After some unexpected events we have a few more places available in our AAG session:
Social anxiety and the geographies of fear
Whereas individual anxieties are well documented, socio-cultural reactions to anxiety
have been hypothesized under broader structural paradigms, such as (post) modernity or
risk. The result is that social anxiety remains under theorized. For example, health and
food scares such as swine flu or BSE, safety and security scares such as terrorist attacks,
or environmental scares embodied by recent debates around climate change have each
been met with large scale institutional responses, with clear temporal trajectories, that
have variously mobilized, produced, reaffirmed or in some cases destabilized
organizational capacity to counteract these threats. As a result, rather than focusing on
the immediate effects and impacts of anxieties arising from real or imagined events on
the individual level, it is necessary to now consider their wider social, cultural, or indeed
geographical impacts.
In broad strokes, the aim of the session is to consider ' social anxiety' as a concept. We
also want to go beyond the ephemeral conceptualisation of social anxiety and invite
papers that explore in one way or another the occurrences of social anxiety as spatial
practices, produced performed and reworked from within everyday life. We welcome any
kind of research in any part of the world and do not wish to limit the thematic scope of
the session as possibly indicated by the examples provided above. We are interested in
exploring through sound empirical research a shared conceptual ground that allows us to
clarify the workings and significance of social anxieties.
Please send abstracts by November 14 to
both Ben Coles ([log in to unmask]) and Jonathan Everts
([log in to unmask]).
|