on previous sessions at recent AAG meetings, this session aims to
engage with this burgeoning debate and address key questions about the
future development and value of economic geographical research concerned
with practice. It aims to attract a wider range of papers concerned with
any dimension of the practice debate within economic geography –
empirical, conceptual or methodological – but that will make a
contribution to the key issues of how economic practice can be better
researched, how the theoretical limitations of the practice turn can be
overcome, and how a strong methodological basis for research economic
practice can be developed. The following themes are intended as
illustrating some of the questions papers might address:
Different forms of economic practice
• research addressing specific forms of practices including, for example,
knowledge and innovation practices, power relationships, technology use
and modification, and economic governance.
• how different economic practices are constituted across different
scales; • whether a scalar conception of practice is helpful or
problematic; • the spatial form of economic practices in different
industries or sector;
The actors who undertake economic practice • how individual, group and or
firm-level interact with each other; how such practices affect economic
outcomes differently.
• differentiating key actors and their forms of practice; the nature of
different actors and their capacity to undertake practices.
• managerial, control and regulatory practices in, for example, firms,
clusters and regions; power relations and the capacity to undertake
economic practices.
• delimiting economic practices (e.g. the boundaries of firm-level
learning, defining communities of practice, the cultural specificity of
practice)
The places and contexts where practice research is conducted •
the “wheres” and “why theres” of practice research – biases, omissions,
and/or excesses.
• the problems and difficulties with researching economic practices in
different contexts (e.g. firms, sectors, advanced economies, LDCs,
institutions)
The epistemological and methodological challenges of researching
practices • how best do we learn about practice and its relationship to
outcomes such as innovation, inequality, and regional development •
questions of validity and transferability in practice research – the
challenges of building theories and extending findings from or beyond in-
depth case studies • issues of defining different practices, identifying
which are significant & the methods that can access these differences.
• examples of new, innovative or strong methodological approaches to
researching practice; • multi-method approaches to researching economic
practice; inter-disciplinary approaches.
• limitations of a practice-based approach; philosophical and conceptual
debates in the practice turn.
These more specific areas are given as a guide only and enquiries from
potential presenters who think that their paper would fit with the overall
themes of the session would be welcome.
The AAG website <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 interested in participating, please send abstracts (of not more than
250 words) for possible inclusion in this session to Andrew Jones
([log in to unmask]) or Jim Murphy ([log in to unmask]) by 19 October
2008.
Abstract instructions:
http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/2008/papers.htm#instructions
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