RGS/IBG annual conference 2009, Manchester (www.rgs.org/AC2009)
Final Call For Papers: 'Life going on and on: time, embodiment, ageing'
Co-Sponsored by: Social and Cultural Geographies Research Group and
Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Working Group.
Organisers: Bethan Evans, Manchester Metropolitan University; John Horton,
The University of Northampton; Peter Kraftl, University of Leicester
Please send abstracts to [log in to unmask] by 29th January 2009
A range of recent geographical work has questioned the multiple
spatio-temporalities and conceptions of embodiment which drive particular
ways of knowing, being and acting on and in the world. Geographers have, for
instance, continually questioned the spatialities of time, and vice-versa
(Massey, 2005; Dodgshon, 2008). Recent work on pre-emption and hope has
highlighted the affective registers at play in the potential futures open to
intending subjects/societies (Anderson, 2006; 2007). Geographers of age have
insisted upon more relational understandings of age, inter-generational
relations, agency, responsibility and the lifecourse (Hopkins and Pain,
2007). Children’s geographers have deployed nonrepresentational theories to
query the linearity of ‘growing up’, stressing that "embodiment-and this
being-in-the-world-is always becoming: bodies are always in flux; always
ongoing; never still"(Horton and Kraftl, 2006a, 2006b). This session seeks
to bring together critical debate about the diverse, multiple conceptions of
spatio-temporality such as those above (and more besides).
We seek empirical, methodological and conceptual papers that provide new
insights into how bodies in/of the world go on. The session aims to question
the multiple kinds of ongoingness done in and to the world. In particular,
we seek papers that critically interrogate the relationships between
hitherto separate theorisations of ongoingness (such as lifecourse, affect,
agency, responsibility and time theories). We therefore invite papers which
explore issues of space-time, embodiment and ageing in non-teleological
terms through a range of theoretical and empirical engagements.
Papers might address (but are not restricted to) the following:
• age and embodiment;
• how bodies ‘know’ ageing;
• exploring the co-construction of age and embodied development with the
development of spaces at larger scales (see Aitken, et al., 2007);
• the spatiotemporalities of memory, nostalgia, hope and fear as bodies grow
up/go on;
• approaching ‘growing up’ in the wake of recent theorisations of events,
rhythms, materiality, duration or complexity;
• alternatives to transitions;
• questioning adulthood;
• material/non-human accompaniments to ageing/going on;
• non-bounded / collective theorisations about agency / responsibility (see
Colls and Evans, 2008; Ruddick., 2007).
References:
Aitken S C, Lund R and Kjørholt A T (2007) Why Children? Why Now? Children's
Geographies. 5:1 3-14
Anderson, B. (2006) Becoming and being hopeful: towards a theory of affect.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24(5): 733-752
Anderson, B (2007) Hope for nanotechnology: Anticipatory knowledge and
governance of affect. Area. 19:156-165.
Colls R and Evans B (2008) 'Embodying Responsibility: children's health and
supermarket interventions'. Environment and Planning A 40:3 615-631
Dodgshon R (2008) Geography’s place in time. Geografiska Annaler B 90: 1-15
Hopkins P and Pain R (2007) Geographies of age: thinking relationally. Area
39 287-294.
Horton J and Kraftl P (2006a) What else? Some more ways of thinking about
and doing children's geographies. Children's Geographies 4:1 69-95
Horton, J. and Kraftl, P. (2006b) Not just growing up, but going on:
children’s geographies as becomings; materials, spacings, bodies, situations
Children’s Geographies. 4:3 259-276.
Massey D (2005) For Space. Sage: London
Ruddick S (2007) At the Horizons of the Subject: Neo-liberalism,
Neo-conservatism and the Rights of the Child. Part One: From 'knowing' fetus
to 'confused' child. Gender, Place and Culture 14:5 513-527
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