Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Boston, April 15-19, 2008
Geographies of 'Peak Oil'
Organizers:
Gavin Bridge, University of Manchester
Andrew Wood, University of Kentucky
The concept of 'peak oil' conventionally refers to an impending decline in global oil production as a consequence of geological limitations. The concept has garnered considerable attention as part of a broader concern with the end of cheap energy and, together with climate change, has emerged as a recurring storyline in public debates through which a post-carbon future is being slowly imagined. To this point, however, geographers have engaged peak oil in only a limited way and their contribution to the broader public debate over its socio-economic and political implications has consequently been very modest.
Within critical human geography, however, there are a number of well-developed lines of inquiry from which one might start to engage peak oil. These include (1) empirical research and theoretical interventions around the 'production of scarcity' that re-direct attention away from external limits and toward the socio-spatial organization of oil production and consumption; (2) discursive analyses of the political work done by calls of 'environmental crisis' and the socio-political implications of specters of scarcity; (3) commodity chain and other relational approaches to economic geography that empirically examine the structure and organization of industrial sectors; and (4) political ecologies of oil and gas development that highlight the multiple ways in which states, firms and communities struggle over the 'last' conventional resources.
This call for papers focuses on peak oil as a particular socio-political problematic that has its roots in historical patterns of resource production-consumption. However, in light of the limited engagement so far, the invitation is deliberately broad and does not seek to specify an analytical perspective or a theoretical approach. Our primary objective is to map the outlines of a geographical contribution to the debate on peak oil and, in the process, to establish a position from which geography might more fully engage in one of the key public debates of the contemporary period.
Interested participants should send expressions of interest, questions and/or title and abstract of 250 words or less to either Andrew Wood (aHYPERLINK "mailto:[log in to unmask]" [log in to unmask]) or Gavin Bridge ([log in to unmask]) by October 6.
Dr Gavin Bridge
Reader in Economic Geography
School of Environment and Development
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
ENGLAND
+44(0)161 275 3638
http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/geography/staff/bridge_gavin.htm
Geographical Political Economy Research Group, University of Manchester
http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/geography/research/gpe/
Society and Environment Research Group, University of Manchester
http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/research/SERG.htm
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