SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS:
Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of
British Geographers
London, 1st-3rd September 2010
www.rgs.org/AC2010
_________________________________
Geographies of rationality
Convenors: Clive Barnett (Open University), Benedikt Korf (University of
Zurich), Roland Lippuner (University of Jena)
Sponsored by the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group
(HPGRG).
Abstract
Post‐Weberian social science has canonised an understanding of
rationality as an outcome of modernity, and action as the conduct of
intentional agency through self‐conscious subjects. These understandings
have supported a particular conception of agency as a vector of
responsibility, which has been challenged from various directions. The
new cultural diversities of a globalising world, the emerging anxieties
around a world risk society and the pluralizing nature of societal
values and norms have increasingly brought into question understandings
of rationality in modern social science. These processes have been
mirrored in intellectual challenges, including post‐structuralist
philosophies, postcolonial and feminist theories, pragmatism, systems
theories, actor‐network theories and non-representational approaches,
and, more recently, the biological life sciences. These scientific and
societal challenges to singular understandings of rationality open up
the multiple rationalities that are enacted in new spaces of action. The
“spatial turn” in the social sciences has reshaped thinking about
rationalities as situated and context‐bound. However, this understanding
of the multiplicity of rationalities is often expressed in the
fragmentation of knowledge domains into specialised sub‐fields and
language games that are often presented as mutually incompatible. This
includes the development of regionally specific discourse communities
that continue to shape language‐specific, and often nation‐bound
traditions of thought around these issues.
This panel wants to develop a conversation on reconstructing
understandings of rationality and action in the light of post‐human
philosophies. We invite contributions from different traditions of
Geography. We particularly encourage submissions in two fields of interest:
(1) Geographies of action: How are the logical geographies of action and
conventional understandings of the relations between perception, action
and conceptualisation recast through a turn towards concepts of embodied
action and expressive rationality?
(2) Spaces of rationality: How can models of human agency be
re‐conceptualised as distributed in situational contexts, through
concepts such as the extended mind and embedded agency?
Deadline for abstracts: *5 February 2010
*Notification of acceptance: *23 February 2010*
Please send paper proposals (Abstracts of approx. 200 words) to Benedikt
Korf ([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>) with
cc to Clive Barnett ([log in to unmask]) and Roland Lippuner
([log in to unmask]).
|